Five More Kings

The re-reading Stephen King project marches on! 

Insomnia (1993)

This is one of King’s mammoth tomes and seems like it wants to be in the vein of It, but never quite makes it there. Great premise, though: after the death of his wife, 60-something Ralph Roberts has an increasing problem with insomnia, until he starts having hallucinations. He can see people’s “auras” but even worse, he has run-ins with three scissor-wielding “little bald doctors” that have the power of life and, more commonly, death. Turns out they are the supernatural beings responsible for deciding who lives and who dies—and Ralph dubs them Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos, after their counterparts in Greek mythology. Atropos is a renegade who is severing people’s life cords willy-nilly—and the other two recruit Ralph to stop him from killing one individual in particular. It starts off well enough but the climax proves unsatisfying—there is another evil being called “The Crimson King” (King was listening to King Crimson, mehtinks) but has only a brief appearance toward the end, and then just kind of vanishes. Also, unless you are familiar with The Dark Tower, which I was not when I first read this back in the 1990s, you miss the point of why the person that needs saving needs saving. Anyway, the book has lots of nice details and characterizations, but doesn’t rank up there wth my favorites. Still, it’s better than The Tommyknockers. Curiously, it was impossible to find a printed edition of this one, even used. I had to read the e-book version which was not unpleasant, although I still remain unenthused about reading e-books. 

Grade: C+

Rose Madder (1995)

The last, for a while, I think, of King’s “women’s novels” tells the sory of abused wife Rose Daniels, who one day officially can’t take her abusive husband anymore, and runs away to a city that is never identified, but appears to be Chicago. She takes refuge at a women’s shelter—decades as a housewife have left her with no marketable job skills—and after an early job as a hotel chambermaid, she lucks into (in one of those Lana-Turner-at-the-drugstore-counter moments) a gig as an audiobook reader. Meanwhile, pawning her wedding ring, she finds an old painting called “Rose Madder” and knows she has to have it. And, of course, the clerk at the pawnshop turns out to be Mr. Right and she learns what it’s like to be in a non-violent relationship. Then, abusive husband Norman—a cop, natch—manages to track her down. Meanwhile, she discovers that the painting she bought has a strange quality: she can travel inside it.... Yeah, there is a lot that seems contrived about Rose Madder, and husband Norman is up there with Annie Wilkes of Misery  as one of King’s scariest non-supernatural monsters. (One of the things that Rose is beaten up for is reading “trash” like “Misery” novels—Paul Sheldon is still cranking them out in the King universe.) It is a unique take on the “abused woman gets revenge” story he has been telling for a few books now, but I think what makes it somewhat unsatisfying is the superatural climax. It would have been better to have Rose get her own revenge...or maybe she did, in a symbolic way). Not awful, but doesn’t rank up there wth my favories. Still, it’s better than The Tommyknockers.

Grade: B-

The Green Mile (1996)

Back in 1996, The Green Mile was a unique publishing experiment: it was a six-part serial novel, with one volume released every month. Set during the Depression in a southern prison, it is narrated by Paul Edgecombe, “head screw” on death row, aka “the Green Mile,” named for the green linoleum on which the dead man walks to “Old Sparky,” the electric chair. The novel(s) concern a weird series of events including a trained mouse, some violent death row inmates, some equally violent prison guards, and a wrongfully convicted inmate who has the magic powers of healing. I picked up each volume back in the day and really liked it at the time—and really liked it a lot better this around, as I think it’s probably his best novel since Needful Things. It’s a lot more streamlined than any book he’s written in a while (including Needful Things) and was easily finished in a weekend. But what I think made it work better this time around was that as strong as the story is, it had a bit less gravitas than a monthly serial would have warranted—I remember being disappointed by the payoff back in 96, less so now. As a quick weekend read, though, it was perfect. There are a few plot holes here and there (to explain them would be severe spoilage) but ultimately it turns out to be a beautiful meditation on life and love, with a very moving ending that reminded me of the end of 11/22/63. I never saw the movie, but the book(s) (it’s now available as a single edition) are a welcome return to form.

Grade: A-

Desperation (1996)

Desperation is a return to mammoth tomes (two of them, actually!) and a familiar King universe, the group of diverse strangers thrown together to battle a supernatural horror. It’s set up reminded me of a cross between The Langoliers and The Stand and while it may not be as good as either of those stories, it does have much to recommend it. It has a great opening: a couple from New York is driving through Nevada which—if you’ve ever been there, you know—is a whiole lotta nothing. They are stopped seemingly at random by an immense cop who demonstrates some bizarre mannerisms before turning completely psychotic. Turns out there is a reason: an ancient force of evil named Tak that was unleashed when an old silver mine was re-opened. If there is such a thing as an achetypal Stephen King story, this would be it. The character archetypes are there—the kid with weird powers, the self-obsessed writer whio has a change of heart, etc. It’s the goriest book he’s done in a while, and I think it will be the last of its kind for a few years. It’s a little over the top, but you never really expect restraint with Stephen King. All the God-bothering gets a little annoying after a while and I think undermines the ending. And I still have no idea what Tak’s ultimate goal was. What was it trying to accomplish? Mere survival? All in all, not among his worst...or is best. Still, it was better than The Tommyknockers.

Grade: B-

The Regulators (1996)

The Regulators, published under the Richard Bachman name, came out on the same day as Desperation, and features the same cast of characters—albeit in different roles—and the same evil entity. This time, it is set in a small suburban Ohio neighborhood where, suddenly, mysterious vans start gunning people down rather gruesomely. Then, the town behinds hnaging into the Nevada desert, with buzards and cacti—but loking as if a child drew them. And that’s because ewverything is a physical manfestation of the imagination of an eight-hear-old autistic boy who has been invaded by Tak. The boy, Seth, had a love of westerns, like Bonanza, and a fictional Rory Calhoun oater called The Regulators. Oh, and a modern hyper-violent cartoon called MotoKops, which is where the death vans came from. It’s basically a look of what happens if TV and movies became real... As one would expect, it’s not pretty. It’s a lot more grim than Desperation (if that ere even possible) and the carnage really does get t you after a while. The use of the Bachman name was not only to blunt the appearance od two big Steohen King books published at the same time, but also becauise The regualtors is a bit more in line with the nihilistic , hyper-violent ethos of the Bachman oevure, although there is a biut more sentiument here—perhaps we could call this later-period Bachman, if that makes any sense. In The Regulators, you get a better sense of what Tak was up to, although you never got the sense that it had any kind of end game in mind. Anyway, a worthy companion to Desperation.

