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“Ohhhhh.....the pain......the PAIN.....”
2004-01-05 09:36:23
You know, you really don’t appreciate the momentum inherent in an object the size of a car until one smacks into you at two or three miles an hour.
With an intro like that, anyone want to guess what my weekend was like?
Well, as usual, it’s a little more elaborate than it sounds. For starters, it was MY car, and it didn’t really hit me directly.
See, on Friday I talked a co-worker into following me out to the tune-up place so I could drop my car off for a tune-up, oil change, and brake check. We drop the car off and I get a ride back to work. Later in the day they call me and give me the bad news, about $300 for all the work and a few parts that needed replacement (distributor cap, spark-plug wires, and the rotor). That’s within my budget, so I OK it, and they say they’ll give me a call when it’s ready. About 5:15 I get worried and give ‘em a call back. It’s ready.
The friend who agreed to give me a ride back has disappeared.
It’s a little under a mile to the garage. (I _think_....I am a terrible judge of distance.)
They close at 5:30.
Crud.
Keeping in mind my only new year’s resolution (to get more exercise...I’m tired of the pasty monitor-bathed complexion I’ve acquired), I tear outta the lab and set off to the garage. I manage to make it there by about 5:40. Fortunately, the guy stayed open to wait for me, I get my car, and all is right with the world. Go on a comics run, come back to the apartment.
The next day I drive home to visit with the ‘rents and pick up a few late gifts that had arrived in the mail. Then I head out to Vicky’s (out in Buford) for the weekly game. Stop off for some drinks, etc.
About a mile from her place, in the middle of the two-lane road, going about 40, the engine suddenly cuts out. I try the key, and the engine won’t turn over. I coast about halfway up a hill in the road, and come to a stop. Not only is there no shoulder to get over on, the road drops off about four feet on either side such that an attempt to GET off the road would leave me hung up sitting on the undercarriage.
Shit.
I try rolling backwards to get to a better area to pull off, but that’s really not any better. Following some singularly unhelpful advice from people passing me (“You really oughta get off the road...this is a really bad place”) two guys from a garbage truck rather insistently lent me a hand in pushing it up the hill toward a gravel driveway. They were also rather insistent that I get out and help, despite protestations that I wouldn’t be able to get at the brakes. We get it up the hill and I steer on-handed into the gravel driveway. At which point the slight DOWN grade on the driveway comes into play, the car slipped sideways off driveway, down the incline, and smacked into a tree. It was only about eight feet off the driveway, but I was standing in the open door when it hit the tree, and the force of the collision rebounded through the spring-loaded car door, nailing me hard with the window-frame just above my right eye. It was a pretty powerful crack, such that, once I found my glasses, I was a bit surprised to find them still in one piece. I’m stunned for a minute or so and then glance up squinty-eyed to see the two guys running back down the road to their truck.
Fuckers. Had it not taken me another five minutes to find my glasses I would’ve taken down their license number.
The rest is pretty predictable. Took an hour or so for a tow truck to come out and find me. The bumper looks to have absorbed all the force of the blow with little to no damage beyond the superficial ding. I dropped the car off at a local repair place I trust (NOT the same one I got the tune-up at, and got dropped off at the ‘rents’ place since it was closer. Mother immediately began speculating about a skull fracture, as is her wont, and then applied copious amounts of ice. Dad took me back in to tech.
Now the weird part. As expected, I’ve got a mildly obtrusive welt above my right eye. (I plan on telling the people at work that I got it in a bar brawl. It really says something that there’s a good chance they’ll believe me.) Also, as I kinda pushed it during that power-walk to the garage, my thighs are killing me, and lending me the limp of the arthritic. What’s weird is that my shoulder hurts. I don’t remember getting whacked there by the door, but there’s this big scrape on the back of my left shoulder that I can’t account for. Actually hurts more than the eye. But you know what hurts the most? My left index finger. For some reason it really hurts to bend that finger. It feels really tight and swollen, though there’s no sign of a bruise or anything similar. I really don’t remember hitting it on the car door, and I haven’t been doing a lot of typing or anything else that might especially stress it. Looks like I may have to sit out Halo on Monday.
Uh...that is...if I can make it there.
Nigel? Can I have a ride?
Since typing is starting to aggravate my hand again, I hope y’all will excuse a further delay in the reviews. Here’s the last entry of “McTyrie” as compensation. Anway, commentary requested and appreciated. I’ve never really been satisfied with my execution on the ending. The content’s about right, but the style is all muddled and disorderly. Ah well.
______________________________________
I do not know why, but I cannot seem to find my way home. I left the McTyrie house that night when I could not find Andrea, but have been unable to find my way out of these damnable woods in two solid days. I have remained upon the dirt road that led me through the first time, and although it has not branched or dead-ended, I have yet to come to the main road. I think Andrea is following me. How she could have managed to keep up with my bicycling is a mystery, but I am plagued by occasional rustling in the bushes behind me, followed by a brief flash of blue fabric as someone runs further into the underbrush. The effect is maddening. I do not know why I think this, but it seems as though Andrea is the one leading me astray. During the time I spent at the McTyrie house, Andrea spent every moment of the day wandering these woods and doubtless knows why I cannot leave them. Yet she does not approach to help me, and her manner so disturbs me that I believe I would hesitate to ask if presented the opportunity. It seems almost as though I am being prevented from leaving the McTyrie estate because of what I have seen there.
Somehow, during my vain attempts to return to the forested road, I wandered upon the field of flowers again. The scene is much changed from my first visit. The flowers have all become withered and limp now, as one would expect of cut flowers kept too long. The stalks stand bent and flaccid with the desiccated petals falling into the dirt. Many have been "uprooted" as well, torn from their placement and piled on one another or flung among the trees in large swaths. Perhaps the Andrea came here after the death of her mother. Her anger and hurt certainly may have resulted in a tantrum...but then again, this seems more than a little girl could accomplish. More than any one person.
The preserves and canned fruit I took to tide me over on the way back and as payment for my services have almost run out, and I shall have to return to the McTyrie house if I am to survive, yet I am loath to do so. I cannot help dwelling on the events that occurred there, but it is not the death of Mrs. McTyrie that haunts me. I keep thinking about the corpse of that horse in the stables, and how, as I left it, the McTyrie manse looks less like a house in my memory, and more like a fortress.
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“He’s not trying to raise the dead, is he? It’s always the dead with that boy...”
2004-01-02 21:18:38
First off, major kudos goes to Scott for somehow coming up with that most unobtainable of treasures..... NEW ZIM. Damn, but if that wasn’t impressive. I think “Backseat Driver of Doom” was by far my favorite, but the Gaz-centric one was also incredibly cool.
My vitrol has just been bubbling over lately, egging me on to write up a handful of political or social screeds. They’ve been slowly accumulating in the back of my head, much to my dismay, nagging at me to write out a lengthy riposte.
But, you can all be reassured, I’ve successfully resisted these urges and shall present none of these in the immediate future.
Oh hell, let me at least do this: http://snltranscripts.jt.org/03/03hdean.phtml
Go read it. It’s funny. Whichever side you stand on.
New Year’s was great this time around. Actually got there (Quu’s) early for once so I could help out with the preparations for the party rather than showing up late, an hour and a half before everyone was about to collapse. I’d acquired a cold of my very own this time, but as the night wore on, I discovered the healing power of beer. (Really, one Guinness down and my throat didn’t hurt any more, I got my voice back, and began enjoying myself much more. No hard liquor, though. I knew better than to attempt that on a disease.)
So, much DDRing (which I wouldn’t do, even if I’d had the energy) and a 12-person halo frag-fest with not NEARLY enough grenades. (Dammit!) Got ensnared in a trap laid in the back room, watched the ball drop via live web-cast, sang a few mumbled verses of “Proud to be an American” and “Auld Lang Syne”, a swig of champagne, and even given a New-Year’s kiss from a lovely young lady, which was greatly appreciated (being my first...never having had anyone interested around NYD before), if somewhat clumsily returned. (Curse my crippling shyness!)
Hung out playing the absolutely absurdly difficult “Warner Bros. Trivial Pursuit” (all the flippin’ cartoon questions were about HANNA BARBARA characters!) until about 4:00 and then drove back home to collapse.
Wait...I’m missing a holiday in here somewhere, aren’t I?
So....Christmas. Right.
Nothing happened.
I mean, I went up for the usual wing-ding with the family in Wisconsin. Fewer relatives than ever showed up this year, but that was likely just a lull in the action. We went and saw RotK (again, for me) the day after Christmas. Reading back through my review, I don’t think there’s anything that needs to be changed (except for my mixing up Bara-dur and Minus Morgul. The battle never makes it as far as Minus Morgul, so I had no real reference as to where the two stood in relation to one another.) No cellphones or screaming children this time around either.
We drove up, had Christmas, attended Christmas Eve service, opened presents, went to the movie, and drove back. The only remarkable thing that happened was that we managed the whole drive up in one day (hit the halfway point around 2:00 and it just seemed silly to stop) and I caught a slight cold on the way back.
Oh yeah, the haul. Well, let’s see. Other than a couple of nice shirts, a sweater, and a new pair of jeans (I’m a 34x34, and I somehow managed to acquire three 32x34 on my birthday, so these were a _welcome_ release.) I did pretty well for myself.
1) The makings (motherboard and accoutrements) of a new computer. (Very odd...didn’t ask for one, but have been bitching about the eccentricities of my current one, so I guess they thought it was a hint.)
2) Looney Tunes Golden Collection. (Ohhhhhhh Yeahhhhhhhhh)
3) Real surprise was a couple of out-of-the-park homers by my aunts who’ve finally realized that, yes, I really do like crappy horror flicks, and picked up some winners on the cheap. “Jeepers Creepers” (damn.....anyone want it? I’ve already got a copy) “Attack of the Giant Leeches” (whoa.... the non-MSTied version) and a double-feature DVD of “The Thirsty Dead” and “The Swamp of the Ravens” (Any plot description that begins “Ruled by a 500-year old disembodied head-in-a-box and a dragon-lady....” already has a half dozen cool points in it’s favor.
4) “Get Fuzzy” compillation.
5) Various foods, etc. (Popcorn and chocolates and the like).
6) About $75 in cash and gift cards from the relations.
Basically a couple of high-priced items leaning on my list cut down on the quantity. I more than made up for it, though, while hitting sales and the like. Made it into a Sam Goody’s that was closing down (66% off everything) and hit Half-Price Books twice while I was up there. HPB is an addiction for me. Have trouble getting out of that place. From that I picked up the games “Command and Conquer: Red Alert” (two frickin’ dollars!) “Gladiators”, “Unreal II”, and Blair Witch III, the DVDs of Farscape (double DVD packs) 3.4 and 3.5 ($11 each!), Armitage the III (2), the Bionicle movie (hey, I’m curious), and (heaven help me) “Boris and Natasha”.....AND the videotapes of two Zagreb animation compilations, Wishmaster 3, Candyman 3, and a legal copy of “The Maxx.” All that cost me, in the final analysis, about $65. (And, dammit, I hesitated on picking up “The Hunger” and it was gone when I came back.)
It’s a damn good thing I don’t live near a HPB down here. I’d go broke in a hurry.
Well... I did do one other thing on the vacation. I read up a storm. As usual, the trip up and back provided ample opportunity for me to catch up on my reading, and I took good advantage of it. Also, the paucity of the turnout let me have more peace and quiet than usual, and the confinement of nearly all the women to the kitchen meant I wasn’t even being anti-social in sitting down and storming through a hundred pages of a book.
(Oh yes, the cooking. Wonderful potato buns, good turkey, EXCELLENT lefsa, delicious krumkaka. I also, once again, tried the lutefisk. Took one bite and came up with six bones. That pretty much cancelled any further adventures for me.)
So, brief (HA!) reviews of the four books I made it through.
First up was a volume lent to me by Jimmy, “The Zombie Survival Guide” by Max Brooks. (Son of comedian Mel Brooks.) I’d heard a half-dozen “damning with faint praise” reviews of this book before it was handed off to me, so I was rather curious to see what, precisely, it was all about. Apparently this thing is usually categorized in the “humor” section, but that really does it a bit of an injustice, and probably led to most of the general criticisms. See, it’s not really a joke. Sure, it’s funny when taken in pieces, but it’s basically the same joke all the way through. Someone reading it for just humor would be groaning after the first hundred pages. “OK, OK, I get it, there are zombies, it’s all been covered up. You’re making sidelong references to different horror concepts. Where’s the point where you ridicule the whole idea?”
