something about the lunch table

One day, this kid at our high school lunch table, Patrick, started talking about a Geto Boys album, “Grip It! On That Other Level,” and about Bushwick Bill, one of the rap group’s members. Patrick had us laughing as he mimicked Bushwick—“Fawk ‘em up like a gawd-dāmm caw crash!” I went out and bought the album, which was already several years old, on cassette. Bushwick sounded just like Patrick said—“You gawd-dāmm parrents awe trippin’, gimme sum madat shet ya’ been sniffin’!” But the album was no joke, especially the Scarface-driven songs “Scarface” and “Life in the Fast Lane.”

 

(posts) two Eliot Smith lyrics that have bounced around my mind the last couple weeks

 

a poem from back on Flamingo

Knew they did
The sharp broken sun
by yawning shadow of the valley would hide
their very soul

Rested there and waited
Fawning
O'er one another
Lusted and seeming to grow
Multiply, and all the while unseen

'Til rushing came the score
A thrust from the belly
When felt was the rumble
he cried "Let loose your bowels!"

And loosed the unloosened promise
burned through the ranks
living, in the Sodom of the land's silhouette.

about Richard Yates’ “Disturbing the Peace”

Richard Yates debuted in 1961 with Revolutionary Road. Critics would say that was his peak, although his short stories in Eleven Kinds of Loneliness (1962) and his fourth novel, The Easter Parade (1976), both drew high praise—much of it posthumously.

I first read The Collected Stories of Richard Yates (2004), then The Easter Parade, and then Revolutionary Road. I loved it all and thought some of his short stories equaled Revolutionary Road. But I had been wanting more, so I started with Disturbing the Peace, published in 1975.

Disturbing the Peace dramatizes a suburban middle-class man’s breakdown.

John Wilder works in advertising sales for a magazine. He drinks a lot—too much—and early in the novel finds himself locked in a psychiatric ward over the long Labor Day weekend—a traumatizing experience. He tries to resume life after his release while also regularly visiting a psychiatrist and attending AA meetings. But alcohol abuse soon resumes its place in his life, and AA meetings become cover for frequent rendezvous with his mistress and escapes from his wife and son. He continues drinking even while on powerful prescription medication.

Critics did not care for the novel, and I had my doubts in the first quarter of it or so, but I read on and was rewarded. (I read the rest of Yates's works after this.)

My favorite excerpt from Disturbing the Peace comes after Wilder has reestablished his life but starts spending most evenings drinking and sleeping with his mistress across town. After some months, Wilder’s neglected wife forces him to spend an evening with her in a coffee shop, where she breaks the news that the school guidance counselor has singled out their son.

“He said—oh, John, he said Tommy’s emotionally disturbed and he thinks we ought to have him see a psychiatrist. Right away.”

Wilder had learned once, in some elementary science course either at Grace Church or at Yale, that the reason for a retractable scrotum in all male mammals is to protect the reproductory organs in hazardous or distressful situations: sharp blades of jungle grass, say, will brush against a running animal’s thighs, and the testicles will automatically withdraw to the base of the trunk. He wasn’t sure if he had it right—did he have anything right that he’d ever learned in school?—but the basic idea seemed sound, and in any case it was happening to him now: his balls were rising, right there in the coffee shop.

Note: I read a Delta trade paperback reissue I bought on Amazon. It had a couple of minor typos and flaws but was fine.

about a connecting flight

A beautiful woman sat in the aisle seat, row 6, and I took the window. More passengers filed in, and then a man took the middle seat. He wanted to sit by her. The plane was full of conversation minutes after takeoff. The man and woman talked. They talked the whole flight. I caught bits and pieces of what he said, but nothing she said. He told some stories. One was about a time he cashed a check at a bank drive-through but at home discovered the teller gave him too much money, which he reported. What a guy: honest and so secure that he doesn't even count money when it is given to him.

 

His smothered, gentle laughs, his quiet applause at her jokes, and the sun streaming through the window onto the pages of my book—it all felt so good. 

a review of some metal band from Cyprus

The tectonic plates pushed Cyprus up from the eastern Mediterranean Sea amid some incredibly pivotal pieces of land. The island-country has seen kings, conquerors, and empires. So I appreciate that, amid all this history, Whispers of Lore includes "Arrow," a song about a lesser-known figure from the past—the defiant Nikolaos Pappas.

Greece was ruled by a right-wing military dictatorship, the Greek junta, from 1967 to 1974. In 1973, Pappas, a Greek naval commander, publicly defied the junta by refusing to return to Greece with his Fletcher-class destroyer Velos (or Arrow) after a NATO exercise. Lyrics from "Arrow"—"In a sea of corruption, we’re sailing the Arrow / Though the path now seems narrow, we won’t stop the fight / And against the oppressive dictatoring sorrow / For a better tomorrow, we'll stand for our rights."

Pappas fled in the destroyer to Italy, where he claimed political asylum and denounced the junta at a press conference. After the junta fell in 1974, Pappas was reinstated and resumed his meritorious career.

