Ghosks is the Bunk

As this crazy work week drags to a close, I made the conscious decision that I wasn't going to stress out about anything today -- that's why I'm actually taking a lunch break to write about The Uninvited, which aired last night on TCM.

This was right up my alley for the month of April: an efficient little unpretentious chiller that has a couple of nice jolts, but also some gentle humor, and which is more character-driven than most. You have to like a movie where Alan Napier (Alfred from the Batman TV show) gets the girl at the end. OK, Ray Milland got the other girl, but Napier got the better deal.

It's easy to see why Milland isn't as well remembered today as some others of his period. He's clearly a major talent with a wide range of tools, including an easygoing sense of comfort in his own skin, but there's nothing iconic about him as there was about some of the other major male stars -- unless it's simply that he's an iconic average American guy.

His relationship with his sister in this movie is a little bit weird, but necessary structurally if you're going to have a female lead who's a spectator, not a participant in the haunting, and not a romantic interest for Milland (whose character is something of a cradle-robber in this picture).

I could be wrong, but I think The Uninvited is unique in that it's got a Good Ghost and a Bad Ghost trying to work their will, and there's some question about which is which. But I wish that real-life ghosts, who to my way of thinking are creatures of the mind and memory, could be dealt with as easily as Movie Ghosts: just solve a few problems for them, work out a riddle or two, then ridicule the Bad Ghost (Poo-Poo! Begone! We Don't Like You!") and suddenly everything is Hunky-Dory.

Modern viewers might cringe a bit to realize that the main human villain here (played as close to flamboyance as this picture goes by the squirm-inducing Cornelia Otis Skinner) is clearly a lesbian, and that this was how homosexuality was commonly treated at the time: as a lurking evil waiting to sink its claws into unsuspecting "normal" people.

*Gasp!*

As much fun as watching the picture was Robert Osborne's brief conversation at both ends with Chita Rivera, who was picking the movies last night. This was a little bit like watching the old Mike Douglas / Merv Griffin style of chat show that went the way of the Dodo many years ago. She wasn't promoting a movie or a book, just sitting down and sharing some memories surrounding her choices. She made some good choices, too, just wish they had changed the order in which they aired. I own a copy of Frankenstein, have seen it many times, and was planning on being in bed by the time it ended! Maybe I'll have to invest in one of those DVR thingummies. But I druther not. One more gadget.

-- Freder.

I Have a Dream

This morning I remembered my dreams, for the first time in months. Better they should have stayed unremembered.

My mother kept on dying, over and over again, and I sobbed dream tears, tears like I haven't had in several months.

There was a jagged hole in the floor. I was afraid that the cats would fall through it, one by one. I covered it over with a heavy rug, but that didn't put down the fear and anxiety.

My mother and I were watching a movie in a theater. It was a fun, colorful picture, but then it turned ugly. This is how you can tell it was a dream: Anderson Cooper came out of a dark, twisted doorway and smiled, proclaiming that he was going to rape the heroine, who had already fallen down on a fire escape. Vague menacing figures spilled out from behind him and rushed the camera.

My mother grew visibly anxious and distressed. I said, "Do you want to leave?" and she nodded.

Instead of getting her into her wheelchair as in real life, I walked beside her towards the theater lobby at the painfully slow pace that was, in later years, the best that she could manage. Mayhem unfolded on the screen behind us. There was screaming, and it could not be blocked out.

I woke with a heavy head, and my whole body feeling as if it was weighted. I felt as if I was walking through a foot of mud.

I used to love remembering my dreams in the morning. They took me to fascinating places and sometimes inspired me. If this is what my dreams have become, I'm glad not to remember them anymore.

I went through my morning chores, not feeling anxious or depressed so much as just heavy and tired. It was Trash Day, and as I carried my two garbage bags down to the street I saw an older woman approaching along the sidewalk from below the house. It was obvious our paths would cross. This distressed me in a minor way. I hate being seen by strangers on my own land, and I dread chance encounters, because you never know how they will work out.

This woman was coming along at a clip. She was quite cheery. She greeted me, and said, "It's going to be a beautiful day!"

There was a cold wind and I wasn't convinced. She said, "There'd be something wrong with us if we complained on a day like this!"

I said, "You're right. Thank you." I set the bags down snd she passed behind me, and we both went about the rest of our day.

The Biz

They've remade Arthur?

Why?

The original wasn't worth watching!

What was the original good for? A song. A chance to hear Sir John Gielgud swear like a sailor.

Honestly, Hollywood needs to get a clue.

This is nowhere near enough to hang a whole post on. Normally I would just chuck it into an email to my old friend BC. But Hollywood has become, if not a sore subject, at least a dead end between the two of us.