This book is really more a work of speculative fiction. If there was such a category as “novelty book” it would land solidly in that category. Essentially, the guide is an honest-to-God survival guide. It covers how to spot possible zombie outbreaks. How to prepare for confrontation with a zombie. What, precisely, is known about zombies (the book goes for the ever popular “sort of disease” angle, although it readily concedes the dead nature of the subjects. The prolongation of decay is covered especially cleverly, as is the nature of eating zombies and vice versa). How to evaluate zombie threat levels, and the proper response for each. What sort of supplies to store. How to start a phone-tree. How to kill zombies. (For example, fire is almost always a bad idea. The zombie takes no notice, and will likely start a major blaze in a building or forest as he staggers about.) Different strategies for escaping, surviving a siege, or hunting down a few individuals. How to dispose of the corpses before they create a health hazard. It’s a completely practical approach with only a very few inside jokes in the entire book, with the exception of the last chapter, where it has a detailed list of past zombie outbreaks throughout history. This plops it squarely down in the midst of my “Cthuloid literature” category, (pretending, somewhat convincingly, that it’s all real) and probably outside the interest of most people, with one exception. Horror roleplayers. This book would be an invaluable asset for anyone who’s ever played a horror RPG. It’s sensible, well-organized, and so reasonable that even the stingiest DM would have trouble poking holes in or thwarting the plans advised in the handbook. Which is precisely why I’ve no plans to tell any of my players about it. :) For example, several zombies, during the course of an extermination, fell off a pier into an enclosed lake. The water is too murky to see through, and too large to patrol the banks. How do you finish them off? This book will tell you how.
In short, a surprisingly practical guide, and essential handbook for the horror roleplayer, or anyone who finds themselves stuck in a horror movie.
Next up was “Alan Moore: Portrait of an Extraordinary Gentleman.” I’d been reading this off and on since the trip out to San Diego, but had been having a very hard time getting into it. It wasn’t at all what I thought it was, which was....welll.... a biography of Alan Moore. For the uninitiated, Alan Moore is probably the most revolutionary writer in modern comics. He’s been more influential than Frank Miller, and was probably at least partially responsible for re-shaping DC’s foundering “Vertigo” press into a form that provided fertile soil for Neil Gamian’s “Sandman” through his masterful control and irrepressible boundary-pushing in the early “Swamp Thing” title. As if that wasn’t enough, he also created one of my favorite characters, John Constantine, though he denies any responsibility for the current incarnation. (By an absurd twist of coincidence I think the only “Swamp Thing” comic I ever read as a kid came one or two issues into his entry into the title, and it weirded me out worse than the first time I stumbled onto my dad’s “Heavy Metal” collection. It was the really odd one with the talking planarian worms and the Floronic Man’s origin story.) I’ve mentioned Moore a couple of times in here before, and my utter adoration of his current titles under the ABC press. My recommendation for his best work would be to read the original “Watchmen”, a series largely responsible for the more intense, sociopathic look at the concept of super heroes, and the more recent work of “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” that is just pure style in technique, working with other people’s creations. “From Hell” is magnificent, but probably way too intense (or, depending on your point of view, too dull) a work to start out on.
Now, to be fair, the book is partially biographical. Several of the pieces mention specific events in sequence, and one in particular near the beginning is an op-art presentation of his life story in extremely abbreviated form. (So THAT’s why he was pissed about DC and ABC...) However, that’s really only 11 pages of it, with 350 to go.
Mostly, it’s a bunch of gushing over Alan by his friends and colleagues. Being artists and scholars, they all gush in different ways. Paintings, comic strips. Essays. Etc. Don’t get me wrong, his colleagues are all really great people, but it’s mostly the same thing over and over again from different angles. See, the book is really a bit of promotion for Alan’s 50th birthday. Alan had sworn to retire from comics when he turned 50, and this book was assembled by all his friends as a birthday present and going-away gift to him from the industry. So why is it sold to the public? Well, mostly because it’s got some really good fan-art in it (of other pros with Alan’s characters), and it’s being done as a charity item, with all proceeds going towards Alzeheimer’s research. (Since Alan is getting old and senile, his friends kid him.) To be honest, if I had realized this, I would’ve sprung for the annotated “League” instead, as I’ve no real desire to plough through 145 “Happy Birthdays” to someone else, but since I plunked down my dough for it, I figured I should at least read it.
It’s actually really well balanced as far as subject matter goes. The praise is hitting most of his work evenly, several individuals even extolling the virtues of his really antiquated works, like “Halo Jones” or his “work” on Captain Britain where he killed the title character off in his first issue. “Swamp Thing” gets about as much attention as “Watchmen” “From Hell” or any of the ABC titles. Even his later, odder pieces after his conversion to magician status, “The Birth Caul” and “Snakes and Ladders” for example, get quite a bit of discussion. Strangely, the authorship isn’t nearly as well balanced. There’s an extraordinary number of Italian artists and writers in the book, which is odd as Alan’s work has no especial connection to that peninsula. A glance inside the cover finds that the particular Alzheimer’s Disease research foundation is centered in Italy (AIMA) and the book is plainly labeled “English Edition” in a couple of places. Being a primarily Italian work, it’s only natural that their dip into the fan-pool would be predominantly Italian, and sold primarily to Italian fans. (Which also explains why I’ve never heard of the publishing company “Abiogenesis Press” before as well.)
The material......well.... it all seems sincere, but it’s also largely repetitive. The majority of the written pieces are just brimming over with adoration, and have only their personal anecdotes to set them apart from everyone else. They coo for two pages, name which of his works affected them most deeply, and end with a happy birthday.
Whoopty frickin’ doo.
However, there are a few exceptions. There’s one that might even be seen as an attack on Alan by his old partner-in-crime Stephen R. Bissette. His is the second longest piece, at 15 pages of script, and essentially just tells the story of their work together during his time as producer of “Taboo”, an adult-oriented horror anthology that was the first place where “From Hell” was serialized. I’ve actually read five or six of those anthologies (an accomplishment, since they only got around 12 published) and found them very good, if a little irregular of quality in places. Apparently there was a major falling-out between him and Alan as Taboo folded, compounded by an interview Bissette gave to the Comics Journal that put him on the outs with Alan forever and ever. The fans, naturally enough, sided with Alan, and the rumor mill started working overtime. Bissette comes off in his little piece as the poor put-upon person who just cannot understand why everyone hates him, and, don’t you know, he still likes all of Alan’s work, even if he isn’t Alan’s bestest bud in the whole universe any more. Alan refuses to discuss the issue, or even acknowledge its presence, so we’re left with the word of a whiner versus a blank slate. Hmmm.
There’s an introduction to the book by Terry Gilliam that tells us that, a long time ago, he was considering directing a film version of “The Watchmen.” This tells us that we must perfect quantum travel now to violate the copyright laws of alternate universes before we can see this film. That oughta provide sufficient motivation to those lazy physicists.
Then there’s the contributions of Jose Alaniz, a PhD in Comparative Literature from Berkley who treats us to his analysis of three of Alan’s Works, “From Hell” “Lost Girls” and an issue of “Puma Blues.” It’s been quite a while since I had to move through text as dense as this, and, as always, I’m left with the impression that the author, if not over-analyzing the material, at the very least has over-written it. (Oh, shut up. I do not.) It’s difficult to extract just a few examples out of context, as they tend to collapse in on their own significance, but I’ll give it a shot. “The female ray’s circular snout and lamprey-like mouth clearly recall the vagina dentate of male dread and Freudian phantasmagoria; throughout the piece, the sex/death link prevails.....These sorts of representations constitute a problem for feminist critics like Elizabeth Grosz, who see them as anything but innocent descriptions of natural phenomena; rather, they seem little more than reifications of male sexuality writ large.....Where these “colonizations” of the natural world by the imperial male gaze, Grost argues, seek to reinscribe human femininity along rigidified norms. The male renders everything “not-male” either in his own image or as threatening-witness our common cultural associations regarding the “predatory” sexual practices of the Praying Mantis or the Black Widow.” This is actually fairly perceptive, or at least interesting, but so over-written as to make it practically opaque, and this was only the second page in. It got worse later. (Oh...and “vagina dentate”? That’s never made sense to me. I mean, if it’s a primary source of Freudian male dread....then why are blowjobs so popular? I’m just sayin’.)
Most interesting....though also longest and most convoluted... were the final entries in the book. An interview of Alan, conducted by fax, by Dave Sim. Boy. There’s so much going on here it’s hard to know where to start. But I’ll try.
During my review of “From Hell” I mentioned that Alan had announced several years ago that he was planning on becoming a “real magician.” I didn’t know at the time exactly what that meant, and whether or not it was an elaborate inside joke/concept/performance art, a ruse, or a real attempt at mysticism. Well, according to several parts of this book, several in Alan’s own words, it appears that he really, honestly meant it. A magician. In the tradition of the Great Beast, Aleister Crowley. Contacting and speaking with daemons. Vision quests. Satanism (sort of, he worships a particular snake-god with an association to both Satan and Jesus). The whole nine yards. A lot of this can be seen on a rather elementary level in his current ABC book “Promethea” and to lesser degrees elsewhere. I actually rather admire this aspect of his work, because he is attempting to do with the occult what I am attempting to do with horror literature, essentially increase its accessibility to the novice initiate while discussing it with long-time fans. In the same way that just diving into genre fiction will likely strand you in areas you can’t comprehend or bore you with the glut of sub-standard material, most of the occult is simply too boring or too convoluted to bother with. Take, for example, numerology. Damn, it’s tedious. Seeking hidden knowledge through the predictive ability of numbers. Discerning temperament and fate through the numeric translations of your name. Bleh. Distill the whole discipline down to the realm where it’s actually got a bit of aesthetic charm, though, and even this dullest of occult practices can spark some neat ideas. Same with astronomy. Move past the daily horoscopes and you might start finding something story-worthy.
On the other end of the scale, we have Dave Sim. Dave Sim I will probably do an entire review on when the 300th issue of Cerberus comes out, officially ending the 25 year-in-the-making epic, but there are a few things you need to know about him. At the start Cerberus was an adventure comic similar to “Conan” with a bit of a smart-ass twist on it. Then it became absolutely brilliant. And hilarious. Then it became deep and profound. Then Dave Sim found Jesus. And politics. And feminism. And took the first two and rejected the latter. And Cerberus got an edge. Still profound. Still pretty brilliant. Then Dave Sim got bitter. And found fundamentalism. Then that wasn’t fundamental enough, and he got conglomerate fundamentalist religion (mix Christianity, Islam, and Judaisim to their most extreme). Then he got more bitter.
Then he got the crazy.
Somewhere along the way he got pariah-ed (or did it to himself). Cerberus the comic is so thoroughly out there now that it’s hard to even explain it. Dave’s spent the last twelve or fifteen months REWRITING THE BOOK OF GENESIS to more adequately represent the first moments of the big bang and to more adequately support his revolution against modern “feminist” thought. I kid you not. The God of Genesis is now a pair, a male “primary origin” and a female “whining bitch.”
These two people interviewed one another.
Though, to be honest, it was from a while back, (published originally in the back of Cerberus 217-220) when neither was quite as crazy as they are now. I think Dave had just found fundamentalism and Alan had just started having truck with the forces of darkness. However, it was prefaced by a commentary by Dave Sim from just a few months ago, and he was in full-bore crazy mode. Afraid that the words of a few years ago might impinge on his own ideals by showing him when he wasn’t quite as crazy, he goes off on a massive rant about....well....everything. I wish I could transcribe the whole thing, but that would be absurd. Here’s two sample sentences from the intro, entitled “Dealing with Pagans” “Pagan stories always....’sound’ funny... in exactly this way. Like a Neil Gamian fairy tale. {lilting musical voice} ‘And there was only one copy of the story in all the lands and all the worlds and by the strangest of chances it came about that the story had fallen into the possession of a Deluded Acolyte of the False and Wicked Judaic, Christian and Islamic God Who Doesn’t Believe that Abortion is a Virtue.’” Or, even better “You know, it occurs to me that it would be really nice if, as a 50th birthday present I could just type ‘IN THE NAME OF ALMIGHTY GOD COME OUT OF ALAN, THOUGH VILE AND ACCURSED’ and have it work.” He’s serious. Swear. There’s a lot more, much worse, but would require the transcription of enormous paragraphs, as Sim tends to run on a bit.
These two people just remind me of that famous Robert Frost poem..... “Two roads diverged in a wood / and both of them went off a cliff.”
On a sad note, it does appear that Alan intends to entirely leave the comic world, and quite soon. A glance through the most recent issues of Promethea show all the books converging and simultaneously disseminating down to their basest metals by the magical symbology therein. Even the execrable “Tomorrow Stories” has shown up to be undone. (Providing us with the best quote evah from Johnny B. Quick “Well, anyways, I mustn’t stand around jawin’. I hear the laws of physics popped a spoke.....and that calls for some hard-hitting potentially violent science!”)
In summary, a book for a good cause, with some neat-o pictures, but really only for the really obsessive comic book fan, with the really outstanding portions being freakishly weird.
Jeez, that got outta control.
Anway, I next stormed through the 350+ page “Good Omens” in two days. Neil Gamian and Terry Pratchett put this book together as a collaboration, which usually spells trouble, but apparently was no trouble at all for these two talented individuals.
I’ve been wanting to give Gamian a second chance in the literary department ever since I found my signed “Stardust” book not entirely to my liking. It was a good enough tale, but with surprisingly little meat on it, predictable and straightforward, with only a few uniquely interesting turns. (Specifically the young prince traveling around in a carriage with the ghosts of all his murdered brothers.)