Whispers of Lore defies cynicism, and Receiver would relegate no act of courage to a footnote.

The album is an enthusiastic foray into the current revival of new wave British heavy metal. The band sounds tight and balances its polish with great energy. Lots of bands now are honoring the epic storytelling sound of Iron Maiden. Besides Maiden, Receiver cites as influences Dio, Riot, Savatage, Omen, and Saracen.

The Cyprus-based band plays proficiently and with sincerity. The songs on Whispers of Lore tell of adventure. But the key to this genre is the vocal—does the singer have the juice?

Singer Nicoletta can belt out the drama. Listen to “Trespasser”: “The modern warlords waging war / peace stands afar out of reach / Witness machinery at roar / The corporate amused and rich / Destroying their hope and lives rearranged / Trespasser storming the gates / Reaching your goals, in madness and in vain / Your sin will not become our fate.” Nicoletta’s committed delivery is reinforced by crunchy, punchy guitars that pace ahead with defiant, simple riffs along with rolls of double-bass.

Gates of Hell Records released Whispers of Lore on November 10.

a creative-type exercise

ʿAtā was evil without reason. An invisible acid filled the void he created, eating away. ʿAtā freely and imaginatively practiced, and The Sorcerer considers him among the worst of all time just because he did not have to be.

For ʿAtā, standing next to Marut in the end was unbearable. Marut started burning the air in consumption. Just burning it into himself.

Another flip of the coin, and we would be sport for evil, evil for fun, evil for the purpose of sport.

 

Think about it. Think by rational numbers about that kind of evil in context to what the textbooks tell you. The logic of allowing it to live and those that built it to exist.

Can you put that evil into context? Not until you meet it from a non-linear perspective. Not until you realize the math inside the word. And not until Marut makes you understand what it means to be physically and mentally and arithmetically and literally evil.

 

about "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave"

Dracula, dying alone, gasping, clawing at the skies, clawing at the cross behind him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Note: Hammer released "Dracula Has Risen from the Grave" in 1968. I saw it when I was a little kid. This ending made an impression.

something about the novel "Dracula"

I saw and loved 1992's "Bram Stoker's Dracula." The movie, as its name suggests, was supposed to stay true to the 1897 novel. It's pretty close!

And, still, I was pleasantly surprised recently as I read Dracula for the first time.

Stoker's way of telling the story through letters, diary entries, memos, notes, transcripts, and newspaper articles worked better than I expected. It provides instant insights into the the characters and gives the story a sense of motion and authenticity.

I noted some comparisons between the book and '92 movie.

In the book, Dracula proudly describes to Harker his bloodline's warrior tradition, repelling and waging insurgencies against invaders over the centuries. Now he seems contemptuous of peace. I enjoyed this part of the novel. The ’92 film acknowledges Dracula’s identity as a warrior but portrays him as a Crusader (while also inventing a fateful connection to Mina). Very few other depictions of the character ever hint at the Dracula warrior tradition.

I was surprised at how scary the original Dracula is. He makes the Christopher Lee/Hammer films' Draculas look pretty tame. The '92 film captures a lot of what is frightening about the monster. But it also makes him sympathetic—Mina loves him in the movie; in the book, aside from a moment of pity, she hates him.

I also enjoyed some of the prose. The novel has a few exceptionally beautiful descriptions of the outdoors (see below). I really enjoyed reading it.

I once heard that the novel Dracula was comment on a dying aristocracy, offering a kind of critique of the past, whereas Frankenstein expressed a fear of the future and technology. Dracula’s way of conducting business is pretty conspicuous in the novel—Dracula contracts directly with different service providers so that no single office or person knows what other business he has going. His hunters eventually realize this strategy helps Dracula avoid scrutiny. And there is a weird scene in which Harker slashes at Dracula, the vampire jumps back, and the knife rips Dracula’s pocket and he freaks out as a bunch of money and gold falls out. His hunters later even comment about how he must really love and need money.

Notes:

• I re-watched the film. Gary Oldman is perfection—the centuries-old lust that stirs when he scolds, "We Draculs have a right to be proud! What devil or witch was ever so great as Attila, whose blood is in these veins?!" And then the derision when he regains composure, "Blood is too precious a thing in these times. The warlike days are over. The victories of my great race are but a tale to be told. I am the last of my kind."
• I noted that American actors Ryder and Reeves played British, and British actors Hopkins and Oldman played Dutch and Romanian. I also like that Dr. Seward is a secret morphine addict.
• Here are two examples of solid prose:
  

... I waited with a sick feeling of suspense.

Then a dog began to howl somewhere in a farmhouse far down the road—a long, agonized wailing, as if from fear. The sound was taken up by another dog, and then another and another, till, borne on the wind which now sighed softly through the Pass, a wild howling began, which seemed to come from all over the country, as far as the imagination could grasp it through the gloom of night.

• Second example:

The castle stood as before, reared high above a waste of desolation.

 

Note: Dracula and vampires are ubiquitous in the culture; vampire hunters, too, get star treatment. For a while, though, zombies have been ascendant.