It doesn't matter if I write to him about a picture that I liked. It doesn't matter if I write to him about something that I didn't like. Hell fire, it doesn't even matter if we completely agree: the other night I wrote to tell him that I'd just metaphorically "walked out" on Spider-Man 3 because it was such a dreadful movie; in response, I got the same tirade that I always get from him these days when the subject of Hollywood comes up. Really, it amazes me that he has the patience to retype it so often.

The thing is, crap like remaking Arthur and True Grit and Mildred Pierce, crap like Hop and Sucker Punch and The Three Musketeers -- It doesn't just make it hard to argue a contrary position, it makes me not want to do so.

The movies get made, and people actually pay money to go see them. As long as that keeps on happening, it doesn't matter if people come away from the experience feeling cheated. What counts is the voting with money.

I don't believe that it's as fundamentally simple as BC appears to think. I believe that, in particular, young people are struggling with the culture that they've been given to live with. My last girlfriend, lo those many years ago, had a teenaged son and daughter. One afternoon the son had friends over and we all sat down to watch a movie.

It was Little Nicky, with Adam Sandler.

I'd never seen a Sandler picture before, so I was open to checking it out. The kids, all of them, told me "This movie is so funny! It's so funny! You've got to see this!"

Well, as the movie unfolded, it came as no surprise to me to discover that it wasn't funny at all -- rather, it was one of the dumber pieces of junk that I'd seen up to that point.

What surprised me was the reaction from the kids. They just sat there with blank looks on their faces.

I said to them, "I thought you liked this movie. I thought you said this was funny!"

All of of them nodded and affirmed, like True Believers, "Oh, it is, it is!"

I did not say it out loud, but I thought it: But, you aren't laughing. You're not giggling, chortling, snorting. You're not even cracking a grin or a faint Mona Lisa smile. You look as bored as I feel.

Shortly after that, I left the room. Better to spend time with C____ than to misguidedly attempt to "bond" over something as puerile as Little Nicky.

But now I think that they believed the movie was funny even though they weren't laughing. I think they believed it was funny because that's what they'd been told, and none of them had anything better to compare it with. I believe that those poor kids had never been exposed to real comedy, and so they took what they were given at face value.

I can only hope that some of them have been exposed to TCM by now. But I doubt it.

We're Americans: and so we are all very well trained to eat whatever shit we are served. So inevitably, the culture is doomed to suffer and endlessly spiral into -- not mediocrity, because we are already long past that point -- how can I put this politely?

Jacques Cousteau, "The Sea King," once said that he did not eat shellfish of any kind, "and you wouldn't either, if you knew what they ate."

So much of our culture is now made up of shellfish eating other shellfish eating other shellfish that it's sometimes hard to see a way back.

The difference between BC and myself is, I haven't given up on it. Still willing to view selectively, and rely on my instincts to steer me away from most of the junk.

Maybe it's because I've met so many people on Facebook and in life who are not willing to eat whatever shit they are fed, who do care about story and who love good movies and good books and can tell the good from the bad.

Maybe it's also because some projects still manage to get made that are worthy of being made. It doesn't happen so often as it used to, but it does happen. I wrote about Jean-Pierre Jeunet a couple of weeks back and think that he's a great example: all the more because he uses all the techniques, the modern and the primitive, including all of the CGI tools that are misused and abused by people with less talent: he shows us that the tools can be used for Good in the hands of an artist.

As long as there are people like that working in the industry, and thriving, I won't give up on the Dream Factory entirely. . . no matter if Peter Cook's Devil from the original Bedazzled often seems to be in charge.

-- Freder.

Rattle Them Bones

I like Halloween so much that I celebrate it twice a year -- sort of. The German holiday Walpugisnacht falls on the last night of April, and although it's celebrated differently, it contains similar themes. I'm aware that this isn't the authentic interpretation of the holiday, but for me it bookends both Halloween and the seasons. If Halloween represents the rise and unleashing of Evil (winter), then for me Walpurgis Night can serve as the time when when that evil is put down and fettered up again, at least for a time, until the cold winds start to blow down  our spines again. It's another sign of Spring that I look forward to every year.

So it's only appropriate that on my last two days off I've spent at least some of the time working in my Halloween Room. It's coming along nicely, getting quite Spooky -- and yet, to me at any rate, it's a cheerful, jolly, warm room. . . not gruesome at all.

Today I strung a wire through the width of the room, so that my large toy figure of the Japanese monster Rodan could appear to fly over the bed. It was useful for other hanging decorations as well, and really adds a lot. I kept a lot of vintage paper Halloween goods, and many of these went up on the walls, also on the Halloween Tree that sits atop one of the two dressers. I got a lot of the jumble cleared away, and the beginnings of a Halloween village on top of the other dresser. Got the bed largely cleared off of the stuff that I had strewn across it. Funny, but in this process I tend to use the beds as temporary work tables.

No pictures yet. There's still a way to go.