Unfortunately, I have much the same problem with “Good Omens.”
See, I really can’t figure out what the problem is. I’ve (just this moment) finished reading the second “Death” limited series, and it’s absolutely beautiful. Touching, heartfelt, sincere, and at least a bit surprising. Neil Gamian has this absolutely extraordinary ability to draft comics that vibrate in tune with your imagination. He can bring mythology (even the hated Greek version) to life with true personality, inject unique perspective, read between the lines, construct enormous fictional worlds from the barest structure of ideas (see....all existence is sorta seen to by these personalizations of abstract ideals....Death, Desire, Dream, Destruction, Delirium, Destiny, and Despair....). He can make the simplest ideas and most tried-and-retreaded ideas feel fresh and new with just a few brushes of personality. Hell, he gave a little tweak to Death, just about the oldest character in human experience, and you can’t keep T-shirts of his version on the shelves. That alone speaks volumes for his skill.
So why is it that he can’t seem to jump mediums with equal skill?
Well, that’s not really fair. Everyone else I know highly recommended “Good Omens” to me, so maybe it’s just something wrong with my perspective. The book is basically the story of the Armageddon. (Or rather, the end of the world. Armageddon is where the battle will take place.) The structure of the story focuses on the initiating factors as described in Revelations, specifically the coming of the Antichrist. The twist is that the book is mostly a comedy. The forces of evil, you see, accidentally misplaced the Antichrist immediately after his birth, and he’s been growing up in the rather idyllic world of Lower Tadfield, UK. They’ve been training a perfectly ordinary, non-godlike, young boy to lead their armies of evil in the final days. This, naturally, causes a bit of a stir when it’s discovered, and would likely result in a “firing” of the most severe sort if the time hadn’t been so damn near nigh.
That’s the core concept of the book, and, honestly, everything else about it sort of spirals around the idea without actually affecting it. There’s the Daemon/Angel pair who are desperately working to stave off the final battle because.....well.... they got really drunk one night and decided that they really rather LIKED earth better this way than if one or the other side actually took over. Crowley likes the fast cars, sunglasses, opulent surroundings, liquor, and sleeping till noon, and Aziraphale likes puttering around his little antique bookstore and how life ISN’T like watching “The Sound of Music” for all eternity. See, these two supposed opponents, being earthbound emissaries of their respective sides and thus way WAY far away from any sort of help or supervision from the home office had found it a lot simpler and more amenable in the end to just have a gentlemen’s agreement to stay out of each other’s way rather than to violently combat one another over every little thing that came up. This association developed into a friendship, and eventually into a plan to see if a little interference of their own might perhaps prolong their stay on the planet longer than the eleven years it would take for the big “A” to grow up and end the world. They’d planned on educating the rugrat on BOTH good and evil, thereby giving him a choice and fouling up his destiny to gather at Armageddon.
Problem is, they can’t FIND the little bugger, because of the afore-mentioned misplacement.
Then there’s a book of surprisingly accurate prophecies written by a 15th century witch named Agnes Nutter that seems to be the only one (including the two adversaries) who knows precisely what’s going down, and helpfully wrote out a bunch of advice for the people she knew would find the book. Problem is, she didn’t know precisely what she was looking at most of the time, so her advice got pretty obtuse. The book is being carried around by Nutter’s descendent, as the modern-day witch does her best to sort it all out.
Then there’s the witchfinder army of two trying to hunt her down, the psychic who gets piggybacked by Aziraphale, a six-hundred year old delivery service, and, of course, the four horsemen.
The horsemen were pretty clever, all told, with quips like Famine being responsible for the “heroine sheik” fashion movement. But, honestly, it all feels like padding. The whole point of the book distills down to the Antichrist being a very clever, but perfectly ordinary little eleven-year-old boy with a couple of schoolyard friends. Almost no one else runs into him until the final confrontation with the four, the witch only getting a few words in edgewise to influence him. Everyone else is running around like barnyard chickens trying to simultaneously escape the notice of their superiors and figure out where the Antichrist has wandered off to, and in the end he just moseys in outta nowhere and fixes everything in a couple of minutes. The end.
Was it funny? Well, yeah. There were a few little unique touches here and there that played with the base concepts. There’s a great establishing bit in the Garden of Eden at the opening of the book which played up my expectations a bit too much. There’s a wonderful evaluation of Satanism that casts it in the light of most religious followings. We find out what happened to that flaming sword that was used to cast out Adam and Eve. And there’s a great line about how the earth is only six thousand years old, and “The whole business with the fossilized dinosaur skeletons was a joke the palentologists hadn’t seen yet.”
But, in the end, there’s entirely too much filler in this novel. There’s a point where the four horsemen briefly become the eight horsemen that looks like it’s going to be clever and interesting, but they just drop from the story twenty pages later. Completely superfluous involvement. Maybe done to up the page count, maybe done for the sake of pacing.
Really, this story could’ve benefited enormously from loosing one or two of the side-quests and being cut down by about a hundred pages. The beginning is clever, the setup is clever, but everything else is rather obvious.
So, my question is, is all of Neil Gamian’s literary work like this? I’ve heard such great things about “American Gods” and....uh.....the other one.....begins with a “C”..... but I’ve normally got very little in the way of reading time, and I’d really like to know if I should just stick to reading the man’s comics.
(Oh God, someone is playing Linkin Park in the room next to me with the Base turned all the way up. Fucking wall is vibrating.)
Finally, the last book I got through was “Borderlands 4,” a short story compilation I picked up last year in the Wisconsin HPBooks. Basic concept is a “collection of stories that explores new ground...” stepping aside from the classic monster rouges gallery and trying to strike out in a new direction. A noble effort, but one naturally more difficult to get good product from than working over well-tilled fields. Unfortunately, it appears that they did a bit of barrel-scraping for this bunch, although, as usual, there’s a few gems in there as well. “A Wind From the South” and “The Late Mr. Havel’s Apartment” are both unusual takes on the literal theft of a life, the latter being a bit better constructed, but describing the matter after-the-fact, while the former let you witness the process in a near-stream of consciousness manner. “House of Cool Air” is a story of elaborately constructed child abuse in a Gormenghast-like world that ended up being rather pointless, while “Morning Terrors” presented us with a hideously sexualized horror with no explanation resting behind it....like a snapshot of a demonic landscape. “One in the A.M.” is a classic idea constructed and filed down to a vicious point, reaching it’s conclusion in just four pages. Slightly less good but more obvious, is the similarly crystallized “Misadventures in the Skin Trade.” “Fee” and “Painted Faces” are two different angles on the “horrible life suffered by this man as a child that made him into a serial killer,” the latter being ludicrously over-long, nearly a seventh of the entire book. A more “crisis point” version of the same idea is introduced in “Circle of Lias” but terribly clumsy in execution. “Dead Leaves” is, as far as I can tell, an entirely pointless and long observation of a man as he prepares, and completes, a suicide, with inserted text on the procedure of embalming. Huh. Then there’s “Union Dues,” “From the Mouth of Babes,” and “Watching the Soldiers,” which all strive to find horror in the indoctrination of society. The first looks at the dehumanization of machinists, the second at grade school “school spirit,” and the third an enormous metaphor for a society at war. The first is the best written, the second the most shockingly executed idea (a little disturbingly so) and the third was just facile. “A side of the sea” is a little confusingly written, but a nice dose of genuine strangeness from the old master Ramsey Campell, and “The Long Holiday” is a bit fun, where a deal that misplaces the “n” in “Santa” means that the elves no longer have to make the toys, and the damned are able to learn useful life skills. Next is “Monotone,” an only mildly interesting stream-of-consciousness piece about a housewife being absorbed by silly putty. The last story, and the best of the bunch, I’d actually read before in another compilation. It’s “The ocean and all its devices,” a wonderfully atmospheric and confusing piece about a morbid little family (I swear I think of Edward Gorey whenever I read this story) and their yearly visits to a seaside lodge after the regular season. It’s one of those stories that keeps you searching until a page or two from the end, when you think you’ve figured it out, and one final curveball comes in the last page that makes you think you’ve misunderstood everything.
All in all, a below-average offering with a weird obsession for the myriad methods and designs of child abuse. The earlier books in the series might prove a bit more interesting, though, if they were still able to attract Campbell at this point.
So, by all logic, I should be giving you my review of “Lifeforce” here, as promised. However, considering how much longer the book reviews were than I anticipated, I think I’ll skip it for now and give you the second to last piece of “McTyrie” instead.
_______________________________________
Mrs. McTyrie is dead. I am afraid that I had no real chance to save her. Whatever sickness killed her bears no resemblance to anything I have ever encountered. Her body temperature gradually descended to room temperature throughout the night, turning her slowly to ice in my grip. All the while, she became paler and paler as her heart-rate slowed to nothing. Speaking as a physician, I would have declared her dead based on body temperature and heart-rate long before she actually stopped moving. The only real solace was that her death appeared to be a relatively peaceful one.
Andrea, fortunately, did not have to be told. The moment Mrs. McTyrie died, silent tears began rolling down Andrea's cheeks. It was only then that the similarity between mother and child struck me. The two were almost identical, excepting Mrs. McTyrie's pale complexion, and Andrea's grimy state. The same blond hair, the same blue eyes, the same stature and long fingers. To look at Andrea was to look at Mrs. McTyrie twenty five or thirty years ago. I was, however, not allowed time to remark on this. A moment later Andrea dropped her precious doll, screwed both fists into her weeping eyes, and ran blindly out of the room. Try as I might, I cannot find her anywhere. I shall wait until tonight for her to return. If I can find her, I will take her back to Salmon City with me, where I can make arrangements for her well-being. If I cannot find her by tonight, then I will go back alone and return with a search party. I certainly will not leave her here alone with no company other than the corpse of her mother.
-
"That still only counts as one!"
2003-12-20 01:20:04
OK! Yes! I’ve seen it! I’ve seen “The Movie”!
Does it strike anyone else as ironic that the film known everywhere as “the movie” had a relatively subdued advertising campaign this time around? At least from where I’m sitting.
Yes, it’s true. I’ve heard the actual title of the film mentioned only about three times since “The Return of the King” came out this week. Every other time was merely someone coming up to me and saying “so have you seen THE movie yet?” No introduction, no lead in, because they know full well that only one movie could be talked about in such a manner.
So.....a review? Ummmmm..... I don’t intend to, but we’ll see how far I meander. In summary, it is a very very good movie. It quite readily deserves to be sitting beside it’s bretheren when the box set comes out (HINT HINT NEW LINE!). Everything I’m about to discuss in my nit-picky little way should be taken with this assessment in mind.
And everyone goes “uh oh.” Spoilers begin here. Let’s face it. If you’ve read the books, you know what’s going to be happening anyway. If you haven’t read the books (or at least this one, like me.....please keep that in mind when I screw over the spelling) then you should be covering your ears and shouting nonsense every time someone even starts to mention a review anyway. Go to the theater and see it for yourself. To be honest, I’m gonna have to revise this review once I see it again (my Mother is the biggest Tolkien fan you’ve ever met, so I’m sure I’ll be seeing it with her up in WI) because I’m not all that clear on my first impressions.
Well.... where to start. The beginning, naturally.
The backstory of Gollum is brilliant. It WORKS. Almost picture-perfect from my memory of the story, and shows rather clearly the slight difference between hill people and hobbits. Couldn’t have imagined it better. From there, we split into two basic story arcs, the hobbits creeping up on Mordor and all the hue and cry of war in the other arc. Going through the plotlines would be stupid, so I’ll just talk about these two arcs in a general fashion.
Sam & Frodo & Gollum. Hmmm. I know this story fairly well, if only because the old Bakshi (I think ?) animated version followed their story almost exclusively in their version of the Return of the King. Everything of directorial imagining in this segment is absolutely beautiful. The winding stair finally made sense to me. Shelob (who, despite having read all of the Two Towers, I’d somehow entirely missed) was unbelievable (as in “good”), thrashing about like Ray Harryhausen’s wet dreams. My difficulty is with the actors and their interactions. What I knew was coming felt rushed...making me wish the film had been four and a half hours long with an intermission. (Here’s hoping for the extended version.) The power of the ring growing to consume Frodo, the slow creep of Smeegul’s plans, the growth of alienation between the two best friends in the world, all of this was a make-or-break point for the film....and I think it felt just a bit rushed. Frodo’s turning on Sam and listening to Gollum seemed just a touch absurd and almost fickle on Frodo’s part. Perhaps most absurd was the complete removal of the two hobbits being pressed into work in the orc mill, a moment we saw in Galadriel’s mirror (and will probably show up in the extended version). Absurd why? Because the cheap-ass ran-out-of-money animated version managed to get at least an approximation of it in there. (Anyone else remember the “where there’s a whip there’s a way” song?)
I don’t blame the decision. Time had to be cut somewhere. But I do want to say that I think the storyline suffered for it, even putting it at odds with events in the first film. Ruined it? No. But there was insufficient gradual buildup for the events in that section of the story, and as a result, some of the later lines sounded overly melodramatic.