Grade: B-

Up next, another Dark Tower and the more “literary” Bag of Bones. But first, his new book Mr. Mercedes just came out, so perhaps I need a diversion before delving back into the past. 

Three More Kings

The rereading Stephen King project continues! (And I appear to be making better headway than the guy who gave me the idea for this, who stalled back in November with Four Past Midnight.) I have also been alternating with other things, as reading only Stephen King will probably eat my brain. Charles Palliser’s Rustication was very good (I read his Dickensian debut The Quincunx back in 1990 but lost track of him over the years). The J.J. Abrams/Doug Dorst specialty printing extravaganza S. was also very good, and I got some mileage out of it for other blogs I contribute to. The new Thomas Pynchon novel Bleeding Edge (a satire of the post-dot-com boom) was excellent and very funny, and I finally made it all the way through Gravity’s Rainbow, as well as rereading V., The Crying of Lot 49, and Vineland. (Reading along with the Pynchon wikis is actually quite helpful.)

Anyway, back to Stephen King:

Gerald’s Game (1992)

This one routinely scores pretty low on King fans’ rankings of his books, but it’s not as bad as you would think. The premise is pretty notorious: Jessie, a middle-aged, wife accedes to her husband Gerald’s requests for an afternoon of bondage, and she is handcuffed mostly naked to the bed—and after a kick in the chest, Gerlad dies of a heart attack. They are of course in a remote cabin on a Maine lake, and it is early autumn, so there is no one around to hear her screams. How will Jessie get out of her situation? There are some pretty harrowing (i.e., gross) scenes, one involving a starving stray dog and a large all-you-can-eat buffet lying on the floor (’nuff said). There is also another character who plays a pivotal role—although as the book’s “Mr. Evil” he is a bit over the top, even by Stephen King’s standards. (One gets the sense that King read about Jeffrey Dahmer—who would have been in the news just before he was writing this—and thought “Heck, I can do better than that.”) Most of the book, though, is a stylistic experimentation with internal monologue, as Jessie flashes back to an unpleasant incident with her father during a solar eclipse in 1963. Maybe the pop psychology is a bit cheesy, but it largely works. The ending isn’t entirely satisfying—a common gripe in King novels, especially starting around this period. There is a tenuous connection to the next book, Dolores Claiborne, involving the same eclipse.

Grade: C+

Dolores Claiborne (1992) 

I recall reading Dolores Claiborne back in the 90s and liking it (I can’t remember if I saw the movie starring Kathy Bates), and while I didn’t dislike it this time around, getting through it was more of a chore than I recall. Part of the problem is that it is a single, long, unbroken narrative as the titular Dolores tells the police about the events that led up to her killing her husband many years earlier, and not killing the elderly dowager she had been working for. And it’s all in her rural Maine dialect, which gets irritating after a very short while. There’s nothing supernatural about the book, which isn’t a bad thing, and it makes a good revenge tale. Dolores is also a pretty sharply drawn character. As indicated above, it’s sort of a companion to Gerald’s Game, as both books flash back to events that happened during the solar eclipse of 1963. It’s another stylistic experiment, which you have to give him credit for. Gerald’s Game and Dolores Claiborne mark the beginning of King’s “women’s novels,” which would include Rose Madder, which is coming up shortly. 

Grade: C+ 

Nightmares & Dreamscapes (1993) 

King’s third short story collection, after Night Shift and Skeleton Crew, and like those earlier collections, it’s a mix of the compelling, the silly, and random experiments, some of which work and some of which don’t. Among the better stories are “Dolan’s Cadillac” (a little on the unbelievable side but it kind of works), “The Night Flier” (a vampire with a pilot’s license?), “Chattery Teeth” (supernaturally possessed joke teeth? a bit silly, but I liked it), “The Moving Finger” (a giant finger pokes out of a bathroom sink for no apparent reason), “The House on Maple Street” (an abusive stepfather gets a bizarre comeuppance), “The Ten O’Clock People” (only people who moderately smoke are able to see horrible creatures around them—another silly premise that kind of works), and “Sorry Right Number,” a screenplay for an episode of Tales from the Dark Side. There is an attempt at a Sherlock Holmes story (“The Doctor’s Case”) which is not bad, and a meta Twilight Zone-y Raymond Chandler piece (“Umney’s Last Case”) in which a character meets his author, which takes a bizarre twist. He channels Shirley Jackson in “Rainy Season” (a torrential rain of killer frogs is a small town ritual). Some of the sillier stories include “Sneakers,” “You Know They’ve Got  Hell of a Band” (all the dead rock stars are still alive in a secluded Oregon village—and they’re evil zombies), and a few others. He also should not try to write British characters (“Crouch End”). A hit or miss, but largely hit, collection, as usual.

Grade: B-

Interestingly, Insomnia, which is up next, is out of print, and even an attempt at getting a used copy has thus far been fruitless. I had to get the e-book version which, curiously enough, is more expensive than the paperback versions I had been picking up.

Hubcaps?

I just got a very strange wrong number…"I'm looking for some hubcaps." Really? I know little about cars, but when was the last time cars used hubcaps? Back when I was a kid in the 1970s, "stealing hubcaps" was the archetypal activity of juvenile delinquents, even though I had no idea why anyone would actually want to steal them. Was there a lucrative black market for hubcaps back then? Today, though, perhaps there could be. Or maybe that would be an antique store. 

Also, too: all those UFO photographs you used to come across every now and then seemed to have stopped about the time the auto industry phased out hubcaps. Coincidence? Read the book!

A Kings' Ransom

Yeah, it has been a while. Things to do, people to see, places to go.

But it has given me ample time to continue through the Stephen King bibliography, and an email from Steven H. (not Stephen K.) reminded me that I have not updated this in a while. So, here is where I have been...

The Tommyknockers (1987)

From the slim Misery we return to the epics, with what is essentially a cheesy 1950s scifi flick turned into a 1980s novel. (I had never read this one before, although I had seen the TV miniseries starring Jimmie Smits.) It’s the second example of what would become a King specialty: the population of a small town either turning against each other or conforming in some way and seeking to destroy those who rebel against the status quo. In Salem’s Lot, it was everyone becoming a vampire; here, it’s everyone turning into an alien after Bobbi Anderson digs up a long-buried spaceship on her property. The book is not awful, but I think what works against it is that the “hero”—Jim Gardener, an obnoxious alcoholic writer—is just generally unlikable. (Early on, it seems like the book is going to be about Anderson, but it is not, although we invest a good chunk of the early part of the book in her.) And then, a long 400-page stretch of the book barely even mentions either Bobbi or Gardener as King details the lives of many of the other people in the town and how they are affected by the spaceship.

