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.

another version of October sunsets in Texas

My last night in Dallas, the setting sun's light breezed through the kitchen window. It was so familiar. I felt my heart twist as the late afternoon gold mixed with shadows, and then the last rays slipped past and ran fingers through the treetops.

 

 

Note: Original post at https://damonwrites.blogspot.com/2021/10/about-texas-sunsets-in-october.html

about a couple songs by a Salt Lake City thrash metal band

Deathblow throws a shoulder into the mosh pit with an early-1980s hardcore punk sound on “Rotten Trajectory,” the opening and titular track of the band’s new EP. This song re-energizes the sounds of Minor Threat and Circle Jerks with truly deft playing, especially the drums.

“Pounder” swaps punk for thrash, which is really Deathblow’s department. The song charges ahead. “Pounder” and “In Plain Sight,” the third and final song, follow the traditions of '80s thrash bands like D.R.I., Overkill, and even Slayer.

For 10 years, Salt Lake City’s Deathblow has thrown down a very denim and high-tops sound—raw and amped-up '80s hardcore traditions cherry-topped by some burning guitar solos. The new EP arrived September 29th via Sewer Mouth Records and is advertised as an “appetizer for the full metal meal coming in the near future!”

a scene from a story about me and Sadie

She said, “They remember you. They can’t have you around.”

“Am I in their mind? Are they screaming?”

Quantum memory attacks by throwing weapons or weapons-generated debris or explosions but memory is now entirely a machine-based phenomenon. Virus-aligned implants man the machine weapon.

I opened the door with force. “Did you know I was in here?,” she asked.

“I knew someone was. I hoped it was you.”

My legs started moving but it was too late. Purple shrapnel tears apart my body, and tearing righteously even once is me physically throwing power away. This sentence recreates an act of absolute public murder. So close to dead but not close enough—or too dead to me now to go on. But a man shape, still.

In her mind she was three different serial killers, one of which is still nameless, famous, and free.

something about "Cold Spring" Harbor by Richard Yates

Evan is a strapping but slightly dull young man; he lacks confidence, discipline, and ambition. At 24, he already has a failed marriage behind him. His father, Charles, a retired army officer, feels unfulfilled, having missed his chance to shine in the fighting of World War I and married to a long-suffering, self-isolating alcoholic.

Evan remarries, this time to Rachel, a nice young woman who lives with her mother, Gloria, a nervous divorcee and compulsive talker, and Phil, Rachel's cynical 15-year-old brother. Cold Spring Harbor, the final novel by the stellar American author Richard Yates, handles the tepid, incongruous relationships between the two small families and the constellation of characters that orbit them.

Yates' characters grow quietly desperate as they stumble down any path that might lead them to what's missing. They are stung by resentment and disappointment, seemingly doomed to forever reckon with the disconnect between reality and the life they had imagined. Sexist and patriarchal norms blossom in the foreground of this novel, which was published in 1986.

Here are two of my favorite passages. First, after the Army rejects him because of his perforated eardrums, Evan begins to worry about his social standing as America prepares to enter World War II:

Well, but still, other men were saying goodbye to their wives all over the world. Other men were caught up in a profoundly hazardous adventure now, unable to guess how long it might last and not even caring. None of them were ready to die but they all knew their death was entirely possible; that was what would invigorate every waking moment of their lives.

And when they came back, these other men—or when most of them did they would all have a decided advantage over Evan Shephard. They might look at him as if he were scarcely worth bothering with, the way the cops had looked at him the night he was booked for disorderly conduct. If they talked to him at all it would be in tones of condescension, rarely waiting to hear his replies. And whatever elaborate peaceful structures they might manage to build in the world, after the war, would always seem to be there for no other purpose than to shut him out.

One thing, therefore, was clear; they had better not find him like this. Evan Shephard was damned if they'd find him punching a factory time clock, fondling his thermos bottle of coffee and his little brown paper bag of lunch, doing mindless, underling things all day then driving home in an absurdly cheap old car to this absurdly expensive place.

And, later in the novel, Evan and his brother-in-law, Phil, set out on a driving lesson. It is a chance to bond; Evan has always loved driving, and Phil is a lonely teenager eager to mature. But the lesson fizzles out in frustration.

That was how the lesson went until darkness began to fall—nothing really taught, nothing really learned—and when Evan drove them silently home he appeared to be sulking, as though he'd been offended by the afternoon. It was clear now that there would be no further driving lessons unless Rachel could find some agreeable way of encouraging them; it seemed too, from the set of Evan's handsome profile, that he might now be thinking of ways to let her know, tonight, what a hopeless fucking idiot her brother was.