The melodrama was only made worse by the overuse of slow-motion in their part, and especially in sloooowww-speaking of Frodo.
I’d hoped for more of a transformation in Frodo when he finally attempts to keep the ring. Ilsiadur got so much foreboding and menace piled into just that one “no” that I wanted to see something similar in Frodo. Instead, we got a touch of the plain greed and selfishness of Gollum....petty and minor. This was obviously a moment of interpretation from a passage or two in the book, but that’s just my take on it not meshing with the film’s. Gollum’s subsequent fight is a little bit of a sore point....it looked almost comical with him bouncing around in mid air like that. I was expecting a bit of back-and-forth before Frodo lost his finger. This is a big iconic moment of the whole story...possibly THE iconic moment, and it came off as a bit silly. (Oh...and liquid metals (and presumably rock) are non-Newtonian shear thinning fluids. Gollum would’ve gone under the moment he hit...)
Now the other storyline. This one’s largest strength is also it’s biggest weakness. That is, the battles.
The battles are the high point of this film. Enormous to a scale never brought to the screen before. I’ve heard the numbers estimated at two 100,000 armies clashing into one another, but it’s not like I could even begin to corroborate numbers like those with the enormous high-shots of the armies. The castles are a true marvel as well, Minis Tyrith (sp?) a wonderful creation of rock and CG. The war is truly brutal, the employment of massive siege machinery, scaling towers, catapults, trebuchets (I think that’s technically what the castle’s defenses were), trolls, and that massive battering ram are just incredible. The charge of Rohan, and the ‘oliphants, the rallying of Minus Tyrith, enormous chunks of masonry hurled into the approaching army, the nazgul, the witch-king, EVERYTHING about the war was so cool and on such a massive scale.....that it overwhelms the rest of the movie. Think about it. The plot in this storyline basically consists of three enormous battles. The initial siege, the arrival of the riders of Rohan (complimented and concluded by the arrival of _another_ army aboard the corsairs), and the assault on the Black gate and Minus Morgul. Even before these, the story is punctuated by Faramir’s loss of the river and futile attempt to retake it. This all takes up an ENORMOUS amount of screen time, and it is quite obviously time well spent, but if you look closely, I think you might find that it’s robbing time from everything else in the movie. An elaboration on the cause of Denethor’s madness (the palantier in his possession isn’t even mentioned) or an exploration of his family is removed so we can have a three-minute CG-animated sequence of Legolas taking down an ‘oilaphant. Theoden offers up only three lines of token resistance to the idea of helping Gondor when they refused to help him, so we could get to the battle faster. There’s no mention of the others who went down the fell road with Aragorn so that we could have a nice shot of the Nazgul tearing apart Minus Tyrith’s trebuchets. And we get less development between Frodo and Sam so that we can have six tracking shots of enormous trebuchet stones falling into the orcs.
Look, the war sequences are beautiful. Inventive, well choreographed, cool, and appropriate. I just think that, when the extended version comes out, we’re going to discover that they take up a significantly smaller proportion of the total story told.
Finally, for this storyline, there are a lot fewer beautiful defining moments in this film than in the others. Iconic scenes are pulled off with less panache. Lines don’t quite manage that level of utter jaw-dropping coolness that we saw in FotR. I can’t quite believe I’m saying this, but Ian McKellan just isn’t as cool in white as he was in grey. He looks like he has less of a handle on the character after he comes back from the dead, and we never get near the utter awesomeness of “YOU SHALL NOT PASS” from the first film. No one else really gets there either. Gimli’s best scenes are all in the first film, and, while his comedic relief bits are less insulting to him than in TTT, he never really pulls himself up out of the depression his stature puts him in to shine again. Even Aragorn, in what’s supposed to be basically his time to shine, has been overshadowed by the rest of the war, and none of his lines quite match up with past performances. (Other than during the conference with the dead knights, which I will readily put down as my absolute favorite moment of the film.) Even his attempt at a Henry V moment (OK, a “Braveheart” moment for those who don’t watch Shakespear) came off as a little weak. Same with Theoden’s similar, rather long-winded attempt, that really should’ve been re-edited.
Little bits left here..... amping up Denethor’s death like that was a bit of a mis-placed effort IMHO. Raised it to a spectacle instead of a tragedy. Killing of the Witch-King was also a bit of a letdown, as A) I was hoping for something a bit more fantastical from the head Nazgul (can’t believe I’m saying it....but the animated version did a better job in concept if not in execution), and I was also hoping for more of a “proud, skilled swordswoman fighting for her life in a fight with the supernatural” than a “frightened child gets in a lucky shot” kind of moment. That was another iconic moment I felt was missed.
In fact, now that I think about it, nearly all the really damn good dramatic moments left with Boromir.
The final windup felt overblown “the ring destroyed! The castle collapses! The eye detonates! Everyone falls down! The earth opens up and swallows the remainder of the army! AND THE VOLCANO ERUPTS!” (dogs and cats, sleeping together, MASS HYSTERIA!) but I suppose I’ve got JRR to thank for that.
I know nothing about the scouring of the shire, so I’ll leave that to someone else to comment on, as well as the rest of the very ending.
So I didn’t like the movie?
Never said that.
Just consider this another “I nitpick because I’m a nerd, but I love the film just the same” kind of review. It gets an A. TFotR gets an A+, and the Two Towers is teetering just below that. More than definitely worth seeing, and probably worth seeing two or three times while it’s still in the theater. I’ll be getting a box set when they all come out together, and watching everything in the set. (Yes...including all the commentary tracks.) The war, for all the time they took up, were spectacular, and worth watching again (although I had to suppress my “Luke fights an AT-AT” though during the Legolas-vs. the ‘oilaphent moment). I just think it has less re-watch value than the other two, and in a head to head contest FotR was the most worthy of the Best Film Oscar. This one was just a little too confident in it’s own coolness, leaving more dependence on momentum than constant supply of intense, gripping cinema.
Of course, you might like to take my conditions for watching the film into consideration.
No less than FIVE CELLPHONES WENT OFF.
ONE SCREAMING CHILD.
And the two people sitting next to me SMUGGLED AN ENTIRE TAKE OUT MEAL INTO THE THEATER WITH THEM...complete with POTATO CHIPS IN A FOIL BAG.
God. The worst was the kid. If I’d had twenty dollars on me, I’d’ve given it to them and begged them to see a later showing. I’ve never been with a more inconsiderate audience.
It also doesn’t help that I’ve been getting rather snippy recently. Not really sure why on that point either. It’s like my brain is having real trouble getting up to speed, almost to a worrying degree. I can’t remember things I’ve been planning for, keep numerous things in mind, stay focused on whatever I’m reading, or have any real deep thoughts without getting distracted by something and ending up just whiling away the time. On a more concerning level, I’ve had brief aphasia attacks while reading. (Giving it a clinical name like that raises more concern that it really warrants, but that’s technically what happened.) Little flashes where suddenly I can’t quite grasp the word I’m looking at for a split second, or I find myself in the middle of a sentence where I just can’t comprehend the symbols I’m looking at. Probably just the result of an overtired brain trying to shut down a bit. Way back in undergrad I remember an occasion where I was running on about 3-4 hours of sleep and one meal a day. In the middle of the day I crossed the street and my world suddenly lost a dimension for about three seconds, rendering me completely unable to register the distance between myself and the approaching car. Nothing happened, but I was sure to get more meals and sleep after that.
So what am I doing right now instead of sitting through a 3.5 hour movie? Sitting through a 3.5 hour movie. A friend of mine lent me “The Fellowship of the Ring” extended version, which I’d never found the time to watch until now. I’m on my third trip through at the moment, as the commentary tracks are proving to be a source of endless entertainment. In general, I love all the extra material included in the disks, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that I wish they’d left it all in the movie. In particular, all the rest of the material at the beginning concerning hobbits is great, amusing, and entertaining, but it does tend to tilt the first half of the film a little to far into the shire. I liked the shorter version’s introduction of Bilbo, for example; first encountered as an itinerant voice shouting from behind a closed door. All the hobbit descriptive material is great for the books, but in the film it effectively spends the first twenty minutes describing a society that we’re just going to leave. On the other hand, I wish the lengthened scenes of Galadriel had stayed in the original, as it develops her quite differently than the abbreviated and rather surly seer/mystic we saw in the shorter version. Kinda wish you could clip between the two versions on command, and edit your own version of the movie. Well, to each their own.
I’ve also started playing Warcraft III again. And have started sucking minutely less. Not enough to win consistently, but enough to have less of a humiliating defeat on occasion. *Sigh*
OK, another review. Maybe two, as I’d like to clear my desk before leaving for WI tomorrow morning.
First up, “X”. Yeah.
Oh, you’ll probably want the subtitle too. “The Man with the X-ray eyes.”
This movie is a classic. An absolute classic. How much of a classic is it? Well, how about this. It’s directed by Roger Corman and stars Ray Milland. Roger Corman, in the commentary on this film, mentioned that Ray Milland, when discussing his career in one of his final interviews, said he’d only ever really been proud of doing two films, “The Lost Weekend” and this one. Need more? OK, how about the fact that it’s Don Rickles very first film? (He was in stand-up long before, though.) Still not enough? Supposedly, the name for the mentor of the X-men came from the lead character in the film, Dr. James Xavier. (The latter was inferred by Roger Corman, though, so I don’t know how much to trust it.)
The film is from 1963 and was filmed in “spectravision”, which came as a great surprise to the director, who had done no such thing. Apparently it was a marketing ploy drummed up by the advertising firm without the director’s knowledge. Thus it dates the film back to that age where science fiction film was actually driven by science. These days, it’s a common joke among film reviewers that “horror is a mood” and “science fiction is a setting.” Here, instead, the action actually comes out of “what ifs” postulated around supposed science discoveries, rather than the same old soap-opera love triangles or mysteries just taking place in outer space. (Yes, there are exceptions. Stop messing with my nice little pigeonholing.)
On the other hand, the questions postulated of science in this period rarely have any real relation to anything scientific. Absurd extrapolations of partially-understood scientific concepts that would be scoffed at by any self-respectingly-snotty expert in the field. Besides, the lesson almost always involves some fashion of scientific hubris anyway.
The question in this film is similarly simple. “What would happen if a person could perceive X-rays? Why, he’d be able to see THROUGH stuff!” The idea is a silly one, ranking right up there with the “X-ray specs” they used to advertise in comic books, but we really aren’t here to understand the science of the concept. After all, we’re not really interested in hearing Scotty explain, in detail, exactly how the warp drive is broken this time, just toss some big words at us, tell us how long it’ll take to fix it, and move on to the actual plot. In this case, this is where the film excels.
Before we get to that, though, we have an intro segment. A slow pull-away from a dismembered eye, floating around in a jar. Ewwww..... Though the director wonders aloud at the start why he had the camera just watch the eye for so long (long enough that I thought the DVD player was stuck) this actually does a good job foreshadowing one of the most startling tropes in the business. It’s referred to as the “injury to the eye motif.” Pioneered (if we ignore Oedipus) in the US by EC comics, it’s a nice little double-entendre of the horror genre. Injuries to the eye are usually enough to make one squeamish, and the effect doubles back upon itself because the “injury” to the audience (making them squeamish or look away) is coming in solely through our visual perception. It’s actually “injuring” the audience’s “eye” in a way, by presenting us with images of injured eyes. Clever, huh? Works much the same way with film, “injuring” the audiences’ eye by injuring the eyes of it’s protagonists. Take this to the n-th degree in explorations like the film version of “Clockwork Orange,” and you’ll start to notice the potential for recursive effect and analysis.
Dr. James Xavier, played by Ray Milland, is a doctor obsessed with the possibilities of sight. He’s developed a chemical distilled into eyedrops, which apparently alters the structure of the eye such that it can pick up the X-ray spectrum of light. (Yeah, like I said, we’re not here for the science, just the extrapolation of the concept.) When tested on laboratory animals trained to press buttons when they see particular colors, the animals are able to perceive the colored cards even when they are placed behind opaque blocks. The only real problem is the way the animals all die of heart failure at the end of the experiment.
Wellp, as is always the case in these films, the department is having trouble with funding. Xavier, desperate to present some worthwhile results to the board, does what any self-respecting scientist in need of money does. He gives up his eyes for science. The results are unstable, the effect fading in and out, but the drops do definitely work. He’s able to read the second level of papers on his desk, spot a missing button beneath his friend’s tie, and other tricks. In celebration, he lets the lovely young woman sent to check on his research take him out to a party.
A beatnik party.
Wow. Sore-thumbsville. Xavier’s probably got twenty-five years on anyone else there (born in 1907). Things take a turn for the amusing when the effect randomly kicks in, and unclothes everyone in the room, much to the Dr.’s bemusement. (Yes, exactly like the old X-ray specs.) He manages to embarrass his date, but they’re both medical doctors, so it doesn’t offend anyone. Unfortunately, the effect starts kicking in a bit too much, and she runs him back to the hospital.
He’s so laid up, in fact, that he’s unable to present to the board of directors the next day, and looses his funding.