He is also at his most self-referential in this one. In Misery, set in Colorado, there is a reference to the incident at the Overlook Hotel some years earlier (The Shining, of course). Here, he has Gardener turn up at the Arcadia Hotel and amusement park in New Hampshire (from The Talisman); some characters travel to the nearby town of Derry, Maine, and at several points one hears “chuckling noises in the drains” (from It, set in Derry); one of the characters is a reporter from Bangor who was also in The Dead Zone, and there are several references to the events of that book; elsewhere, he refers to the Jack Nicholson “Here’s Johnny!” scene in the film version of The Shining; at the end of The Tommyknockers, characters are taken to the CIA-like Shop from Firestarter, and references are made to the events in that book. Then we have, on page 386, where one character talks about Bobbi, “she wrote good old-fashioned western stories...not full of make-believe monsters and a bunch of dirty words, like the ones that fellow who lived up in Bangor wrote.” 

Grade: C

The Dark Half (1989)

Thad Beaumont is a writer of literary fiction that, alas, has failed to sell. However, under the pen name George Stark, he wrote violent action-adventure stories that were best sellers. After being outed as the author of the Stark novels, he decides to leave those books behind and “kills” his pseudonym via a staged graveyard photo shoot for People magazine. However, George Stark comes to life, digs himself out of his makeshift grave, and starts killing everyone complicit in exposing Stark as Beaumont’s pseudonym, finally forcing Beaumont to write one more Stark thriller. It’s not hard to see where the idea came from (this was not long after King was outed as Richard Bachman), even if it is a supernatural variation on Misery. This wasn’t a bad one, even granting the premise which is very Twilight Zone-y (maybe not for nothing Beaumont was named after Charles Beaumont, one of the TZ’s top three screenwriters). I’m not sure I get what the sparrows were all about, but they were quite the deus ex machina.

Grade: B+ 

Four Past Midnight (1989)

Much like Different Seasons, this is a collection of four novellas, the most prominent of which is “The Langoliers,” made into a pretty good TV movie in 1994 or so. (Seeing it again not long ago, the cheesy digital effects have not aged well, but it’s still a damn good story.) The novella provides a bit more back story for the characters, and one even comes to sympathize a little with Craig Toomy, the evil Bronson Pinchot character. (Actually a highlight of the movie was seeing people beat the crap out of Bronson Pinchot; I always hated Perfect Strangers and his Balki character.) This is not one to read on an airplane!

“Secret Window, Secret Garden” is what King, in his introduction, promises is the last of his “writers” stories, and it's a weird amalgam of Misery and The Dark Half. Saying anything more would be serious spoilerage, and while I question some of the details, I liked it a lot. 

“The Library Policeman” was kind of a one-joke story that is OK, sort of redoing It, in a way, although I have always suspected that librarians were strange creatures that fed on the fear of kids, but is the weakest of the four.

“The Sun Dog” sounds like the kind of story that would have made a good episode of the Rod Serling series Night Gallery: a kid is given a Polaroid camera as a birthday gift, but it takes pictures of things that aren’t there. Namely, a big, black dog. Thing is, each picture seems to be the next frame in a sequence. The dog is turning around, is quite evil and savage, and quite likely will burst out of the pictures and into the “real world.” I really liked that one, and it made a New York-Albany train ride go very fast. 

Grade: B

The Dark Tower III: The Waste Lands (1989) 

OK, I was tentative about The Dark Tower for the first two books, but I really liked this one. The ragtag bunch—Roland, Eddie, and Susannah—are becoming three-dimensional, likable characters, and the reclaiming of 11-year-old Jake (first appearing in the first book) makes a great addition, as does a strange otter/dog creature named Oy, which is not as cutesy and annoying as these kinds of pets can be. The adventures begin in earnest, and it does move briskly. It ends on a bit of a cliffhanger, but it has made me eager for the next installment. 

Grade: A-

Needful Things (1990)

King bade farewell to Castle Rock with this epic, in which an old curiosity shop called Needful Things comes to town. Each person in town manages to find the exact item that will bring them immense joy to own—and the only real price is to play a prank on someone else in town. Soon, just about everyone, except for the local sheriff, is killing each other, all for fear of losing their prized possessions. A parable about a materialistic society, and maybe a bit heavy-handed on that level, but it contains some of King’s best-drawn characters and his sharpest writing. This has always been in my top 5 King books. 

Grade: A 

Uh oh. Gerald’s Game is next. Taking a short jump forward to Doctor Sleep, which just came out. It will be a lo-o-o-ong time before it turns up here, but I am halfway through it and it is very good. 

Fit to Be Crossed

A trip to the North Regional CrossFit Games last May introduced me to the North East Media Director who, as it turned out, was looking for more writers to contribute to the CrossFit Games/CrossFit Journal Web site(s). I am always happy to oblige. And my first assignment—a profile of North East Regional winner Austin Malleolo, is now live here.

The CrossFit Games will take place next weekend, July 26 to 28, at the Home Depot Center in Carson, Calif., close to the West Coast home of the Goodyear blimp. (Carson is one town over from Torrance, where I lived for 3.5 years.) The Games can be watched on ESPN 3 or streamed at the official CrossFit Games site.

Happy Bloomsday...Amongst Other Days

Whilst today is in fact Father's Day—and happy F.D. to all fathers, although my own is apparently doing something involving printing with steamrollers, so my mind is riven with thoughts of a sketch from an old ~1980 Steve Martin TV special warning of the hazards of drinking and driving a steamroller. I can't find it on YouTube, which makes me wonder if it ever actually existed. Anyroad, today is also "Bloomsday," when literature nerds and other assorted dorks (like me) around the world celebrate James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses, which chronicles Leopold Bloom's perambulations around Dublin on June 16, 1904. (Leopold Bloom becomes a father figure to Stephen Dedalus, so it is not un-apropos to Father's Day.) How did I celebate this year? Why, with a special CrossFit workout I made up called "The Bloomsday":

04 rounds for time (not 1904 rounds):

6 thrusters (95#)

16 pull-ups

(my time= 9:21)

Then, because Ulysses was first published in 1922:

4 min AMRAP*:

19 pushups

22 situps

(my roundage= 2 rounds + 19 pushups + 3 situps)

So whether you are a father, or a James Joyce aficionado, or both, or neither, I hope you had a great day!