And Phil knew there might not be much profit or future in hating your brother-in-law, but that didn't mean you couldn't figure him out and see him plain. This dumb bastard would never get into college. This ignorant, inarticulate, car-driving son of a bitch would never even be promoted to a halfway decent job. This asshole was going to spend the rest of his life on the factory floor with all the other slobs, and it would serve him right. Fuck him.

Phil also imagined how his approaching chance to enter the service and the war would give him the advantage over blue-collar Evan.

Phil Drake might not be much bigger or heavier at eighteen, but he'd be stronger and smarter and hardly ever silly any more. Except for a few widely scattered Irving School boys there would be nobody to remember what a jerk he'd been, and so the army might be the making of him; it might be the time of his life. Just before going overseas he would come home on furlough, wearing a uniform that could only make Evan Shepard weak with envy, and he'd say "Well, how're things going at the plant, Evan?"

Or, to be fair, Evan might have found his way into some second-rate engineering school by then, years older than any of his classmates, with Rachel at some menial daily work to make ends meet. But even a line like "How's college, Evan?" would be good enough, coming from a soldier in wartime. It would take care of the situation; it would do the job.

I first read this book in May 2021 and then reread it in May 2022. It was even better the second time.

about another hardcore band's debut

French hardcore band Cleaver wreaks havoc on debut

The chaotic and crude-sounding "No More Must Crawl" debuts the hard-shove hardcore of Cleaver. Songs grind and scrape by in an Adderall-fueled turn, switching impatiently between sludge, choppy heavy metal, dissonant sidesteps, and chord-rolling hardcore.

The sound is a spasming relapse of American hardcore from the late 90s, like Botch and maybe early Converge at a time when Converge's epic album "Jane Doe" floated still on the hazy horizon.

The title track of "No More Must Crawl" echoes the eponymous closer of "Jane Doe." I liked “The Plight,” which opens with loud, dissonant detonations amid chunky power chords before slowing to a bleary slog. And the album’s eruptions of grindcore, like on “Thudding Stares” and “Kyg,” add vitality to these hastily stitched-together episodes of frustrated sonic violence.

Cleaver formed in France in 2018 and consists of Franck Fortina (bass and vocals) and brothers Mathis Garelli (guitar and vocals) and Léo-Paul Garelli (drums). The music shows a lot of promise amid the debut’s rough edges.

Note: This is from a while back.

(posts) a real poem, another good one

Sentimental Moment or Why Did the Baguette Cross the Road?
—Robert Hershon

Don't fill up on bread
I say absent-mindedly
The servings here are huge

My son, whose hair may be
receding a bit, says
Did you really just
say that to me?

What he doesn't know
is that when we're walking
together, when we get
to the curb
I sometimes start to reach
for his hand

about a seatmate, a partner

​

On my plane, I sat next to guy who looked like a small Ed Harris. Five-four, five-five, bald head. But with a Roman nose leading his narrow face. He spent most of the flight with his head resting against the seat back in front of him. Half the time while wearing ​eye​glasses​.

 

a review of some other dumb band

Wild Beyond bargains with a lying, writhing serpent of thrashy black metal. The band pursues chaos and finds itself in a lovely mess on its self-titled debut.

The opener, “In the Footsteps of Mars,” is exemplary: the guitar crashes ahead and the cymbal stands teeter as the bass shakes the burning ground under your feet. Everything in a frenzy, everything in constant motion.

The Goddamn thing is reckless.

“Detonation of Secret Works” shows the same disregard for safety. I found its manic, climbing riffs inventive and colorful. The vocal crawls between growls, snarls, and wretches, leaning more toward black metal than death.

Songs do relent, but only between all the dungeon-defiling cutting and squealing.

And the band will explore. “Frenzied at the Skull” almost recalls classic British metal. On "Antichrist Coronation," the maniacal drumming momentarily loses touch with the guitars, losing each other in the dark they create.

The album remains dynamic through its eight songs. Some moments lack inspiration, and some songs perhaps go too long. But what beeswax can long withstand the heat of the sun?

This Philadelphia trio took shape amid peak 2020 covid. "Wild Beyond" was released April 14, 2023, on Gates of Hell Records.