Well, even though they dismantle his lab, he’s still got his bottle of eyedrops....and his surgery. While examining a young patient in one of the wards, he forces the effect to the forefront, and discovers an understandable, but potentially disastrous misdiagnosis by one of his colleagues. The colleague refuses to listen, and even insists that Xavier assist the operation. Desperate to prevent the girl’s death, Xavier first tries to take over, and then forces the issue by slashing the other doctor’s hand with a scalpel. (Wow. I work with scalpels. If you’d slashed the back of someone’s hand like that, you could really easily permanently cripple that hand by clipping the ligaments. Those things are SHARP.)
The girl is saved, but this kind of behavior simply can’t be tolerated. A rouge surgeon? Would you go to that hospital? Xavier confers briefly with his friends while waiting for word on the matter, but when they advise him to turn himself in, he reacts violently, struggling to make a run for it. Unfortunately in the process he elbows his best friend, and the friend reflexively falls out a sixth story window. (This sequence is actually pretty funny in its suddenness. You’d think they wouldn’t build windows on the sixth story out of sugar glass....)
Well. Now you’ve done it. Better run!
Yeah, he flees the police and goes into hiding. Desperate for money, he turns to a Coney Island-style sideshow, where he does a “mentallo” –style act, reading letters in closed envelopes, examining objects through a blindfold......all quite easy for a man who can see through anything. He uses the eyedrops regularly now, and the effect is getting stronger. He can control it to some extent, but normal light is now much too bright for him to withstand, so he wears special welder’s goggles during his off hours.
One day, while walking the boardwalk, a woman is injured, and Xavier makes the mistake of rushing to her aid and quickly diagnosing cracked ribs and a broken leg. The event is witnessed by Xavier’s manager “Crane” (Don Rickles), who gets it in his head that a man who actually CAN see through things, instead of it being a trick, is a much better tool for even better scams. Convincing Xavier (who has become so disillusioned that he now lists his wants as “First, money, then a place to do my work in peace”), they set up shop in a couple of decrepit old rooms. The destitute of the area come to him, and he diagnoses them with a glance. There’s no fee, of course....but Crane panders pretty heavily for a “donation to the healer” of which he naturally keeps a percentage. This is all disrupted when the young lady from his old job shows up. In a particularly poignant moment, Xavier has to concentrate to even see her features, at first glancing casually at her and seeing only exposed organs and bare bones. She convinces him to leave this place, and they both run out, an angry Crane caterwauling after them that he knows who they are (he figured out about Xavier’s past), and telling the customers in the room that it was Xavier’s gaze that made them sick.
Xavier, turning more and more inwards with every moment, become self-centered enough to ask Dr. Fairfax (the girl from the institute and his rescuer) to give up her life, give him all her money, and flee with him to Mexico. First, though, is an attempt to bolster their funds. Thus a stop at a casino in Las Vegas.
Xavier proves to be a master at blackjack, disconcerting in his surround-dark glasses, but always able to spot when and when not to call or hit. Unfortunately he gets cocky enough over his winnings to attract the attention of the manager, who accosts him and knocks off his glasses. Underneath, Xavier’s eyes have become goldish-black, giving him a truly odd appearance as he screams and grabs at his eyes. Stumbling out in the confusion, Xavier steals a car at the hotel entrance and drives off into the foothills (not sure which mountains, exactly...)
(Don’t read the next four paragraphs if you intend to watch this film. It’s a really cool climax, and a classic moment that I wouldn’t want to ruin for y’all if you’re going to borrow the movie from me or something.)
But, of course, he can’t really see. He sees right through oncoming cars, only swerving away at the last minute. The sun is absolutely blinding to him, and his eyes are constantly red from the scratching and clawing. Eventually he runs out of control and the car wrecks (off screen.....no budget) stranding him in the middle of scrub-brush nowhere. There’s several good scenes of him stumbling about, trying to find his way in an environment that must be fading in and out for him, as he follows the sound of voices raised in song. You see, he’s stumbled into a church-tent revival in the middle of a service. Swaying like a drunk, or possibly insane, man, he weaves into the tent, the police only a few minutes behind. Pulled forward by the rush of people coming forward to witness, Xavier is pushed up front to the preacher. The preacher, noticing the wildly swaying man, asks if he is a sinner....if he wishes to be saved. Xavier looks up, his eyes gone completely black, and delivers a memorable performance. The condition has proceeded to the furthest degree now, and he can see....everything. “Saved....no. I’ve come to tell you what I SEE. There are great darknesses, farther than time itself....and beyond the darkness....a light that glows...changes...and in the center of the universe...the eye...that sees us all....” overwhelmed by the implications, he reels back, crying out “no....NO...”
The preacher responds with a typical fire and brimstone response. “You see sin and the devil! But the Lord has told us what to do about it. Said Matthew in chapter five....if thine eye offends thee....PLUCK IT OUT!” Xavier reels back, considering....seeing the thing that dwells at the center of the universe.... and gouges his hands into his eyesockets as he drops from view. Our final image is as his head is thrown back, eyes red and empty. (Very low on gore, though, the effect is a very obvious photomanipulation from the sixties.)
Corman, on the commentary track, mentions at this point the comment I’d been hoping to hear. Stephen King, in his non-fiction book on horror history in the US, mentions this film in particular and an urban legend that grew up around it. According to the legend, there was a slightly alternate ending following that last scene. Xavier reels back, we see his empty eyesockets......and he screams “I CAN STILL SEE!”
Wow. Corman admits that it’s a really cool story, and a great idea for an alternate ending, but isn’t actually sure if it’s true. He shot the film so long ago, that he doesn’t remember if they shot the scene, or if it was just a passing idea he had.
The horror at the center of this film is a little more sophisticated than you might expect from the plot summary. Just another case of scientific hubris, right? No recognition of “places where man was not meant to go” and “man was not meant to tamper with nature.” That’s especially strongly supported considering the location of the final scene, but I’d like to point out additional points of interest here. Essentially, much of the film had to do with perception of reality, and finding horror within that. Looking at people and not seeing whole, complete human beings, indivisible objects with personalities, thoughts, and feelings. Instead, looking at them, and seeing them for what their components are. Looking through the skin that binds everything together into a deceptive whole and seeing them for their organs, constantly pumping and flexing bags of meat and systems of tubes, holes, and hideously organic tissues, reinterpreting “people” as a system of coincidentally-aligned systems of grotesque flesh. A good part of the film is spent with Xavier just looking at patient after patient, person after person, giving them a glance or two, only to perceive the anomaly of organic growth or decay that’s running the organs awry, never perceiving them as human, merely another pile of flesh and meat, to be regarded with a butcher’s eye. In essence, this is a confrontation of the audience with their own composition. The horrid organics, the horror of the constituent parts, something prefiguring the later obsession with much cruder, unrefined attempts of slasher and gore films along the same lines. It even breaks it down sequentially. There’s seeing people normally, then without their clothes on, which is amusing or titillating, then without their skin on, which reveals their organic faults(sickness)....or rather the faults of their organics, and then you start seeing further and further through that....past the disgust of the organic and all the way to the center of the universe....where lies madness. (This interpretation is supported rather strongly by the opening segment of the eye floating freely in the tub of water, and continues through much of the film.)
Anyway, the flick is really quite good, if you don’t mind the lack of special effects and almost entire reliance upon actor skill to get the story across. Everyone does a superb job in this film, especially Ray Milland whose gradual descent starts as the act of good faith with the oath of Hippocrates, descends to anti-social grouch, self obsession, delirium, then madness. The change starts off slow, and then goes exponential by the end.
The special effects are rather lame, but well attempted. The different contacts he wears for the flick are obviously highly uncomfortable, and look a little absurd by today’s standards, but still have a nice effect. “Spectravison” is a weird little look into the “X-ray world”, but is little more than an elaborate camera trick. Either simple fades and overlays, or some kind of film treatment that runs the colors into little chromatography rainbows. Lame and squinty-eye inducing. It’s also fun to watch for stuff that dates the film terribly. Not only does everyone smoke, but apparently doctors working on experimental eye-drop formulas have no misgivings about lighting up a couple of coffin-nails right there in the lab off of the Bunsen burner. Heh.
Finally, if you do watch this film, make sure to watch the commentary track afterwards. Roger Corman does a wonderful commentary on these films, remembering tiny details, anecdotes, and personal opinions on the work. Apparently, these films were made on an absolutely absurd timeframe, only eight weeks from the start of filming to first release....and he’d often do several features back-to-back without a break.
I’ll have to forgo the other review, as I’m very tired and leaving at 7:00 tomorrow morning. So you’ll just have to wait for my review of the long-heard-of long-avoided British “classic” “Lifeforce.” If you are in any danger of seeing this film while I’m gone, and have to know RIGHT NOW whether or not to waste your time......This is what happens when bad ideas get big budgets. Sexy naked vampires descend on London and suck all the life-force out of the city to power their spaceship in the tail of Halley’s comet. It makes “Battlefield Earth” look coherent. Lots of nudity, terrible acting, and Patrick Stewart in the single most disturbing part of his career.
And now, another entry of “McTyrie.” If you’ve been saving comments until the end, there’s a bare few to go.
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Today has truly been a day of horrors. Early this morning, in an effort to clear my head, I went for a walk around the grounds and encountered a short path into the woods which I decided to explore. I had hoped the exercise would give me a new perspective upon Mrs. McTyrie's illness, but it was of no help. At one point along the path I came to a clearing with a small stables-house in the center. As I approached the building, Andrea, who was apparently playing inside, saw me coming and bolted into the woods opposite. It occurred to me that any horses inside would be starving after five days without food or water, unless, of course, Andrea was tending to them, but that seemed unlikely. I headed into the building in order to check on any occupants.
I suppose the smell should have warned me as I approached, but I continued anyway.
Only one of the stalls was occupied, but its inhabitant was long dead. The corpse lay stretched out across the stall with its head next to the feeding trough. Its sparse palomino coat was mottled with bald spots and its mane had come out in places. The head was thankfully turned away from me, but the entire body had been rotting for some time, and the appearance of the corpse was enough to make me, a man of science, physically ill. The body was thin and meager, and showed no sign of violence, so it had probably died of starvation. Strangely enough, the grain box in the stall was at least half full and looked as though it had been that way for quite some time, as there were a few shoots growing out of the dusty oats. In addition, the corpse seemed to have been there much longer than five days. The significance of this I can only guess at. The sturdy construction of the stall had prevented the entrance of any scavengers larger than mice, so the corpse was nearly complete. It will take a long time for the body to disappear. I had to practically flee from the building, overcome by my discovery.
When I returned from my less than enlightening walk, I found Mrs. McTyrie in a state of extreme distress. She was having great trouble breathing and her body temperature had dropped to nearly eight degrees below normal. I instantly applied myself to the situation, attempting to warm her with hot water bottles heated in a kettle held over one of the many fireplaces, and trying to calm her while adjusting her position to facilitate easier breathing. The situation is quite bad, though, and I fear that she may not make it. Mrs. McTyrie seems to be literally fading into the linens, she has become so pale.
Andrea seems to have sensed her mother's distress as well, for she showed up soon after I arrived. To her credit, she knew to stay out of the way, and her appearance reassured Mrs. McTyrie, calming her greatly. Andrea is plainly concerned, wearing a worried frown while watching me tend to her mother. This is also reassuring me, for I was beginning to wonder if Andrea was capable of expressing anything other than the apathetic disinterest with which she has always greeted me.
There may in fact be a telephone somewhere in this great house, but I have been unable to locate one. Mrs. McTyrie should definitely be taken to a hospital as soon as possible, but I dare not spend more than five or ten minutes away from her side searching for it, and Andrea doesn't know or refuses to tell me where to find one. I will stay here, at the bedside of Mrs. McTyrie, throughout the night and help her in whatever way I can.
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Now I'm poundin' the ouzo/ with Mario Fuzio..."
2003-12-11 19:59:37
Ding Dong, the fuckin’ witch is dead.
Killed. Shot in the head, and the body buried where no one will ever find it.
Yes, the OT and WOT forums at AMV.org are GONE. The shitheel breeding ground has been purged. Burned to the ground, taking every single “look at meeeeeee” and “I’m an overcaffinated fourteen-year-old flamer” thread down to the depths with it.
GOD I am so glad. There’s the distinct possibility that, with their breeding ground staked and poisoned against them, that the most troublesome members might actually get the hell out. It’s not like they ever made any videos or had anything to offer the group. They couldn’t even keep a civil tongue in their heads.....or even a sensible one. Did anyone ever really care what these people thought? I mean, they always had to cluster together into their own little troublemaking fan club to find people who wouldn’t reflexively spit on them or vomit in their presence. Let’s start ticking off the rats we hope will desert the ship.......Kamoc (man it’ll be good to be rid of that 25-to-no-lifer), Hatter (in all of his useless incarnations), SPamda (idiot), Sarah the Boring (and her incessant persecution complex), CaT, and.....ohhhh.....anyone else?