* I was going to do 18 min AMRAP for each of the 18 "episodes" in the book, but that wasn't gonna happen. 

Ride the King's Highway

Despite the lack of blogging, the Rereading Stephen King Project has actually been continuing behind the scenes. Which does raise the question: if you do something in your life and do not blog, tweet, or update Facebook about it, can it be said that you did it at all? 

Anyway, we continue:

The Talisman (with Peter Straub) (1984)

First off, boy did King (and Straub) really like Lord of the Rings. The Dark Tower and The Stand are King’s solo attempts at a uniquely American LoTR, and his first of two collaborations with Peter Straub (who is perhaps best known for Ghost Story via the 1981 movie) more closely brings to mind Tolkein, except you don’t have to learn Elvish. Jack Sawyer, the 12-year-old son of an old, faded Hollywood actress, finds that his mother is dying from cancer (thanks to a smoking habit). Holing up in a New Hampshire seaside hotel during the offseason, he encounters the caretaker of a nearby carnival, who tells him that, to save his mother, he needs to journey to the West Coast and seek The Talisman, whatever that is. To get there, he can slip into The Territories, a kind of parallel, pre-Industrial Age Earth where the air is clear and fresh, and there are weird flora and fauna. As the situation dictates, Jack flips back and forth between these two worlds and gets caught up in unpleasant jams both prosaic and fantastical. It’s a thick, brick of a book and I did generally like it. One of the big problems I generally have with fantasy is that every single geography has some kind of weird, deadly creature(s) that defy biology (yes, I know, that’s why they call it “fantasy”), but it really does get to be a bit much. The killer trees were pretty creepy (and tres Tolkein), and there is a good showdown between Jack and the force of evil (his dead father’s former business partner—not quite Tolkein, that). It’s a weird, crazy book that actually was worth the time it took to plow through it. Some of the ancillary characters are quite fun (especially Wolf, a werewolf from The Territories, who is a good guy). Ultimately, it’s a story about the power of friendship, as many of King’s books tend to be. The sequel Black House comes up much much later in this series and I will be curious to check it out.

Grade: B-

Thinner (as Richard Bachman) (1984) 

The last of the Bachman books before he was “outed” as Stephen King, Thinner is actually the most King-like of the Bachman books, especially in that it is the densest and longest, tarrying a bit more than the fast-moving, very streamlined earlier Bachman books. In a nutshell, overweight lawyer Billy Halleck (who kind of reminded me a little of Chris Christie) accidentally runs over and kills a Gypsy woman, he had connections that get him acquitted of any charges, so the woman’s father curses him to lose weight...which he does, and drastically. The Battle of the [Lack Of] Bulge is well-done, and the drastic weight loss starts off enviable and then gets creepy and upsetting. Much of the book gets bogged down in the minutiae of Billy’s searching for the Gypsies who cursed him, and then in the details of how an old mob friend terrorized the Gypsies into removing the curse. The thing is, Billy was so clearly in the wrong, and the perversion of justice so egregious that it’s kind of hard to truly be on his side—but I suspect that was the point. (The Bachman books tended to feature anti-heroes were were unlikeable in one way or another.) The real downer ending (a Bachman hallmark) is perhaps for the best. Also, too: the idea of a Gypsy curse. I dunno. It’s one of those old, tired tropes (like the possessed Indian burial ground in Pet Sematary) that would probably have been done a bit differently if King (or anyone) were to write this today.

Grade: B-

Skeleton Crew (1985) 

Another collection of short stories that, like Night Shift, is a mixed bag of the really effective and the really bad, and everything in between. Opening novella “The Mist”—detailing people trapped in a supermarket by the titular mist and the mysterious creatures living within it—is probably one of the truly scariest things King has ever written. (For this reread, I actually did read “The Mist” while on holiday and taking the Eurostar train through the Chunnel, which had added an extra level of creepiness.) Other good stories in this collection include “The Raft” (college students trapped on raft in the middle of a lake get eaten by a weird splotch in the water); “Gramma” (little kid is scared to be alone with his perhaps dying grandmother who happens to be a witch); and a few others. Some (“The Jaunt,” “Word Processor of the Gods”) are okay and would have made good Twilight Zone episodes. An okay collection but some stories were tough to get through.

Grade: C 

It (1986) 

This was about where SK and I parted ways back in the 80s, but reading It for the first time in the 90s and again for this project, this is his magnum opus (so far). It is an immense epic, but it rarely drags. The Losers Club are some of his most endearing characters and we really get to know them, as kids and as adults, over the course of the book. It could use some editing and rearranging (the chapter in which all seven of the kids meet doesn’t come until more than halfway through the book, some early chapters are wasted detailing the lives of characters we will never meet again, and the “Derry Interludes” do seem a bit beside the point), but it/It really does keep you going for its length. Clowns are truly frightening to begin with, so Pennywise’s earthly incarnation made perfect sense. But it’s really a story about childhood and friendship, the last time, actually, that King would address these themes. There was a pretty awful TV miniseries made in the 90s that starred mostly sitcom actors, although Tim Curry stole the show as the evil clown.

Grade: A

The Eyes of the Dragon (1987)

A young adult (sort of) fantasy novel about princes and assassinated kings and evil magicians, written, as the story goes, for his daughter who did not are for his more typical fare. It’s a not unsatisfying read, and has some wry takes on the fantasy genre. There are some connections to The Dark Tower; the assassinated king is named Roland while the evil magician is named Flagg (also from The Stand). Peter, Roland’s elder son and heir to the throne, is blamed for the king’s murder and his brother Thomas—who is not a particularly adept ruler—is put on throne so as to be Flagg’s manipulatee. (The idea of “Dragon Sand,” the poison that kills Roland, is pure, unadulterated King.) Peter’s plan to escape the tower in which he is imprisoned is, shall we say, unique. (You will never look at napkins the same way again.) All in all, a unique decidedly Kingean take on a classic genre. 

