Category Archives: death

On scary movies

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I am currently watching “The Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man.” (1943) One of the multiple, cheap, and tawdry sequels that are so common in the film industry. The studios made all of those sequels, cheap and tawdry, because there was so much money to be made. No matter how bad the films were, they still made tons of money. They made/make money because people loved to be scared, to experience the vicarious thrill of fear that they do not have in their own lives. All scary films are about fear, and yet modern society is quickly becoming scary enough all by itself. Perhaps scary movies are more about the fears we harbor in our sub-conscience than about the ones we face daily on the freeways, at work, or at school. Most of these “monster” movies are based on the beauty and the beast dialectic, and this movie is no different. The beauty here is IIona Massey, a stunning blond actress from Budapest, and she plays opposite both the monster and the wolf man. The voice of reason and modern science is played by Dr. Mannering, the stand-in for the dead Dr. Frankenstein. The problem with making loads of sequels is that in each movie most of the characters are killed, maimed, or burned–often dismembered or frozen, and so you often need an entirely new cast for each film. Characters don’t carry over from movie to movie unless they can’t die or are already undead. The absurdity of life presented by the irrational story lines of most monster movies is a metaphor for the more abstract absurdity that makes up our everyday lives. The frightening part of the Frankenstein movies is the irrational, murderous nature of the crowd, the angry town’s people who want to lynch anything that moves, shouting, screaming, and whining about everything. The truly frightening part of these films occurs when you can’t see a difference between how the crowd acts in the film and how crowds act in real life. Real life, however, is often much more tragic, much more arbitrary than anything that Hollywood could ever dream up. The survivors of riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes can testify to the terrifying reality of the destructive nature of life on earth. Maybe we go to the movies to watch horror pictures and monster movies because, when the film is over, we know we can just get up and walk out.

On scary movies

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I am currently watching “The Frankenstein meets the Wolf Man.” (1943) One of the multiple, cheap, and tawdry sequels that are so common in the film industry. The studios made all of those sequels, cheap and tawdry, because there was so much money to be made. No matter how bad the films were, they still made tons of money. They made/make money because people loved to be scared, to experience the vicarious thrill of fear that they do not have in their own lives. All scary films are about fear, and yet modern society is quickly becoming scary enough all by itself. Perhaps scary movies are more about the fears we harbor in our sub-conscience than about the ones we face daily on the freeways, at work, or at school. Most of these “monster” movies are based on the beauty and the beast dialectic, and this movie is no different. The beauty here is IIona Massey, a stunning blond actress from Budapest, and she plays opposite both the monster and the wolf man. The voice of reason and modern science is played by Dr. Mannering, the stand-in for the dead Dr. Frankenstein. The problem with making loads of sequels is that in each movie most of the characters are killed, maimed, or burned–often dismembered or frozen, and so you often need an entirely new cast for each film. Characters don’t carry over from movie to movie unless they can’t die or are already undead. The absurdity of life presented by the irrational story lines of most monster movies is a metaphor for the more abstract absurdity that makes up our everyday lives. The frightening part of the Frankenstein movies is the irrational, murderous nature of the crowd, the angry town’s people who want to lynch anything that moves, shouting, screaming, and whining about everything. The truly frightening part of these films occurs when you can’t see a difference between how the crowd acts in the film and how crowds act in real life. Real life, however, is often much more tragic, much more arbitrary than anything that Hollywood could ever dream up. The survivors of riots, earthquakes, and hurricanes can testify to the terrifying reality of the destructive nature of life on earth. Maybe we go to the movies to watch horror pictures and monster movies because, when the film is over, we know we can just get up and walk out.

On a pink suit

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When I saw her in her pink suit, it, of course, looked to be a medium shade of gray. She was a grown woman, I was but a child of four. The tragedy unfolding before my eyes was difficult to understand, and it was only much later that I began to understand what the word “assassination” meant. When I finally got to see the films on a color television, perhaps a decade after the events of that day, I realized the bitter irony of that bright pink dress, an elegant pink wool outfit that contrasted violently with the death of her husband. To me she was just another grown up mixed up in the complicated and mysterious world of adults. Four-year-olds have a very limited sense of tragedy or loss or complexity. I knew the president was dead, and I knew that this affected his wife, but my primitive understanding of the world could not comprehend the immensity of what had happened. I remembered that she looked beautiful, neat and trim, dutiful. As I watched television that fateful day, watched the long faces of the newsmen, listened to their terribly stern words, witnessed their disbelief, I knew something important was happening. She wore a pink dress that day.

On a pink suit

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When I saw her in her pink suit, it, of course, looked to be a medium shade of gray. She was a grown woman, I was but a child of four. The tragedy unfolding before my eyes was difficult to understand, and it was only much later that I began to understand what the word “assassination” meant. When I finally got to see the films on a color television, perhaps a decade after the events of that day, I realized the bitter irony of that bright pink dress, an elegant pink wool outfit that contrasted violently with the death of her husband. To me she was just another grown up mixed up in the complicated and mysterious world of adults. Four-year-olds have a very limited sense of tragedy or loss or complexity. I knew the president was dead, and I knew that this affected his wife, but my primitive understanding of the world could not comprehend the immensity of what had happened. I remembered that she looked beautiful, neat and trim, dutiful. As I watched television that fateful day, watched the long faces of the newsmen, listened to their terribly stern words, witnessed their disbelief, I knew something important was happening. She wore a pink dress that day.