 

something about "Paper Lion" by George Plimpton

George Plimpton was an American journalist and writer. Paper Lion describes his experience in 1963 joining the training camp of the Detroit Lions, a National Football League team. Plimpton, 36 years old at the time and not an athlete, tried out to be the team's third-string quarterback. Paper Lion expands on a two-part piece Plimpton wrote for Sports Illustrated in September 1964.

The book, published in 1966, is a widely read example of Plimpton's "participatory journalism." It followed up on a similar project, Out of My League, in which Plimpton participated in an American professional baseball all-star exhibition game. These books attempt to ask, How would the average man do in competition with professional athletes?

What comes off to me, though, is one guy who, for reasons probably having a lot to do with class, spends a lot of time among people he cannot relate to. And the prose is a language time capsule.

Overall, Paper Lion was fine. But I think the book would have worked just as well at half the length.

Note: Plimpton is the tall guy in the photo. Paper Lion was made into a movie, released in 1968 as a sports comedy, starring Alan Alda as Plimpton. Have not seen it.

about a loud band that sounds good

Hazing Over sounds fantastic on "Tunnel Vision," the band’s new EP. Hardcore, mathcore, grindcore, metalcore—all those cores fly like musical shrapnel.

“Gushing Wound” intends next-level wreckage beginning at the 30-second mark with the vocal “Corrosive connection, it wore me down.” Then a writhing riff at 1:30 folds melting beams into a mechanized monster—one of the most devastating sequences to hit ears in a while.

“Disavowed” razes in melody. The track with its clean vocals is an outlier in the young band’s small catalog. I hope the band tries more of it. The melodic turn starts 45 seconds in with the lyric, “Gutted prey swallow rain in neglect," the vocal melody summoned somehow from a gory parade of inspired hardcore. At 1:25, the song transitions into some weight-throwing chords and the lyrics, "Strangers in motion see through on their own the changes that no one seems to undergo / Disavowed, they wait it out / It weighs us down!" What a song.

"Tunnel Vision" was released July 7, 2023, via 1126 Records. All six songs run under 3 minutes. “Pestilence,” the first EP from the Pittsburgh-based five-piece, was released in early 2021.

 

Note: I started writing music reviews in June 2006. The first site I wrote for was taken down by the owner after years and years.

more about Novak Djokovic, a tennis champion

 

On Sunday, July 16, 20-year-old Carlos "Carlito" Alcaraz defeated the dominant Novak Djokovic in the Wimbledon men's final.

 

Seven of Djokovic's all-time record 23 Grand Slam tournament wins are at Wimbledon. This was Alcaraz's first time winning the tournament.

 

Tennis has buzzed about Alcaraz for almost two years now. He is the latest young talent believed capable of ending Djokovic's reign.

 

Nevertheless, I, like most tennis fans, believed Djokovic was still too great too consistently to lose this match. But he did, and Alcaraz is the top-ranked player in men's tennis now.

 

The fans cheered on Alcaraz, celebrating not only every winner he smashed across court, but also every Djokovic error. It could have been Alcaraz playing, it could have been Kim Jong Un—the crowd always roots against Djokovic. I wrote a little about this before.

 

Why do people root against him? 

 

I think the first reason is timing: Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal came first, and fans fell in love. Djokovic emerged after fans built relationships with them, and then he was beating tennis fans' heroes.

 

Second, people are shallow. Federer and Nadal are handsome and look like heroes. Djokovic does not look like a hero. He looks like the villain. Maybe part of that is because, in Western culture, villains are often Eastern Europeans.

 

Third—my armchair psychologist's opinion—Djokovic, 36, leans into conflict because he grew up in Serbia in the 1990s. Maybe that plays into the complicated Djokovic-crowd dynamic.

 

Finally, Djokovic really cares whether the crowd likes him, and that is unforgivable. Roger Federer never had to worry about it. Rafael Nadal never seemed to worry. And neither does Alcaraz.

 

Alcaraz's win was the big. Tennis does feel different now. How will fans respond to Djokovic if he falls?

 

From The New Yorker:

Whether this outcome represented a changing of the guard—the vanquishing, finally, of a generation that has ruled men’s tennis since Alcaraz was a toddler—remains to be seen. Djokovic appeared far from finished. What the final showed for sure is that, when it is all on the line, Alcaraz will decide to play his game and be himself, and that what he can bring in those moments is the stuff of greatness.

Notes:

• When the match began, most people, including commentators John and Patrick McEnroe, believed Djokovic would win. But an IBM modeler—supposed AI—predicted Alcaraz, 55-45.
  