Grade: B-

The Dark Tower II: The Drawing of the Three (1987)

The second installment of The Dark Tower epic seems a bit more directed and intentional than the first volume, which was a collection of a couple of shorter pieces. Volume II has the sense that it’s going somewhere. At the beginning, our gunslinger Roland has been attacked by giant mutant lobsters (called lobstrosities, a neologism I shall have to use). Dispossessed of a couple of fingers and toes, he is in desperate need of medicine. On the beach on which he is trapped, there are three doors, for some reason, and through them lie the three people he needs to choose (aka abduct) who will accompany him on his journey to the Dark Tower. All three doors lead to our world, specifically New York City at various times, and Roland manages to take possession of the bodies of the people who will accompany him, battling various folk in our world before dragging them back to his. The first is a 1980s-era 18-year-old heroin addict and smuggler (Eddie), the second is an African-American woman from the 60s who not only has had her legs severed in a freak subway accident but who also suffers from multiple personality disorder (Odetta), the alternate personality (Detta) being a psychotic. The third actually is not intended to be part of Roland’s gang, and is a psycho who gets off on randomly injuring or killing people, including the character of Jake who ended up in Roland’s world in the first book. He is dealt a very brutal fate, appropriately, and his demise (he was responsible for Odetta losing her legs) results in her two personalities merging and becoming a third person, Susannah. (Yeah, this is where the book kind of lost me, and at about the same point where the first book lost me.) Still, I remain intrigued and will forge ahead when Volume III comes up a few books hence. 

Grade: B-

Misery (1987)

Probably the quintessential Stephen King book, the one everyone probably knows from the hit movie, one of the best King adaptations, and it really is hard to not see Kathy Bates as the psychotic Annie Wilkes. She was perfectly cast. (James Caan as Paul Sheldon...well, not so much.) Everyone knows the plot: writer Paul Sheldon, author of a bestselling series of Victorian romance novels about Misery Chastain, is rescued from a road accident by his "number one fan," who then proceeds to torture him for a) killing off Misery in his latest book, hoping to end the series, b) having written a contemporary novel about a foul-mouthed car thief, and c) trying to escape. At her request (via an axe), he writes a new Misery novel in which she comes back from the dead in very Stephen King fashion. There are some differences between the book and movie (in the book, she chops off his foot and his thumb), but both are very well-done. This would be the ideal gateway Stephen King novel, as it is pretty short and devoid of any supernatural elements. I also get the sense that it would be a vicarious thrill for any writer buttonholed into a specific genre or series—as indeed King has been buttonholed as a horror writer.  

Grade: A

Coming up...The Tommyknockers, The Dark Half, and Part III of The Dark Tower...just as soon as I clear my palate with something else for a bit. 

Certain Songs Part XIX: Blogger Sucks

And Blogger continues to get worse and worse. We attempt to continue, even though it was quite the struggle to get this to display without a great deal of effort. There are spacing and other issues. I don't care anymore.

#97
Pixies
Doolittle
1989

When I first heard Nirvana in the early 1990s, my first thought was, “Dang, they nicked the Pixies’ sound and did it far more depressingly.” I adored the Pixies in 1989, although when Steven H. and I tried to see them in Providence on this tour, the crowd—which was voluminous—were all of the slam-dancing type, so it was hard to really enjoy the show. Still, they played their set in alphabetical order, and that appealed to me. Doolittle was the one masterpiece of the band’s four records.
Opener “Debaser” has become something of a classic, with its references to the surrealist Louis Buñuel/Salvador Dalì film Un Chien Andalou.

“Here Comes Your Man” and “Monkey Gone to Heaven” were the radio/MTV hits (“Here Comes Your Man” was the video they played relentlessly on 120 Minutes, and it is pretty funny, even if the song is the most atypical of the album), but all the songs are great. The line “Walked the sand with a crustacean” in “Wave of Mutilation” helped endear me to the record. The dark, surreal aspects of the lyrics were the appeal, but rarely duplicated since. And how can you not sing along with “Gouge Away”? The Pixies may have helped invent grunge, which was unfortunate. Their subsequent two records were okay, but never matched the heights of Doolittle.



Sugar
Copper Blue
1992

After one great and one okay solo album, Bob Mould formed another power trio, but this one blew the doors off Hüsker Dü. Where the Hüskers’ power was in their lo-fi thrash punk, Sugar was a professionally recorded assault on the senses. The EP Beaster will shred eardrums and speakers alike, and I mean that in a good way. Their debut LP Copper Blue has a pop sensibility buried amongst the tumult. It will still shred anything in earshot if the volume is loud enough (one advantage to owning a house—perhaps the only one). Opener “The Act We Act” sets the (very loud) tone (“The act we act is wearing thin”...indeed). “Helpless” should have been a hit. This one reminds me of commuting in NYC in 1992, as it was playing on my Walkman incessantly at the time, which may explain my failing hearing. “If I Can’t Change Your Mind” is a refreshing acoustic break, but still emotionally wrought. We’ve all been there. This record may be the pinnacle of Bob Mould’s entire career, although he’d probably beat the crap out of me for saying that. But, then, there are days when cranking Beaster is the most appealing option. File Under: Easy Listening never did much for me. But then, neither did too many of Mould’s subsequent records.


#95
Stan Ridgway
Mosquitoes
1989

Stan Ridgway may, unfortunately, be forever known as the singer of the one-hit-wonder 80s band Wall of Voodoo (“Mexican Radio”), even though his solo career easily surpasses his brief stint with WoV. I discovered Mosquitoes via a Rolling Stone review that pointed out that Ridgway should be writing movie screenplays; they also played the uptempo “Goin’ Southbound” on Boston’s WFNX at the time. Ridgway’s songs are, often, story-songs about film noir-ish characters, and what I think is his masterpiece—Mosquitoes [sic]—has some of his most compelling characters and stories.
Wall of Voodoo had originally begun in the 1970s to score movie soundtracks, and while that didn’t quite happen, Mosquitos’ opening instrumental “Heat Takes a Walk” does sound like it could have been a low-budget movie theme. “Lonely Town” only drops hints as to why the narrator wants to go to the titular town, where “all those people are lonely and mad”:

I think about those mosquitos on my windshield
And they don’t give a damn about Christmastime.”

He’s obviously returning to a place he ran away from? “Goin’ Southbound” is a great crime caper song—and the crime-boss narrator doesn’t like people who snitch: “The last one who did, well, we tied him a tree/Out in high desert by an anthilll....” But then: “Everybody does what nobody will allow.” “Peg and Pete and Me” is very James M. Cain-esque (see The Postman Always Rings Twice mixed with Double Indemnity, while “Can't Complain” is one of what I would imagine to be a very few songs to feature a character crushed by a falling piano. The tragic “Calling Out to Carol” got some rotation on MTV’s 120 Minutes. “The Last Honest Man” may be a bit trite, but hearing Ridgway’s film-noir-wise-guy voice sing the phrase “He kept his meeting for a cat o’nine beating from a leather-clad man named Moe” is worth it. “Mission in Life” sends the album out on a very inspirational note (“You got a mission in life/To hold out your hand/Help the other guy out/Help your fellow man...”). The music itself is very hard to describe, as Ridgway never cleaves to one particular style; saxophones blurt in middle of “Peg and Pete and Me” and sitar gives “Newspapers” a somewhat exotic flavor. In some cases, the 1980s-era sound dates certain portions, but most of the music was pretty left of center even at the time, so it still holds up. The follow-up record Partyball is nearly as good, with more scifi-related story songs. Never especially prolific, he’s only released fewer than half a dozen albums since Mosquitos

Nemo No Mo'?