What? Oh gasp? I’m naming people in that forum that I actually have a problem with? Hell yes, and I’d tell them to their faces if I had the opportunity. This crowd of shit-slinging monkeys is the reason I started tapering off my perusal of those forums, and was the eventual reason I left entirely. Oh yeah, I could just not read those sections, continue in blissful ignorance of the depths that the community in general was being dragged to, but let’s face it, WOT and OT had become the public face of AMV.org. If you went to AMV.org, you weren’t traveling to a forum full of nice helpful people who were interested in your idea and willing to lend a little help. You were wandering into a bar with filthy glasses and trying to ask your nerdy little pocket-protector questions of the bleeding bartender, shouting over the fornicating brawl taking place in the far corner as the bouncers tried to separate the white-trash hags going at one another tooth and nail because someone stole someone’s last cigarette butt. Now that the bar’s been cleaned up, the bouncers are turning away the crazy homeless people at the door, and the bartender has gotten the stitches he needed, I may just start regular visits once again. Hell, maybe all the veterans who were driven away from regular contribution might find their way back. And there’s nothing funnier than the “I can’t believe you would address me in that way!” complaints pouring in now. Toughen up and prove us wrong you little twit. Don’t snivel home to your mommy, grow up in the real world with the rest of us.
Anyway, I’m not sure how long this will be, as I fell asleep on my arm last night, and it’s still hurting from the loss of circulation. (Legitimate loss of circ, not a pinched nerve. No pins and needles...no pain at all. Just entirely unresponsive and insensate until a few minutes after I rolled over and let the blood flow back in. Stupid reperfusion damage.) (Next day, and my shoulder is giving me hell. Seems to be getting worse. If it persists to tomorrow, I’ll take it to the clinic.)
So, where’ve I been?
San Diego!
Yep, belly of the beast. Sorta.
Southern California is.....well.....in theory I could live there. But I’m not sure for how long. But I’ll get to that. The real question, of course, is why I was going there. I was attending the American Society of Hematology (ASH) 45 annual convention in the San Diego convention center, home of the San Diego Comic Con, the biggest comic convention in the US. The convention I was attending was quite a bit more exclusive (at a guess, around 15,000 attendees), way more expensive ($500 for non-member attendance, no choice about which days) and also a LOT more boring. Fifteen thousand of the world’s best hematologists together in one building, revealing the results of what they’d been working on for the last year. I was there to present as well, but I’m under no illusions as to my status in relation to them. At the uppermost tiers, there’s the presentations by doctors receiving awards granted by the society. Beneath them are the professors invited for the Educational, Scientific Committee, and Plenary sessions to cover entire topics in their talks. Then there are the individual research groups granted ten minutes of time to present their recent findings in the “Simultaneous Sessions.” Then, at the bottom-most tier are the poster presenters, people who are given a 6x8’ slot on the rows and rows of corkboard to tack up a poster explaining their findings, and then stand in front of it to answer questions from the people walking past who take an interest. That was me.
My lab submitted three abstracts (two from me, one from Amanda) to the conference for consideration in the poster and simultaneous session presentations, and, to the shock of everyone, all three were accepted. My two for posters, Amanda’s for an oral session.
So, step one, fly out to San Diego. Cheapest flight had a layover in Las Vegas, so maybe even a few rounds with the one-armed bandit. Wouldn’t you know, I managed to screw that up. See, I hate flying. Really, really hate it. I’ve mentioned this before, but I just thought I should reinforce the statement. So, a four-hour flight is murder on me, screaming along at 35000 feet above the ground. I don’t think it’s the death that bothers me, it’s the whole “fall for five minutes before the abrupt stop” thing. If I’m gonna die, let it be a long painful battle from a hospital bed, a quick bleed out on the city street after an intense knife fight, or the abruptness of being hit by a truck. This whole falling thing is crap.
So I brought along a magazine to read. Which one? “Rue Morgue.” It’s sorta a more indy-focused Canadian version of “Fangoria,” only (if this one issue is any indication) they have a lot better writers for this one. Delves around in the same range of work that I review here (even hit “God Told Me To” “The Night Evelyn Came Out of the Grave” and a couple of others that I’ve reviewed here). Problem was the cover was a close-up on one of the zombies from “Undead”. Even I caught on that this might be a bit disturbing to the sixty-year-old grandma sitting next to me, so I kept flipping it over whenever the plane shook a little, and I was required to white-knuckle the armrests. The back cover wasn’t much better. An ad for “Flesh Eater.” During the flight, the stewardesses brought out the drink cart and parked it right next to me in the aisle. So they got a good long look at “Flesh Eater.”
Ladies and Genelmen, I done been discriminated again’st because uh what I done read. The magazine apparently alarmed the stewardesses, and because of the increased alertness that everyone in this country is under, I was singled out as a worrisome figure for investigation. Blah blah “censorship” blah blah “discrimination” blah blah “Ashcroft” blah blah “human rights.” Pah. It was really more funny than anything else. Apparently the stewardesses were clustered in the back of the plane gossiping and speculating about me for long enough that the steward got fed up with it. He came forward and interrogated Amanda about me. She came back with the ringing endorsement “He’s a little different, but I don’t think you need to worry about him.” Eventually he got up to me and asked me to explain the magazine. I’m sure he explained his reasons real well, but I had the headphones on for the movie (“Uptown Girls”.....early twenties coming-of-age Cinderella-inverse pablum, but anything to keep my mind off where we were.) and only caught the end of the request. The rundown satisfied everyone (especially me, who, at the time, just thought the guy had been curious about what I was reading) and everything was hunky-dory. I only pieced it together afterwards. Yup, the airline was worried that I might be a terrorist because I read graphic horror magazines.
Feather in MY cap......
Landed late in Las Vegas, and was aboard the next plane within two minutes. Not even enough time to throw away a quarter on the slots. (Airport gambling typically has the absolute worst adjusted odds.)
Landed in San Diego and immediately started regretting the leather coat I was wearing over my dress clothes. Balmy, sun-shiny weather. Ran into Dr. Hsu at the entrance and spoke to him for a little bit (he’d been on the same flight and we hadn’t even realized it). Caught the shuttle to our hotel and settled in.
Originally, we’d intended to go to the conference on Friday, but the only things that were running were the “Corporate Friday Symposia.” Essentially, that’s the sessions devoted to the drug companies coming in and presenting the details of their brand new drugs, educating doctors on how to administer their drugs, or revealing new data surrounding old drugs. Nothing that related to us in the least, and with a three (?) hour jet lag working on us, we weren’t all that interested in hiking all the way to the convention center. On the other hand, we weren’t really interested in just sitting around until bed either. My aunt (uh....second aunt or aunt once removed....I always forget how that works) who lived in the area called the moment I walked into the room, and we got from her the details about the surrounding area and set up plans for Sunday. Feeling adventurous, we decided to try and make it out to San Diego’s “old town” for dinner by way of the trolley a few blocks from our hotel. We go wandering around and eventually find the station. Then we stand for fifteen minutes in front of the vending machine to get your tickets. We knew where we were, we knew where we were going, but we couldn’t figure out how to buy a ticket that would get us there. No attendees anywhere to be found. Several maps with alphabetical designations along intersecting rail lines. And prices varying from $1.50 to $7.00 depending on.....stuff.
Eventually we had to give it up. Stupid machine wouldn’t consider giving us more than $4.50 in change anyway, which is a problem when all you have is a $20. So we wandered to the nearby mall (Fashion Center) and succeeded in getting completely lost in a JC Penny’s. Amanda and I wandered in and out of the stores for an hour or so before heading back to the hotel. Turns out she hasn’t been to a mall in ages. Didn’t know what a “Sharper Image” store or a “Spencer’s” was. I endeavored to educate. It was also really weird to see a food court where I only recognized one out of a dozen different fast food places.
Saturday, my big day. We showed up at the conference center by 7:20, and I went straight in to set up the posters. The posters were in grouped in different categories, but they’d managed to put mine on opposite ends of the “Sickle Hemoglobinopathies: Basic and Translational” section, between “Erythrocyte Membrane, Cytoskeleton and Enzymes” and “Thalassemia and Globin Gene Regulation I”. My posters were numbers 26 (Histamine Promotes Sickle Erythrocyte Adherence to Endothelium under Flow through Stimulation of H2 and H4 via Nitric Oxide Synthase Signaling abstract 914) and 43 (Shear stress Modulation of Cytokine Induced Sickle Cell Adherence to Endothelium abstract 931). The hall itself was HUGE. Just the poster side easily dwarfed all the dealer’s rooms at D*C, being maybe three times its size. (The other half of the room, equally enormous, was the business side where all the drug companies set up their booths.) Each session (there were three, each lasting a day from Saturday to Monday). Had just shy of a thousand posters in it (941). I started out with the optimistic goal of at least looking at each of them, but that was absurdly impossible. I got down four full rows in a couple of hours before giving up. Anything outside of my expertise required me to stand in front of it for at least ten minutes just to understand what it was they did, much less figure out why it was important. Sometimes even that much wasn’t accomplished, as I tried to decipher the elaborate acronyms necessary to read anything in the leukemia section or one of several genetic disorders I’d never heard of before. It wasn’t like I had all day anyway, there were a bunch of the scientific and educational sections I had to attend. Hemoglobinopathies (Nagel’s work on the Sickle Transgenic mice was especially interesting), Thrombosis and Vascular Biology:Targeting the Endothelium for Good and Bad, Clinical Laboratory Hematology: Intracellular Signals: Targets for Future Therapies and Diagnosis, but we snuck out on the Ham-Wasserman Lecture on treating anemia by inducing differentiation and apoptosis. Hit a local place (letting the thousands of attendees file past us in search of classier, expense-account supported food) called Pat and Oscar’s that had mediocre food but the best damn breadsticks I’ve ever tasted. I got a free sample by the door and couldn’t touch anything for fear of getting the olive oil all over my suit.
Ran into the boss for the first time during the weekend and talked over the seminars I’d been to. Then made an emergency run back to the hotel to pick up my business cards, and got back just in time to go stand in front of my poster. Dr. Wick took the other so we’d be able to answer any questions that came up and explain the finer points. Actually had quite a few people stop by and discuss the material at length, although that’s not really surprising, since one of the discoveries appears, on the surface, to contradict most of the literature. Having anticipated the question, however, I had ready answer for every person who asked about it, and made myself look at least somewhat intelligent by comparison. Dr. Schechter was especially concerned with that point, as the apparent contradiction conflicted with a poster his student would be presenting on Monday, but I think I assuaged their fears or their instincts to tear my work apart in favor of their own. (Dr. Schechter is a remarkably overanxious individual in person. He’s one of those types who nods rapidly the whole time you’re talking, always looking like he’s just about to have something to say.) There was free beer and snacky....things, but they were being served clear across the room and I couldn’t leave my poster long enough to grab some. On the other hand, it was Budweiser and Bud Light, so I wasn’t missing much. Watching all the respected heads of science swarm around the bartender whenever a new cask was hooked up was rather amusing, though.
7:30 rolled around, and they started turning the lights out on us, so the posters got rolled back up and stuffed in the carrier. Amanda and I hit the shuttles and had dinner at the hotel restaurant. (Amanda eats less than any person I’ve ever known. She’s really quite short, but even then I don’t think she finished more than 40% of any of her meals. Bit awkward, really.)
Looking back at how the conference was run, I can only profess admiration for the resources. Every one of the 20+presentation rooms were equipped with video projectors and nice, cushioned hooked-together chairs. One to four wireless microphones were positioned on stands among the audience for the attendees to ask questions with. Other than a couple of glips in the audio, everything on the technical side came off without a hitch. Registration took me ten minutes, and only that long because someone had screwed up my pre-payment. The pile of goodies we got included a 1200 page conference book (Blood, volume 102, No. 11) with a five hundred page addendum listing a total of 5778 abstracts, a ring-bound 450 page “program book” summarizing the conference book, and a hundred-page “meeting book” summarizing the program book. Plus a nice canvas tote to carry the whole deal around in. Everyone at the conference was walking at a slight tilt to keep the complimentary bag from slipping off their shoulders. The badges themselves were color-coded for type of attendee, and the card in the badge with your name on it was a hard-plastic ID with a magnetic stripe you could use for logging into the free terminals to check for messages or answer e-mail. Plus they published a daily newspaper for the conference every morning. On the other hand, a few things hit a little too close to home. MOST of the time, these doctors and professors were intelligent enough to NOT get into intense conversations while standing at the top of escalators and blocking traffic. Camera usage, however, meant instantaneous roadblock in the aisles of posters. (Many groups just use digital cameras to take pictures of the posters so they don’t have to take notes on them.) Food in the convention center was absurdly priced. $5 for a cinnamon pretzel? $3.25 for a tiny cup of coffee? $2 for a cookie? Bleh. They gave out free coffee in the morning in the poster sessions, and it was better than the stuff the little kiosks were selling. Oh, and the egos. Not universally applicable, but apparently even the professional world has a fair share of the fanwang community.
Knowing the kind of panic that goes on behind the scenes at AWA, I just have to wonder how much panic happened among the staffers at ASH. Not much, I’m betting. The drunken asshole contingent is exceedingly small among adult hematologists, and the worst, most consistent problem was probably the language barrier.