On loud commercials

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This is not about weird local commercials for flooring or odd used cars or sewage pumping. This is about how television stations raise the sound level of commercials, a move that should be illegal, but still plagues us all. Imagine, you are watching a favorite television show at a normal level of sound. A commercial for pick-up trucks cut in at the same decible level as an old 747, knocking you off of the sofa, leaving you both startled and deaf. I know that “they”, the advertisers have been doing this for decades, but I still hate it. I end up diving for the remote control, spilling my potato chips and soda, in order to hit the mute button. I get it–they want me to pay attention, but really, the exact opposite happens: I take note of the offending product and vow to never, ever to buy it, no matter what it is. Once I get the screen muted, many commercials are actually rather entertaining, especially when you can’t really tell what is being advertised. Since the sound if off, you can’t hear either the music, the sound track or the voice-over, so many times it’s not easy to tell what is being sold at any given moment, especially if they need to use euphemisms to describe the product. I particularly hate the ads for all sanitary products, diapers, catheters and the like. Food ads late at night are despicable. All truck ads are blatantly loud and obnoxious. Some insurance ads, especially if the character is dressed in white, are creepy and sketchy, which is not exactly the image an insurance company wants to put forward. Honestly, if they didn’t turn up the sound during the ads, I might actually listen and watch. In the meantime, I will turn off the sound, defeating the entire purpose of the commercials, and make up my soundtrack and voice-over, all the while maintaining my list of annoying products that I will never use.

On loud commercials

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This is not about weird local commercials for flooring or odd used cars or sewage pumping. This is about how television stations raise the sound level of commercials, a move that should be illegal, but still plagues us all. Imagine, you are watching a favorite television show at a normal level of sound. A commercial for pick-up trucks cut in at the same decible level as an old 747, knocking you off of the sofa, leaving you both startled and deaf. I know that “they”, the advertisers have been doing this for decades, but I still hate it. I end up diving for the remote control, spilling my potato chips and soda, in order to hit the mute button. I get it–they want me to pay attention, but really, the exact opposite happens: I take note of the offending product and vow to never, ever to buy it, no matter what it is. Once I get the screen muted, many commercials are actually rather entertaining, especially when you can’t really tell what is being advertised. Since the sound if off, you can’t hear either the music, the sound track or the voice-over, so many times it’s not easy to tell what is being sold at any given moment, especially if they need to use euphemisms to describe the product. I particularly hate the ads for all sanitary products, diapers, catheters and the like. Food ads late at night are despicable. All truck ads are blatantly loud and obnoxious. Some insurance ads, especially if the character is dressed in white, are creepy and sketchy, which is not exactly the image an insurance company wants to put forward. Honestly, if they didn’t turn up the sound during the ads, I might actually listen and watch. In the meantime, I will turn off the sound, defeating the entire purpose of the commercials, and make up my soundtrack and voice-over, all the while maintaining my list of annoying products that I will never use.

On starting over

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As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On starting over

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As someone who works in education, for most of my life the end of August and the beginning of September has been about starting over as the new education year begins. I associate the dog days of August with back to school specials, the weird NFL pre-season, and a new school year. The students have come back to campus and today was the second day of move-in for those living in the dorms. All of this means starting over, especially for the first-year students who just three short months ago were the top dogs in their respective high schools. Now they are starting over as first-year fish. They are frightened, excited, confused, lonesome, lost, and out of their element. Their lives as high school students are over, their childhoods are ending, quickly, so they are starting over. Perhaps the only thing that never changes in life is change itself. We get used to a situation, a neighborhood, a job, a subway system, a car, a home, a relationship, and then something happens. We graduate, move to a new city, someone retires, a car breaks down, a new job comes along, a marriage, a divorce, a death, and we are forced to start over and our world is turned upside down and nothing seems normal, all of our recognizable cultural and social markers disappear. Different people react differently to starting over. For some, starting over is a welcome relief from their past and they greet starting over with open arms–they can put a tough past behind them, rebuild their personal identity, leave their old baggage on the curb. Others, however, are forced to start over under dire circumstances, facing life alone, single, without parents or boyfriend or wife or whoever might have been their personal support system. For still others, starting over is a tragedy, an enormous fiasco, a complete collapse, a boulevard of shattered dreams. Some people throw in the towel, give up, fold, quit, stop caring. Both stability and continuity are illusory and unrealistic in our fragmented, discontinuous, and chaotic world. For our first-year students, this is probably the first time they are facing life out on their own away from their parents and siblings–they are starting over. When I came to my current job over twenty years ago, I had to start over. Two decades have flown by, and I am very comfortable with both job and city, although I must say that Texas keeps my nerves rather rattled. Starting over–the race, the day, the job, the novel–is a mixed bag of emotions, experiences, stumbles, false starts, stalled plans, wrong turns, detours, stops, starts, unplanned surprises. Nothing is ever what we plan it to be, nothing is ever what it seems to be. In the end, our best laid plans go for naught, and for one reason or another, we end up starting over. This is the normal state of affairs. We have to start over. Starting over is the natural progression of how life cycles us through our routines, year in and year out. I find the process of starting over to be both liberating and refreshing. The fact that we all have to start over is one of those cold facts of life that we all know, but that we frequently choose to ignore.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

Posted on by

Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.