OK, so I’m not going crazy (well, at least not in this respect); I didn’t think they named winter storms, much less something as dorky as “Nemo” (most folks think of the animated fish, but nemo, as Jules Verne could tell you, is actually Latin for “no one”—a bit of an ironic name, especially if you are in New England). Back in my day, we had to be content with referring to “The Blizzard of 1978.”

Anyway, it turns out a storm is brewing between AccuWeather and other meteorologists and The Weather Channel, as it was The Weather Channel that unilaterally decided to name the storm “Nemo,” against the protestations of just about everyone else.

Then again, maybe we should name all weather phenomena: Torrential Rain Robin, Tornado Tom, Unseasonable Warmth Dennis. And of course they call the wind Maria.

Back to Britain 1: Of Banquets and Bunkers

There are three reasons why traveling to popular international destinations over the Christmas holiday is a bad idea. First, there is the weather, and hoping that Mother Nature cooperates with travel plans, which she rarely does. It also tends to be cold. Second, there are huge masses of people everywhere, more so than during other parts of the year, with the exception perhaps of peak summer vacation time. Third, things are closed on at least one, often two days during that period. And fourth—there are four reasons why traveling to popular international destinations over the Christmas holiday is a bad idea—the days are very short and daylight ends around 4:00 or 4:30.

We experienced all four of these problems when Ken A. and I did London for Christmas back in 2008—a December blizzard cancelled our outbound flight and we had to rebook flights and flats. This time, we lucked out, and outbound was no problem, and even the return happened to coincide with the one clear day sandwiched between two blizzard days. We—and more specifically I—rarely have that kind of luck, to which just about any trip to Graphics of the Americas in Florida in February stands as a testament.

For international flights, I prefer flying out of Newark, but for some inexplicable reason tickets were about $400 more than flying out of JFK, so needless to say, JFK it was. This was the first time I have ever actually been to JFK airport (although I think I took a Boston–NY shuttle to/from there in 1999 but it may have been La Guardia), and I had heard horror stories, but it was actually quite smooth and relatively uncrowded. British Airways check-in went quickly, more quickly than at Newark actually, and security was surprisingly fast, as well. We had allotted plenty of time, which it turned out we did not need, so we spent a fair amount of time in a bar/restaurant owned (or at least named after) Sammy Hagar, of Van Halen fame as well as the solo 1984 ode to reckless endangerment, “I Can’t Drive 55.”

The outbound flight was generally OK, although right behind us, a child screamed the whole way. Can’t they check children with luggage? 

We arrived at Heathrow early the following morning, and passport control into the UK was the usual level of crowded, but at least the border agents didn’t give me the third degree about why I want to enter the country the way they usually do. I guess with the UK economy in the toilet (austerity!), they need as many tourist dollars (or pounds) as they can get.

We had rented a flat in Bayswater in West London, as we had in 2008, a wonderfully ethnic and diverse neighborhood with many great restaurants. It’s also easy to get anywhere else in London from there, either on foot or by Tube. We took the Heathrow Express train into Paddington Station and, whilst detraining, my well-traveled-but-not-very-old-but-still-very-crappily-made suitcase literally fell apart (the handle ripped right out of it, tearing the top off). It had been steadily deteriorating for a while, pretty much right after its first use; the plastic used for the inner shell turned exceedingly brittle when exposed to the cold temperature of aircraft baggage holds, so after every flight the case is filled with small plastic fragments. American Tourister = Chinese-Made Crap. Anyway, I managed to wedge the handle back into the frame and it held together long enough to go the one stop on the Circle Line to Bayswater.

The first night we availed ourselves of Phoenicia, an excellent Lebanese restaurant on Queensway.

Our first point of interest in London was the Banqueting House on Whitehall, which I have been meaning to visit for the past few trips over there. Originally a palace for the Archbishop of York, and later the lavish palace of Cardinal Woolsey during the reign of Henry VIII, Henry took it over when Woolsey fell from royal favor (Woolsey was unable to get Henry his divorce) and turned it into a vast space for entertaining. The original wood structure was replaced during the reign of the first Stuart monarch, James I, with a magnificent new structure designed by architect Inigo Jones (most of London was either designed by Inigo Jones or Christopher Wren, it seems) in a grand classical style, borrowed from Jones’ visits to Italy. 

The Banqueting House then became the venue for grand “masques,” music and dance extravaganzas. When Charles I, James’ son, became king, he took to the Banqueting House, and commissioned Peter Paul Rubens to paint grand paintings for the ceiling. However, the paintings were potentially so sensitive to smoke that the use of candles was verboten, and thus ended the masques.

About the paintings... magnificent, yes, but they depicted James and Charles as if they were gods. Indeed, the Stuarts were big on the notion of the Divine Right of Kings, the idea that the British monarch was the human instrument of God on Earth. This didn’t go over particularly well with a lot of people and when Charles I dissolved Parliament for 11 years, well, folks began to grumble. Prime among them was Oliver Cromwell, and Civil War broke out in England. At the end of the Civil War, Charles I was charged with treason and sentenced to be executed. On January 30, 1649, Charles awaited the executioner in his beloved Banqueting House and, when the time came, was marched out an upper window (which no longer exists) and beheaded just outside. The whole thing is recreated in the 1970 film Cromwell, starring Richard Harris as Cromwell and Alec Guinness as Charles I. And you know, Charles I does bear more than a passing resemblance to Guinness. Help me, Charles I, you’re my only hope! 

After the Banqueting House, we banqueted ourselves in the Red Lion pub across the street from the Houses of Parliament, then proceeded to the Churchill War Rooms. 