Sunday was our day off. Or half day, anyway. The big important sessions at the conference repeat themselves to make sure everyone gets a chance to see what they want, and the stuff lined up so that there was nothing for us to attend, so I arranged to go hang out with my aunt Kukla. (It’s greek. She’s the daughter of Aunt Kitty and Uncle Teddy that I told you all about so long ago.) Amanda tagged along, and we persuaded my boss to join us as well. We arranged to meet at opening time at the San Diego zoo.
Now, before I go further, a little rant about San Diego. This city is very nearly the antithesis of what I like in city character. I’ve never been to southern California before, so I don’t know if it’s region-wide, or just San Diego that’s like this, but I’ve never encountered a more idiot-proof city in my life. There was a sign next to the pool saying “this pool contains chemicals that are known by the government of California to be toxic to humans”..... in other words..... the pool is chlorinated. Don’t drink it, you moron. In the hotel restaurant there was a sign stating “this restaurant serves food containing substances known to promote cancer in laboratory animals”. I fucking kid you not. The restaurant in our hotel had to put up a sign saying that their food was toxic so that they couldn’t be sued by some opportunist or complete moron that came in, had a tuna melt, and then claimed that the goat cheese or foccaccio bread gave them cancer. How can ANYONE live in a world that stupid? Then there were the “organic” labels on everything. Special nutrition information in all the menus for whatever weird-ass diet was cock-of-the-walk this week. I bring this up here, because the rest of the day provides ample opportunity to get the rest of my rants about the city out.
We got up Sunday morning, looked out the window......and it was raining.
Damn.
Not hard, though. Just sprinkling. Hoping for the best, we caught the shuttle to the Zoo, and caught up with Kukla. On the way there, we saw a section of road closed off and traffic backed way the hell up, going the other way. And a couple of cars distinctly facing the wrong way. I found out today that someone in SD has taken it upon themselves to start pouring motor oil on freeway onramps, and we’d seen the result of his work. Bears a striking resemblance to the caltrops lecture I had a few entries back. Worrisome. I should also note that, while this was one of the cleanest cities I’ve ever been in, apparently the litter is vaporized and sent up as smoke, because there was a plainly visible layer of smog that hung over the city every morning. I’m guessing it’s some unique circulation effect having to do with the winds in the valley, but I’d only be guessing.
It was great to see Kukla. Since the death of Aunt Kitty and Uncle Teddy, that end of the family had kind of scattered to the four winds and I hadn’t seen her in over two years. The situation was a bit awkward, though. There was hemming. And hawing. And eventually we just said “the hell with it” and went in despite the rain. We walked the length of the reptile house (note to self, always go there first....apparently they are much more active in the morning) and by the time we got out to the (missing) Komodo dragon, the rain had stopped.
The San Diego zoo really is quite phenomenal. A massive number of exhibits ranging from the enormous hippo holding tank, to the segregated environment of the Pandas, down to a number of individual walk-in aviaries. The thing is also really hilly, meaning you did a lot of climbing over hills in the process of your walk. Apparently the zoo is deep into a remodeling, as the contrast between the new habitats and the old cages is quite startling. The Hippo, Polar Bears and Tiger enclaves were beautiful terraced creations with running waterfalls (notice attached about their recycling the water lest anyone complain) or enormous pools, but the wild dogs were resigned to tiered concrete and rocks. The Tiger habitat was still under partial construction, which left us with not much of a view, but gave hope for the other wild cats. We hit the “cat walk” last, on our way out, and they were by far the worst. Classic pacing Jaguars and Snow Leopards, walking back and forth in front of the bars on their somewhat nice but stupidly small little habitats, engaging in the optical illusion that the bars weren’t there and favoring us with a heartfelt growl or leer as they walked. Appeared to be in excellent health, though, even the little wildcat that was COMPLETELY PISSED about the rain, and did nothing but hiss continuously at us. (Actually, I take that back. The Koala and red Kangaroo exhibits were the worst. Practically the classic “dead treebranch in a box” design.)
We got out of there and headed over to “Old Town” for lunch. Actually, I tried to shake off the tagalongs, but with no success.
Now, “Old Town” in Albuquerque is essentially the old center of town for the Spanish settlement that founded the city. Ancient, but-well-kept-up adobe-and-log buildings. Many have been converted into touristy souvenir shops, or clothing stores selling their own local fashions, but the shops in Albuquerque managed to maintain something of their authenticity. “The Covered Wagon” before it closed, was a good example. Among the myriad of polished rocks and kids popguns, you wound your way into the back room where they kept the thousand-dollar kachinas, clay sculpture, and authentic pottery carefully placed on the mantle and creaking decades-old wood. The clothing shops would offer designs with tiny beads of turquoise worked onto leather tassels, and the art galleries offered work by artist from the nearby reservations. Further, the covered porches that fronted all the buildings on the central town square are used by all the local Indian jewelers to display their wares. Thick black blankets are laid out, and hundreds of rings, bracelets, earrings and the needlepoint turquoise-and silver work typical of the Zuni (which no other jeweler will ever touch, for fear of crumbling the stone) are set out for the passing tourists to consider. (This is a special favorite of my mother’s, and she always has to get some item of turquoise jewelry every time she visits.)
“Old Town” in San Diego, from the impression gleaned by my three hour visit, is a sad farce. I could be quite wrong, and it might posses a rich cultural heritage fed by the descendants of the first Spanish settlers in the area and contributed to by the surrounding tribes, but that’s certainly not the impression I got. The impression I got was of a made-over tourist-trap. In preparation for Christmas, Albuquerque will set out the traditional decoration, thousands of luminarias perched on adobe housetops, along walkways, and forming giant cross designs in the center of town. San Diego, by contrast, had big wooden Nutcrackers (as in suite) and red-and-green cellophane streamers strung up. All it was missing was a couple of light-up barber-pole candy-canes. The shops I stopped in were all the worst of the touristy crap. Pastel T-shirts saying “San Diego” in a hundred and twenty different font designs. A shop full of little cat and dog knickknacks. A shop of “Scandanavian folk art”.(?) A street kiosk selling flamenco-dancer Barbie outfits. 50-state refrigerator magnets. A bookstore that’s so concerned with making sufficient room for their coffee shop that they’d shoved one section of shelves flat against another, denying access to about 10% of their wares. We actually found a store selling Zuni jewelry, but it was all behind glass cases, in front of the row after row of “authentic moccasins”. We even went into an art gallery, to discover great pedestals of frosted acrylic featuring nude couples pre-coitus, (the figures were hollow spaces in the solid blocks of acrylic) and generic “female in repose” oil paintings. The coolest thing I saw there was one guy who didn’t have a shop or store of any kind, just working on a big blanket laid out in the gravel, painting sci-fi dreamscapes with spraypaint. He’d stencil sections with the edge of a newspaper, smear the paint with his fingers for a water effect, and to add a shooting star he’d balance the spray can point down on the cardstock and just tap the base once. It was fascinating.
Anyway, Kukla had brought us here at my request to get some good Mexican food. At which point I had another nasty surprise. Apparently I don’t like Mexican food. This is stunning, because I thought I DID like authentic Mexican, but it turns out that what I’d always been getting in Albuquerque was NEW Mexican food, which is distinctly different. If your nose doesn’t begin to run and tears stream down your face by the end of dinner, you haven’t had good New Mexican food. If the chili-rienio (sp?) is made with a red peper instead of honest-to-God chili-peppers, you’re not eating New Mexican food. If you think that sopapias are brittle, hard-fried tortias with honey, cinnamon, and cream poured over top, you haven’t had good New Mexican food. (Those taste a little like Cinnamon toast Crunch. Good sopapias are baked and inflate up to soft, baseball-sized pastries that you tear a corner off of, and pour the honey inside. Invariably leading to a leak that runs down your arm, but who cares?) Mexican food, even good Mexican food, by contrast, is a little bland. The stuff we had was orders of magnitude better than Taco Bell, but it didn’t have much kick or strong, distinctive flavor. To her credit, Kukla warned me about all this, but I’d insisted anyway. On the other hand, the guacamole was excellent.
After lunch we wandered a bit so that I could pick up the requisite “my parents will kill me if I don’t bring anything back” gifts, and we headed back to the hotel. Amanda stayed behind to work on her presentation for the next day, and I caught the shuttle back to the convention center. I wasn’t exactly required to attend the convention at all on Sunday, because there really wasn’t much of anything that related to my work, but I figured that I should make the attempt a broadening my horizons, so I had to at least make it to the second poster session. Bounced into the Committee on Hematopoietic Growth Factors: Cell Signaling Negative Regulators within the Hematopoietic System, but got bored and wandered down to the poster session early. Wandered distractedly around there for a couple of hours, at which point they started the “Beer and Pretzels” reception. I hope whoever was in charge of buying the Pretzels is fired. Those were the worst concoctions I’ve ever tasted. Undercooked, and kept on steam trays to keep them “warm” and very, very damp. Oversalted as well, the salt started dissolving and soaking into the bread. Blech. And the beer was still Budwiser. Even when it’s free, I have my limits.
Halfway through I wandered over to the drug exhibitors section of the hall.
Weird
It was like falling into a profoundly un-fun version of Disneyland where you “play with science”. Great big plasma-screen monitors displayed CG-animated programs, displaying how their drug worked. People practically threw their stenciled pens at you in an attempt to lure you into their kiosk. (One booth got massively swarmed when they revealed that they could personalize their pens with an on-site stenciler) Every manner of knickknack was out with a name on it. Bowls of candy (jolly ranchers and lemonheads, with tootsie-rolls a distant third), coffee and expresso machines were set out as bait, but most doctors just grabbed a handful on the way past. Even a big “interactive” display to show drug “x” abolishing receptor expression (little rubber hoses that drooped on command). The larger, more centrally based booths had second levels. Everything was an eye-catching logo, or a suite of comfy chairs to lure you in. The only thing missing was the booth babes. Took me nearly an hour just to wander through all the booths at a walking pace.
Again, fled the center on the shuttle, grabbed a dinner at the hotel, ironed my clothes for the next day, and crashed.
Monday was Amanda’s presentation day among a long string of “simultaneous sessions.” Hit the sessions of Sickle Cell Disease: Novel Therapies, Sickle Hemoglobinopathies: Cellular Interactions and Pathophysiology, Sickle Cell Disease: Clinical Correlations, and then bounced a bit in Signaling: Surviving and Cycling. Also caught the invited lecture by Dr. Beutler, “Gaucher Disease: Multiple Lessons from a Single Gene Disease”, which was pretty interesting as it was an overview of all progress on the disease. A clever targeting of the affected areas was accomplished by loading up the inside of some RBCs with the drug, and then messing with their membrane so the body would want to cycle them out, getting macrophages to eat them or deliver them to the spleen and liver. Amanda’s session didn’t go so well. Essentially, one of her results contradicted the results that were being presented immediately after hers, and the PI essentially questioned her methods. Steve Embury also stepped up to the mike, rattled off a couple of rather rude questions, and then walked out while Amanda was still answering him. Flippin’ fanwang. She survived, though, and will benefit from the experience. (In retrospect, she could’ve shot down a couple of those questions handily, but she only had a few minutes to answer them.) After hers, the quality of the sessions started declining. Presentations of either obvious or fairly useless data, reaching non-conclusions, proposing systems that were patently absurd, or giving us direct confirmation of a result we could’ve guessed. After that session, most of the sickle data presented was clinical, and that stuff is always pretty general and shaky with enormous standard deviations. (But don’t tell the clinicians I said that.) Hit a little place called Café 22 for lunch and had a wonderful turkey-and-goat-cheese-melt on foccacio bread. Not kidding, it was really, really good. Recommend to anyone in the area. Dr. Eckman and my boss joined us, and we sort of had our perspectives rewritten as they ripped on the fanwang of some of the doctors and the low quality of some of the presentations. Honestly, I’d caught a glimpse of the downward trend in a couple of the presentations, but to hear them talk about it, it’d bottomed out right after Amanda’s talk. Ouch.
Caught the sickle section of the poster session (one really interesting one had found some MASSIVELY negative effects of hydroxyurea on newborn mice.....like “brain 25% smaller” kind of results....ouch) read our way through the important ones, and the my boss took us out for dinner. We went to a really good steakhouse called “Hunter’s Grill”. Excellent, excellent food. Had a couple of GOOD beers, and walked back to our hotel.
Tuesday I was on my own. Amanda had left early because she didn’t want to be kept up late by the return flight. (No, not kidding. Yes, I do think it was rather petty of her.) Tuesday was the last day of the convention, and didn’t have anything in particular I had to attend, so I spent the time bouncing from one clinical session to another. Grabbed a $5 pretzel for lunch (better....but not $5 worth) and hit the closing ceremonies for the presidential session. Three plenary-type sessions on Epigenetics. (Epigenetics are heritable traits passed along without the use of the genetic sequence. Little elaborate, so I’ll leave it alone.) Had to leave during the third one to make the airport shuttle, and wouldn’t you know it, that was the one discussing epigenetic hemoglobin switching. Damn, an actually useful piece.