• Relevant posts from me: something about Novak Djokovic and his 2022 Australian Open quest and about tennis and a new piece in The New Yorker.

about a sunrise in July

The sunrise set alight the purring strip of river reaching across to me from the far banks. I felt as though I had for the first time in years the patient attention of some beautiful stranger. But the orange was, I knew, mistaken about me and very soon to pass, and the next week would resume in the bright blur of faces on sidewalks and the dark reluctance of the few fading hours of breathing room inside at night.

a revised note from a friend

The weapon is hand-held and fires with applied force. The round will run backward and forward, execute a sequence of programs and multiply, expand in mass and weight and enter hyper-velocity. It will stretch to follow you home and explode directly. I will not turn it off. Who builds an automaton armed with this weapon? An evil person. One is by force of will an evil person. That cannot be disputed.

about an EP from some former members of aughts metalcore bands

New music from former members of Every Time I Die and The Dillinger Escape Plan

 

Whoa! Here is an EP by Better Lovers, a group combining former Every Time I Die members Jordan Buckley, Steve Micciche, and Clayton “Goose” Holyoak with former The Dillinger Escape Plan frontman Greg Puciato, plus producer and member of Fit for an Autopsy and END, Will Putney.

 

The four-song EP, "God Made Me an Animal," opens with “Sacrificial Participant,” and immediately Puciato’s manic, veiny-neck vocal fills the room. At 1:10, the song spins melodic with a fretboard-tapping, cymbal-riding passage under Puciato’s rubbery and subtly R&B-influenced vocal, "You got manipulated, told lies behind my back / I’m not the one you hated, you’re just looking to unpack.”

 

At 2:13, the song downshifts, freeing reverb-heavy notes and splashy cymbals to run with the falsetto—“You’re losing time to move, outcomes keep you second guessing / entombed still inside the womb, and I’m not sure you’ll get the message.”

 

Every Time I Die and Dillinger toured together years ago, but in 2022 Buckley saw Puciato performing in Las Vegas, and one thing led to another. Puciato says, “We’ve all hung out, gotten to know each other, and it’s all fire now. Everyone has already been through shit. You know yourself better. Your ego isn’t as big as it used to be. You can share your opinions. It’s a cool dynamic.”

 

Buckley says likewise: “This is my life’s work. I learned all of my lessons, passed all of the tests, and took all of the right turns and the wrong turns. It turns out what I thought were wrong turns got me here, and that’s all that matters. I have no regrets. I know this is what I’m supposed to be doing.”

 

In April, Better Lovers put out a single, “30 Under 13”—right away, you hear an aughts-era breakdown move into a glazed-thicc riff. At 2:08, the song drops into speed metal topped off with a virtuosic little guitar solo. Puciato often dominates songs, but the rhythm section gets time in the spotlight on this one. The finalé crushes with breakdown-style riffing and the attention-seeking vocal, "How far are you willing to reach? You can’t become like this fucking machine! Oh, you shouldn’t hold onto me, hold onto me, let go of me, let go of me, try to hold on to me, hold on to me, try to let go of me, let go of me, of what you’ll never be!"

 

It shows lots of Puciato’s nose in your face, but the video looks good. The dark background and red and warm-white lights burn and reflect off instruments and faces, all stars in a dying galaxy.

“For some reason, this song got me,” says Puciato. “Once that happens, you have the toe of the dinosaur skeleton in the dirt. You start brushing it away, and soon you have a fucking T-Rex.”

 

Drums hop ahead as the guitar and bass move with wild agility on the EP’s title track, “God Made Me an Animal.” At 1:25, the song hits fault-line-grooving riffs. At 2 minutes, a melodic muted-metal sequence jets, the vocal crooning, "Deny your skin and bone, pretend the flesh hides stone / I’m sitting here, we’re talking, but we know we have to go / and I’m afraid there’s nothing that can make this clearer / I wish that we could be nearer / anything to get you here or closer—anything to get you closer, anything to get us closer, anything to get us closer!"

 

Puciato describes the project: “Better Lovers definitely feels like its own thing. I’m in so many lanes right now, so it was important that one lane didn’t step on another. However, nothing I’m doing is this vicious. This is full-on scathing. It’s been really fun. I forgot how much I liked that.” Buckley also comments on what the project means to him: “Greg and Will rejuvenated me and made me even more confident.”

 

Putney mixed and mastered the EP; it sounds crisp and clean. "God Made Me an Animal" was released July 7, 2023. Better Lovers are about to tour, sometimes headlining, sometimes backing.