I had been there before but Ken was eager to check it out, so down we descended into the underground rabbit warren of rooms where Winston Churchill and his ministers ran the war effort during WWII as bombs rained down on London. Since I had been there in 2007, they had installed a massive Churchill museum that basically chronicles every detail of his life. In the center of it all was a giant touch screen display that essentially let you tap on any date during Churchill’s life and find out what happened on that day. We gave it only a cursory look, as it was all a bit overwhelming.

By that time, it was getting late, so back to the Red Lion, and then off to Bayswater where we found a very good Indian restaurant.

Next up: Back to Greenwich.

So This Is Christmas...

Despite the fact that I will be spending Christmas in London, earlier this month a strange burst of the holiday spirit struck me (helped by a sale on trees at Lowe’s)‚ and I decided to put up a tree of my own this year (premised on how easy it would be to find all my Christmas ornaments, which turned to not be that hard at all). Curiously, some of the old Hallmark Star Trek ornaments from the 1990s that plugged into the mini-light sockets and lit up don’t fit the string of lights I have, but happily found that the local Hallmark has an adapter. An adapter for Christmas ornaments? What, is Apple making ornaments now? iOrnament?

At any rate, have yourself a very Merry Christmas.

Certain Songs Part XVIII: Cheepnis

Yeah, OK, it has been a while. I read somewhere that the feud between Apple and Google is why Blogger has become staggeringly annoying to use on a Mac, compared to how easy it used to be. Also explains the awful Apple Maps app that can actually give life-threatening directions if you are in Australia. But then, says The Onion, “Apple Promises To Fix Glitches In Map Software By Rearranging Earth’s Geography.”

Anyway, the list continues.

Part I (150–152) here.
Part II (147–149) here.
Part III (144–146) here.
Part IV (141–143) here.
Part V (138–140) here.
Part VI (135–137) here.
Part VII (132–134) here.
Part VIII (129–131) here.
Part IX (126–128) here.
Part X (123–125)here
Part XI (120–122)here
Part XII (117–119)here
Part XIII: (114–116) here.
Part XIV (111–113) here.
Part XV (108–110) here.
Part XVI (105–107) here.
Part XVII (104–101) here.

#100
Echo & the Bunnymen
Crocodiles
1980

I came kind of late to this particular party; while I was familiar with Echo & the Bunnymen back in the 80s, and I remember when Ian McCulloch left the band in 1988 and everyone in colleges across the country was quite upset, and I did like a few scattered songs here and there (especially “The Killing Moon,” see later in this list), I didn’t really get into them in earnest until their original five albums were reissued in the early 2000s. Crocodiles was their debut, and it has to go down as one of the best debut albums of all time. They’d get better, sure, especially by Ocean Rain, but it's hard to find a bad track on Crocodiles. Mix two parts doomy post-punk à la Joy Division with one part psychedelia and you pretty much have Echo (or more precisely, the Bunnymen; Echo was the name of the band’s drum machine that was jettisoned before they started recording). Four years before Johnny Marr appeared on the scene to reinvent the guitar sound of the 80s, Will Sergeant was creating unique soundscapes and moods. The highlight here is “Rescue,” with its chiming opening riff. “Villiers Terrace”—“There’s people rolling round on the carpets”—was inspired by a story about how Hitler used to get upset and chew on the carpet (recounted in William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich). “Stars Are Stars” is also a highlight. And the closing song “Happy Death Men” does live up to its name! Their next album, Heaven Up Here, was a bit more experimental.



#99
Roger Waters
Radio KAOS
1987

As a crazy nuts Pink Floyd fan, I picked up Waters’ second proper solo album Radio KAOS (no, there is nothing about Get Smart on it) probably the second it was released, and I played it virtually nonstop throughout 1987. As a concept album, or “rock opera,” if you prefer (and I’d understand if you didn’t prefer), the plot isn’t so much half-baked as quite raw. Basically, a vegetable savant manages to steal a cordless phone and call an LA DJ using his mind (he can communicate via radio waves, kind of like The Who’s Tommy as conceived by Nokia), and he eventually manages to hack into the Government’s computers and scare everyone into thinking WWIII has started. Yeah.

Musically, it was quite different from Waters’ previous Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking (see earlier in this list); it was a bit slicker, a bit more radio friendly (which didn’t help him get on the radio all that much), and more song-oriented. The bass-driven opener “Radio Waves” got some radio play, and “Who Needs Information” tries to advance the plot but doesn’t really. “Me or Him?” was mellow Waters, and side one closer “The Powers That Be” is one of Waters’ effective critiques of the Reagan/Thatcher era. Much of side two (or the last half of the album—that’s right, I didn’t have this on LP, I bought the CD straight away) deals with the simulated nuclear attack and its aftermath. “The Tide is Turning” ends on a hopeful note and may be the most uplifting song Roger Waters ever wrote, even if it was not reflected in reality. His Bleeding Heart Band actually does seem like a proper band (much of them had played on the latter half of the Pros and Cons tour). The usual sound effects add atmosphere and realism to the proceedings.

Actual LA DJ Jim Ladd is a character in the, um, story, and some of his former colleagues at KMET (a freeform FM station in the 70s that was taken over by a large media corporation and turned into a New Age music station) appear here and there, even reprising their “Fish Report with a Beat,” which was far more risqué in actuality than appears on the album, where it just seems strange. (A more representative version of it was included in the concert tour for the album.) Radio KAOS came out at the same time as the reconstituted Pink Floyd released A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and while I liked much of the Floyd album musically, it just fell very flat to me compared to KAOS. (Steven H. and I saw Waters live on this tour in Providence, RI, and it was a fantastic show, with Jim Ladd introducing the songs on stage. I also had the opportunity to work with Jim Ladd, as his memoir Radio Waves was published by St. Martin’s Press when I worked there in 1990. I’m even listed in book’s acknowledgements. My one claim to fame!)



#98
Zappa/Mothers
Roxy & Elsewhere
1974

Perhaps the best band Zappa ever had (arguably until his final 1988 tour) was in the post-Flo and Eddie period, featuring George Duke, Napoleon Murphy Brock, Ruth Underwood, Chester Thompson, Jeff Simmons, and a variety of Fowlers on a variety of horns. They played on a few albums in the early to mid 70s, including the masterpiece One Size Fits All (see later in this list). Roxy & Elsewhere, like most of Zappa’s live albums, featured predominantly original songs; indeed, few of Roxy’s tracks appeared elsewhere. (Except on Vol. 2 of You Can’t Do That On Stage Anymore, where the same band does much of the same set list in Helsinki—and it’s startling how the songs transformed over the course of the tour or, in other words, got faster.)