The process is actually a lot of fun, because I'm not just unpacking things and putting them in drawers or closets, but decorating and designing as I go. It gives me a real sense of accomplishment to see the difference after a few hours of work.

There are still multiple boxes and bags to unpack in there, but little by little it is coming together.

Next is the Studio, and I rather dread that. It's the biggest job of the three bedrooms upstairs, which is why I did the Playroom first, and now the more ambitious Halloween Room.

I haven't yet done any season-appropriate programming. I think I'm going to remedy that tonight!

Back to work tomorrow, into a week that's more fully-packed than normal. But seeing things steadily come together on these days off fills me with a sense of accomplishment that I haven't experienced very often in my life, especially in the last few years, when it seemed that everything was coming unglued at once, especially me.

It was grey and rainy all day, but this bothered me not at all. It took the snow away before my eyes. I stayed inside and worked. About the only thing that depressed me today was opening my credit card bill! It cost me nearly $2,000 to heat two houses during the month of February, and I bought the washer and dryer, and these things landed on my card like a two-ton weight! It's not over yet, either! I have to get the car inspected in the next couple of weeks.

Now, that's scary! You may hear me howling again yet.

-- Freder.

Things that made me Happy this afternoon. . .

1) Getting out of work much earlier than expected, with a beautiful, sunny afternoon ahead of me.

2) Finding fresh corn on the cob at the supermarket, the first of the season! I bought four ears and two of 'em are going into my tummy tonight!

3) Opening up the porch when I got home, and throwing open windows for the first time, both out there and inside the house.

4) Sitting on the couch out there with two quats on my lap, just watching the world go by and seeing how much the quats enjoyed the fresh air and sun.

5) Just now: ordering three lilac trees from White Flower Farm to plant in the front and side garden patches around the house. I've always had lilacs and daffodils in the spring, and at this house I'm gonna have both (won't order the daffodils until the end of June, though). Cost me $90 all told, but some things you just have to have. It's a quality of life issue.

Now I've got to go and close those windows! It's getting chilly in here!

-- Freder

An odd relic

Pictured above is a side panel from one of the boxes I unpacked late this week. My mother had filled it with a wide range of her smaller creations -- candlesticks, necklaces and the like -- and then stowed it in the attic, lord knows how many years ago. When I found it, I exclaimed out loud: "Mom!" -- and of course it came with me.

It's hard to date this box, but it probably goes back to the late '70s. 9-Lives hasn't used that logo or design in longer than I remember. It's too bad; I like its retro stylishness, and the winking cartoon quat. You don't see many cartoon mascots for products anymore (although I've noted that Speedy is still around, and Mister Peanut never really left --  just changed his appearance a few times).

Can anyone else remember some cartoon mascots that have retired to the old mascots home, or ones that are still around?

The now-defunct (?) Hamms Beer, a local Midwestern brew, had a bear character that I always liked. We used to have a ceramic display piece featuring the bear. Haven't seen it since we moved from Southern Maine, but I popped onlike just now, and lo & behold, there was a picture of it:

Changing styles in advertising, clothing and design have always interested me, and I sometimes marvel at things like the 9-Lives box that once looked contemporary to us, but now, clearly, belong to a different era. Even the terminology has changed: "Tuna and Chicken parts" is much more open and honest than anything you see in these days of Designer Cat Food when "Tasty Temptations" and "Fancy Feast" are more likely what you see on the shelf. Back then, Quat Fud was Quat Fud.

That box goes back to the time when we had, get this, more than thirty cats outdoors, and close to twenty more indoors. My mother bought between three and five CASES of cat food every week. And as you can see on the box, there were twenty-four cans in each case.

When we fed the outside quats, we put down two big trays of food, each with at least three cans of food and whole mess of crunchies mixed in. A whole bunch o' quats would circle each tray. It was like feeding a bunch of small, furry pigs.

At that time we also had two dogs, two horses, one pony, a goat and a flock of sheep. The horses and pony were for my sister, but guess who had to help out, and guess who got stuck caring for all of them when she went away and got married? Sandy, her male palomino, hated all men, had probably been abused, but he ended up liking me better than he did her. I was the only man he ever let hug him around the neck. I was the only one he trusted, and I led him to his death.

That still haunts me to this day. He's buried at the old house, another sad memory to leave behind.

As for the cats -- one summer, I'm guessing it was in the early or middle '80s, a terrible disease swept through the yard. It killed quickly. It seemed as if a couple of times a week there was a new body for me to bury. By the time it was over, there were only about eight or ten hardy quats remaining. With comings and goings and people dropping their kittens on us, it stayed at around that number for a long time. It was only within the last decade that it got down to around six, then five, then four, then three, and finally Junior was the last to disappear. I wish he could have made it through the move. He was a sweet guy.