Anyway, went back, checked out, shuttle to airport, flight delayed, connecting flight barely made, saw Seabiscuit on the plane (what an extraordinarily long and predictable film. OK for the horse lovers, though) landed in Atlanta, forgot where I parked, and got to bed around 4:00 AM.
A review? Are you nuts? Ploughing through all that boring material took everything I had. Haven’t forgotten the story though, so here’s your next update. Commentary gladly welcome and earnestly awaited, be it positive or negative.
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This entire house is built to her scale! Well, no, that's not entirely true. The furniture is all full scale, but everything is set very low to the ground. It's as if someone went around and sawed the legs of every stick of furniture in half. I've checked at least a dozen guest bedrooms, and none of them have furniture I can sit on without folding myself in half. It is becoming more and more frustrating to do anything in this house.
Mrs. McTyrie seems a little worse this morning. She is a little weaker than before, and her heart-rate is slightly slower than yesterday. She drinks little and eats less despite my best efforts. Even more surprising is that her temperature, however slightly, has actually dropped! I am uncertain what to make of these symptoms, and if they get much worse I shall certainly call for an ambulance. Provided I am able to find a telephone.
I have given up on the absent Mr. McTyrie. I do not know if it is due to some accident or if he has abandoned this family, but he has yet to appear, and I feel that I cannot depend upon his arriving any time soon.
Andrea returned late last night from the forest, so I scolded her this morning for worrying her mother, but she paid no attention and promptly disappeared again. I am beginning to suspect that there is something physically wrong with her, for she has yet to utter a word or make a single sound in my presence. Perhaps she is a deaf mute who is adept at reading lips, or perhaps Mrs. McTyrie is a negligent mother and Andrea is merely lacking in any manners whatsoever.
When Mrs. McTyrie dropped off to sleep again, I went out for a walk and came upon a field of flowers. It was remarkable as the flowers were not only entirely out of region, being a grand burst of tulips and lilies, but also entirely out of season, it now approaching the coldest months of fall. I spent some time walking among them, and I suppose I must have crushed many an innocent bulb beneath my headless tread, for there was no real path to follow. The Field covered nearly three acres, but was entirely swamped with these strange out of season flowers, and I could not help but wonder at the distribution. In the wild one is likely to come upon flowers bunched up according to color, as each originates from different parents, but is fertilized by it's neighbor. However, these were scattered seemingly at random across the field, placed as if for aesthetic display rather than a coincidence of nature's plan. At any rate, I found the display beautiful, decided that a bouquet of such beauties could hardly do the girl's mother any harm, and got it in my head to collect a bunch to take back for her. Upon grasping the stalk of a particularly large and red tulip, however, I made an astounding discovery. The flower slid out of the ground with remarkable ease, and, startled at the lack of resistance in such rich soil, I stooped to examine the root structure. Imagine my amazement when I found that it had none. The stem simply ended an inch or two after it entered the ground, clipped off at the end as though by a pair of shears. Close examination of the ground showed no sign of the missing structure, merely a hole in which the flower had been jammed, as though placed in a potter's block in some flower arrangement. Examination of the neighboring flower revealed a similar state, as did another, and another, and another. The meaning of this discovery is either astounding or absurd. Could it be that this entire field was the home to some strange genetic mutation able to thrive in such a strange situation? It seems terribly unlikely. But what other alternative is there? It is even more absurd to suggest that someone came up into these hills, into this secluded, indeed hidden corner of the forest to place three acres of cut flowers so densely that one cannot pass among them without treading upon the display. How can such a place exist?, I find my self repeatedly asking. The flowers all seem healthy and new, despite their evident lack of roots or leaves of any significant size. None show any sign of the random grazing of deer or other forested creatures, nor do they show any sign of damage from the weather, or even wetness from the morning dew. Indeed, it is as though a team of workers had finished the job mere moments before I stepped into the clearing...which is, of course, absurd.
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If there’s one thing I’ve learned from anti-smoking ads on TV, it’s that non-smokers are complete and utter assholes.
2003-12-03 00:36:55
I am so pissed at Quu right now. He beat me to introducing y’all to Nemi: http://nemi.thtn.com/
That’s the unofficial fansite of the comic. Here’s the official outlet:
http://spray.nettavisen.no/kultur/tegneserie/nemi/
So I trip over this daily comic by accident, linked over from Faans. Naturally, the comic gets +10 cool points for being Norwegian. Then I get to the site and discover that the titular character is a mondo metal goth chick. + another 20 cool points. (Hey, I admit my biases. Anything Norwegian gets +10, anything Swedish gets -10.) Then I read a handful of the comics. And they’re pretty funny. Nothing massive or mind-blowing, but funny and fun. Nemi’s no Writhe or Shine, she’s as alive with ecstatic cartoony expression as a Tex Avery character, except goth. She took off on a non—sequiter Beavis and Butt-head reference in one comic. Hit several harmonic chords with me.
Problem is, I ran through the whole 125-comic set on that fan site in one night. (Up late, working.) Which is really saying something considering how slow the site is. Then I went hunting for more. Which are, naturally, in Norwegian.
Which I don’t speak.
Crap.
Thus started a great hunt to find a competent online translator. Which led to the discovery that NO ONE translates Norwegian. Not that I’m sure how I’d type in those “A” with a little circle over it, the “ash” or the “null set” characters anyway.
Damn I wish I spoke Norwegian. I still remember a little German, and that’s usually enough to stumble through something in Dutch (which is a lot like German, except with this obsession over double vowels), and Norsk is technically a Germanic language, but apparently living on the godawful cold end of the world forced the Vikings to conjugation strangely in order to conserve heat, rendering the whole language indecipherable. (Of course, some things are universal constants in any language: http://spray.nettavisen.no/kultur/tegneserie/nemi/nemi_pop.jsp?timedir=pre&lastShown=14.11.03 )
So, if anyone out there is fluent in Norwegian, and has the time to put in to translating a bunch of comics for this ignorant English-speaker, go here: http://nemi.thtn.com/home.shtml . The fan-site runner is looking for a new translator. For now, I’ll just have to whimper futily while trying to wrap my mind around updates that look like they’d be hilarious....if I knew what anyone was saying....
So how was my Thanksgiving? Boring mostly. Which I really needed. Was able to just sit down and read for a good long time. Went all the way through my new “Marvel Essentials: Tomb of Dracula: Vol.1”. I went into it thinking “wow, a continuous horror series that actually hung around for 7 years while based on a single character! And one as played out as Dracula! It must be really well written!”
Nope.
Let me summarize for you...Dracula goes somewhere, encounters something TOTALLY RANDOM, runs into one of the van Helsing crew that is perpetually trying to kill him, doesn’t get killed or kill any of them by some totally ludicrous “deus ex machina” and then leaves. And, at some point in there, there’ll be a full page of Dracula stalking and killing someone completely separate from the plot. Here’s an example, from a random page opening. Tomb of Dracula #15. A hunter mistakes the count for a simple bat, and shoots him out of the sky. Dracula plays along to see who would take a pot shot at him. Gets pissed and gives a high-handed rant to the guy, and then has him chased through the woods by rats, then wolves. I mean, what was the point?
And that’s not the worst. Dracula has incurable narrator syndrome. Every appearance, every panel, is filled with the most overblown melodramatic ranting you’ve ever seen. “So, Harker and his stalwarts have found me.....very well then, my long-time foes...we shall meet, and before this night has fled forever... you shall all lie dead at the feet of your master DRACULA! But all must go quickly, for the dawn is only MINUTES away, when again I must rest in the sacred earth of my homeland. So come this way....be led by the instincts I plant in your childish minds. Come....come to your deaths...” (It keeps going after that) I’m no big fan of vampire stories, but even to me, this Dracula seems little more than a cardboard caricature of a horror villain. Almost all of the stories are one-offs, single shot arcs that change little or bear little resemblance to an ongoing story. Some new machination, some new angle, all collapse by the end of the issue.
It’s not all bad, though. I was actually getting a little interested by the end of the book, as something resembling ongoing stories were developing, but I might’ve just been desperate for some positive aspect of all these old comics. Dracula finally settled on a single house for a while, keeping company with a tormented young woman, beset by a ghost inhabiting the house. Then there’s Dr. Sun, a teleporting Chinese brain in a box that masterminds (heh) some plots concerning Dracula. There’s one moment of actual tragedy when Dracula kidnaps and feeds upon Quincy Harker’s daughter Edith. And, when all else fails, there’s always the cameos. Werewolf by Night did a crossover in ToD#18, with the stars Jack Russel and Topaz crossing the nightwalker’s path. All in all, Werewolf by Night looked a lot more interesting, although that might have more to do with the “during the full moon” rather than “every fucking night” aspect. (Dracula hunts someone down EVERY NIGHT, effectively pausing any plot progression until he gets back.)
Then, of course, there’s Blade.
I was under the impression he first showed up in either Spider-Man or Morbius, but it looks like I was really wrong, as his first appearance is listed as ToD#10. How’s he compare with the movie? Well, thus far the origin is about right, but he’s not “half vampire” he’s just immune to vampirism. That, and he’s Shaft. No, really. He is. Afro, attitude, almost as talky as Dracula. Blacksploitation all the way. Painfully so.
So, basically, avoid this like the plague. The art is surprisingly good, but it was a real endurance test for me to get through it. Really, I picked it up hoping I’d get to see one of the really big, but largely forgotten events of the Marvel Universe. The point where Stephen Strange, along with the regulars from the ToD book find and recite the Montessi (sp?) formula, banishing all vampires from the Marvel Universe forever. That’s right, there are absolutely no vampires allowed in the MU, with the exception of Morbius (science-vampire, not occult version). (There’ve been a few attempts to break through the mystical seal, with Dracula’s daughter Lillith sneaking across for a few issues of Dr. Strange, but I don’t think it’s been broken yet.)
So I started this entry intending it to be a brief little note telling y’all not to expect much from me for the coming week or two, and I kinda got sidetracked. (Lightspeed review: I hereby re-dub “Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World” the movie that will henceforth be known to all as “Oh hell....you know....that one with Russel Crowe, where he’s on that ship...” “Oh yeah.....what the hell was it called....” Very good movie, but with very little in the way of defining moments, and a little scatterbrained about the pacing.) The conference that those two poster presentations are for is coming up this Thursday, and I’m getting run ragged. Was in the lab from 12:30 till 4:00 A.M. after Anime at Patrick’s, and then came back in at 9:00 AM this morning to continue working. Presented a preliminary version to a local consortium, finishing around 8:00, and didn’t finish all the labwork I’d been putting off until 11:00.
However, I decided I couldn’t just leave y’all hanging, as I was quickly moving from “maintaing suspense” to “everyone forgetting about it,” so I’ll pass along the second installment in “McTyrie.” (Again, remember it’s several years old, and lacking in grace.)
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What strange discoveries I have made! Not concerning Mrs. McTyrie, unfortunately her condition is unchanged, and she was fast asleep last night when I went to see if she wanted supper. Instead I have spent some time exploring this house. I do not wish to spend too much time away from Mrs. McTyrie, but I was forced to spend three hours this morning simply searching for something to eat! As far as I am able to tell, this house, with its hundreds of rooms, possess no kitchen or dining room! I caught a glimpse of Andrea disappearing into the woods early this morning, so she was of no help. Purely by chance I finally found my way into the cellar. I have never seen so many jars of bottled pickles, preserves, and canned fruit. The cellar must take up the entire basement of the mansion and contains enough preserved food to feed a small army for quite a while. Meat is kept in a well insulated ice-chest in one corner of the room, but, seeing as how I had no idea how I would cook it, I decided to leave it alone. There must be some manner of cooking in this house, however, because several of the cuts of meat had large pieces removed from them. It must have been a very dull knife that was used to do the cutting. The meat around the cut was throughly mauled through the efforts of either a very dull knife or a throughly incompetent butcher. Having collected sufficient supplies for Mrs. McTyrie and myself, I was starting back towards the stairs when I tripped over a small stepladder. After picking up the dropped jars, I considered the stepladder for a moment. This is most curious of all, since all of the shelves were easily within my reach, only reaching chest height at the top level. Further, I found that, although there was more than enough room further back within the shelves, all of the jars have been lined up along the edge, dangerously so in several cases. Apparently all of this is for Andrea's use, she being unable to reach the higher or deeper shelves. This seems to hint that she must commonly make her own meals. This is quite strange, for Mrs. McTyrie does not appear to be the sort of negligent parent that forgets meals.
Mr. McTyrie never came home last night. If it wasn't for the man's voice on the telephone, calling me out here, I would doubt his very existence. I have tried to question Mrs. McTyrie about him, but she is in no condition to clearly answer questions, and merely mumbles quietly that he is gone for a while. It is possible that some accident or emergency has occurred, preventing him from returning home, but I can find no radio to listen to for news reports.
I had completely forgotten about Andrea's joke until I turned in for the night. I must move to another room tomorrow. Working at a child's scale is frustrating.
JOURNAL: MCWagner (Matthew Wagner)
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