Each of the four sides of the original double album featured a Zappa introduction; opener “Penguin in Bondage” seems like it would have been dirtier on another album, but here is just surreal. “Knirps for moisture” was a bizarre line (I thought “knirps” was a verb, albeit a made-up one), until I learned many years later that Knirps is a brand of German umbrella. Well, I guess it’s still a strange line. “Howlin’ over to some antarticulated moon” is pretty good. “Pygmy Twylyte” is also pretty surreal and vaguely about drugs (not in a good a way; Zappa was vehemently anti-drug). “Dummy Up” features some onstage business about smoking a high school diploma. “Village of the Sun” is that rare Zappa song that smacks of nostalgia (I recall it going through my mind whenever driving past Palmdale, CA, ”out where the turkey farmers run”—that’s where Zappa grew up, in Lancaster). “Echidna’s Arf” and “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” are amazing instrumental showcases, especially for percussionist Ruth Underwood. “Cheepnis” opens with a narrative about the old Roger Corman grade Z movie It Conquered the World (shown on MST3K) before launching into a funny track about Zappa’s love of bad monster movies.

All of side 4 is “Be-Bop Tango,” which begins with a very complicated instrumental section (“The cowbell as a symbol of unbridled passion!”) before morphing into one of Zappa’s “enforced entertainment” events in which audience members were invited up on stage and told to try to dance to something well-nigh un-dance-to-able. It obviously went on longer; the edit toward the end is just abrupt. Just a fun, yet musically challenging record. It’s also very much a percussion-lover’s record—you’ve got drummer Chester Thompson but also random percussionist Ruth Underwood. There are moments that are quite sublime. “A true Zen saying, ‘Nothing is what I want.’”

I, Saac

Given the extent to which I utterly loathe driving, I am intrigued by the idea of self-driving cars such as those being tested by Google, although if it’s Google, I can only imagine that any drive will thoroughly inundate the rider with ads which may end up being even more unpleasant than driving. (Actually, I’d rather walk or take public transport but, this being the U.S., that’s not an option in most places.)

The New Yorker, though, poses some interesting questions vis-à-vis self-driving cars and the potentially Robot Holocaust-like technology underlying it all.

Eventually (though not yet) automated vehicles will be able to drive better, and more safely than you can; no drinking, no distraction, better reflexes, and better awareness (via networking) of other vehicles. Within two or three decades the difference between automated driving and human driving will be so great you may not be legally allowed to drive your own car...

Hope springs eternal! But, perhaps more importantly, we may be ushering in

the era in which it will no longer be optional for machines to have ethical systems. Your car is speeding along a bridge at fifty miles per hour when errant school bus carrying forty innocent children crosses its path. Should your car swerve, possibly risking the life of its owner (you), in order to save the children, or keep going, putting all forty kids at risk? If the decision must be made in milliseconds, the computer will have to make the call.

Now, suppose there was no such thing as a hypothetical situation...

But if we have reached this point, why would the school bus be errant in the first place? (Yeah, I know, think about MS Windows and then extrapolate that to a vehicle’s OS; “You’re about to die in a fiery crash. But there are unused icons on your desktop. Would you like you like to fix them?”) And in the second place, I’ve seen some viral videos and bits of the movie Bully, so I’m not all that convinced of the innocence of school kids, so I say off the bridge with ’em. (Oh, I’m kidding. Sort of....Um, can we pick which of the forty?)

There are, of course, Isaac Asimov’s classic Three Laws of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws.

And, it being Asimov, 4. All robots must sport gigantic mutton-chop sideburns.

Asimov’s short story collection I, Robot demonstrated pretty effectively just how problematic those laws could be. And think about how you might define terms like “injure,” “inaction,” “harm,” “protection.” Norman, coordinate! (Star Trek’s “I, Mudd” episode also illustrated these conundra, albeit in very silly ways, and Futurama’s “I, Roommate” in more intentionally silly ways.)

Still, given that after all these millennia we still have not figured out how to get humans to act ethically and morally, so I suppose it’s no surprise that it will be challenge to get our machines to behave as such. 

Pop Goes the Culture

It was around 1999 or 2000 that I began to lose complete track of pop culture. It was the popularity and subsequent ubiquity of illiterate— er, I mean, reality—TV that did it; when Survivor was a hit and there was no avoiding the repellent, semi-nude photos of the creep who won the first series, that was perhaps the first brick in the wall that went up between me and media culture. Big Brother was the second. The utterly vile and loathsome Temptation Island was a ton of bricks all by itself (not that I watched any of these; the promos were enough to make me want to pluck out my eyes—“Out, vile jelly!”). A few years later, when a show pitted a team of midgets against an elephant to pull a jet, the entire medium jumped the shark, as it were, and the rest of the wall went up. 

Movies? Well, at least I write and update the Saratoga Film Forum’s newsletters and Web site, so I have a passing familiarity with at least some current movies, namely the good ones. (I saw Safety Not Guaranteed a few weeks ago; I liked it.) As for what plays at the malls and multiplexes...I haven’t a clue. There was something about a foul-mouthed teddy bear (yeah, sign me up for that), and a series of movies about hangovers, if my peripheral vision caught the Web ads correctly. I think about five years ago I was dragged to a Will Ferrell movie (something about ice skating) and again prayed for retinal detachment (I really can’t stand Will Ferrell).

I was talking with someone recently about James Bond (apparently there is a new one out) and even I was shocked to realize that the last Bond movie I saw—at all, let alone in the theater—was Licence to Kill. And, yes, that came out in 1989. Tempus fugit. (In my own defense, I thought they went downhill after Sean Connery quit, and gee our old LaSalle ran great.)*

And while I have been perfectly happy to remain ignorant of it all (or most of it; a few shows—not reality ones—have filtered into my little bubble, like Parks and Recreation and, um, others, I suspect), I am discovering that there is a downside: my ignorance of pop culture is starting to impede my ability to do crossword puzzles, as more puzzles are cluing actors, actresses, shows, and movies I have never even heard of. It is starting to become like doing those old Margaret Farrar- and Will Weng-era NYT puzzles from the 1960s and early 70s that included then-current-but-now-long-forgotten names.

It’s getting serious. I may have to subscribe to Entertainment Weekly strictly—and ironically—for educational purposes. 

*It could also be age-related. It’s my belief that the definition of middle age is the point at which you can look through an issue of People magazine at the dentist’s office and fail to identify more than 50% of the celebrities in it.

UPDATE: I rest my case. They remade Red Dawn?! For the love of all that’s holy, why?