On her deathbed, my mother said, "Bring them in." I think she meant Junior, Whitestockings and Grumpyface.

But how could I? Grumpyface is too wild, Junior was an unspayed male, and I did try with Whitestockings. Longtime readers of this blog know how that turned out.

It's funny how something like the side panel of a cat food box can take your mind down some long-abandoned, branching pathways.

-- Freder

Putting The Wolf Behind Me

Yes, this is really Us. Although my costume   is Superman, my face is JFK. Which not only dates me, but is something to Ponder Upon, whether you agree with the connotations or not.

Right around the time this picture was taken, my sister sexually abused me for the first time.

From that day, to the day in the early '70s when she threw me out of the recliner because SHE wanted to sit in it, to the day a couple of years later when she threw me off of the toilet because SHE wanted to shit in it (never mind that there was a perfectly serviceable bathroom just thirteen steps down) to the day just a few months ago when she sold the old house out from under me even though I was willed the right to live there for five years --

-- from that day to this, I cannot think of my sister without thinking: "I hate you, Claudia."

And yet --

-- today, for the first time, I thought of her, and thought, as always, "I hate you!"

-- and then thought, But I don't HAVE to hate you anymore. You don't even know my address or phone number, and if I have any say in it you never will. You are Out of My Life, for once and for all, forever.

You bitch. I never have to put up with your abuse, ever again.

THANK GOD FOR THAT.

Life is so much better without you in it.

And yet, it comes at such a cost.

Big Change in the Weather

Unfortunately, the Weather Weenies and Wenches were right about this one! The last (one can only hope) snowstorm of the season is a doozy. You're looking at a picture snapped 45 minutes ago from my porch, and it's gotten worse since then. As you can see, the snow is so wet and heavy that it's weighing down the branches of my pine trees to the extent that they actually obstruct the driveway! When I was out shoveling the steps a little after ten, I heard the distinct crack of a branch snapping. Mainers who weren't born yesterday know what this means: there are going to be power outages, perhaps significant and lengthy ones.

In the big Ice Storm of, I think, '89, we were without power at the old house for fourteen days. Today is another day that I'm glad I'm not out there!

I have some Juicy Gossip to report. Tiger Whitestockings seems to have found herself a beau!

When I took her food out this morning I was surprised when she crawled out from under the deck and struggled up the stairs through three plus inches of snow to meet me. I was even more surprised when another cat came after her.

He was Big. He was Yellow. And when he saw me, he got a Stupid look on his face.

That's right: Whitestockings's taste in Men hasn't changed! This guy looks like he could be Big Stupid Yellow Cat's younger brother and Junior's pampered uncle. My jaw dropped. So we were both crouched there, staring at each other with stupid looks on our faces.

He turned and ran back under the deck, and instead of staying and eating her breakfast, Tiger Whitestockings went after him. When she couldn't find him, she stood below the deck, looking around anxiously.

So, it's serious! She's found herself a New Junior. Sort of tells you something about Human Nature.

One of my tasks for this day off is to continue, at a pace, working on the new site. This will give you an idea of how small I'm starting and how much I have ahead of me. I decided that the earliest chapters of Tinsel*Town, my graphic novel in progress, should appear under the original logo. But there were a couple of things I didn't like about the original logo, and even the revised logo that replaced it had legibility problems and was smaller than what I wanted for the new site.

So I re-made it, from scratch. in Adobe Illustrator. The original was hand drawn, many years ago; this version is all CGI, although I tried to preserve some of the hand-drawn look. The possibility exists to import it into Flash and animate it ever so slightly. I'm going to think on that one a bit. It's probably better to get the basic site designed and uploaded, then work on dressing it up as time allows.

Many, but not all, of the other graphics found around the old site are going to get the same treatment, some more dramatically than others. Before I put together a single page of the new site, I'm going to get the bulk of the graphics in place.

In the meantime, I broke down and bought a copy of Adobe Creative Suite 5 Design Premium All-in-One for Dummies. I just needed some real, printed-on-paper documentation that I could sit down and read, and the official books from Adobe appear to be little more than tutorials in book form. I have no patience whatever  with tutorials -- can't see the point in spending time playing with imaginary projects when I have a real one right in front of me that needs my attention. 

Although I'm only 50+ pages into an almost 1,000 page book, I've already picked up some useful knowledge -- and confirmed my suspicions about the "Bridge" program -- that it's completely extraneous. I've been doing this long enough that I can manage my own files, thank you very much, and unless Bridge can pull out a little electronic chair and whip and make those files climb up on their hind legs and jump through hoops I don't have a use for it!

So, today is for staying indoors, fixing my lamp, working a bit in the Halloween bedroom, poking some site graphics into shape, and reading some more about the software. Oh, I still have my taxes to do as well, but that ought not to take long. 

I'll keep you posted on Whitestockings's newfound Love!

-- Freder