I begin writing today at 10:17PM, and it is a slightly unpleasant 82 degrees fahrenheit in the house. Outdoor temperatures got up to over 100 today, which is not really that fun. I spent much of the day at the mall engaging in air-conditioned browsing, something I normally wouldn’t do. Sheer heat, illness and an urge to see a movie compelled me, despite the dearth of anything hugely exciting in theaters.
Now, onto the scrappage!
1) Just returned home from seeing ‘The Box.’ For those of you who don’t know or care, this is based on the short story ‘Button, Button’ by Richard Matheson. Matheson has come back into fashion a bit lately for the adaptation of his novella ‘I Am Legend,’ the kooky vampire tale which was bastardized into a Will Smith vehicle (it had already been twisted into a film twice before, with Vincent Price in ‘The Last Man On Earth’ and Charlton Heston fighting off doomsday hippies in ‘The Omega Man’). Matheson was also responsible for Steven Spielberg’s first movie, ‘Duel,’ ‘The Incredible Shrinking Man,’ ’What Dreams May Come’ and that episode of the Twilight Zone where Shatner freaks out on an airplane. He’s a pretty big deal, and a damn fine writer.
There are quite a few reasons, without knowing anything about it, to see ‘The Box.’ Whether you get off on 70’s period pieces, love ‘Donnie Darko’ to death and will follow the director to the ends of time, or even just wanna see the guy who played Cyclops without red sunglasses. Personally, I wanted to see it because I wanted desperately to know how they could make a movie out of a 12 page short story originally published as a two pager in Playboy magazine. Yep.
So I went along, taking an airconditioned break from this hellish inferno of a house, and watched. Frankly, I was baffled. They expanded the plot in ways I wouldn’t have thought of, genuinely creeped me out, and kept me guessing. It’s really rare to see a movie nowadays and not have any idea where its going, while still enjoying it. So I’m glad for that, and I feel like Matheson might even like it himself. Maybe.
Regardless, it will flop horribly. It’s too slow paced, the morality angle is kind of neutered with the additional explanation, and the two main characters are too pretty to be sympathetic. Former models aren’t the best choice for your average 70s couple. Just what I think. Again, I enjoyed it, these are just the issues I see in the way of it gaining mainstream success.
At the very least, there is a sci-fi (or whatever it is) film out that draws and expands on a story, which might well lead to people reading again. Matheson has a huge library of work. He’s the very definition of prolific, and yet we’ve gotten but a relative few glances at it, as it trickles out in the form of Hollywoodized adaptations. Sort of like Philip K. Dick, without all the drugs and Harrison Ford.
But hey, at least his adaptors give credit, unlike James Cameron, who’s been ripping stuff of ever since ‘The Terminator’ (See: Harlan Ellison’s Outer Limits episodes ‘Soldier’ and ‘Demon with a Glass Hand’… See also: Philip K. Dick’s short story ‘Second Variety’) and is now continuing to do so with his half-cartoon soon-to-be-blockbuster Avatar (which rips off, apparently, both CG miserable failure ‘Delgo’ and Poul Anderson’s novella ‘Call Me Joe.’) Man. Nobody has new ideas anymore. Also, sorry about all the parentheses, but it was really necessary to get across how little respect I have for James Cameron.
Sigh. Too much ranting on this topic. Moving on.
2) The aforementioned heatwave. It’s November, which here is the equivalent of May, season-wise. I feel like it being 38 degrees celsius (100.4 F) is a bit much. This isn’t spring. This is hell. To make matters even better, I’ve spent the past few days oscillating in and out of a fever, unable to breathe through my nose, due to some germ or other I picked up from a child. I assume the children are to blame. I can’t wait until a pandemic of “Child Flu” hits the Earth. It won’t kill us, it’ll just render us useless, if my experience is anything to go by.
I’ve had no energy whatsoever. No drive, no ambition. Writing and hell, even reading have fallen by the wayside as I seek someplace cool to lie down and recover. That place can’t be found though, outside of shopping centers, where you are inundated with Christmas spirit that feels very premature and generally… strange.
For one, it’s fucking hot out. Secondly, since it’s hot, things work a little different. It’ll likely be over 100 degrees on Christmas day, meaning things have to work differently. I don’t mean that Santa will be wearing board shorts and a wifebeater, but according to the current promotion at the local mall, he will be arriving at the mall this weekend… BY HOVERCRAFT. I kind of want to go just to see a guy in a Santa suit glide up to the shopping center’s doors on a cushion of propelled air. Hopefully he gets inside before succumbing to beard-related heat stroke. That would likely traumatize some kids.
Christmas in the summer.. I can’t get over it. I mean, it’s not really surprising, what with roughly half the world experiencing it (admittedly probably not half the Christmas-celebrating world). And it would be kind of cool, if you got a bike, or you know, an airconditioner, to be able to test it out right away. But Christmas, for me, has to be cold. You have to WANT to stay inside. You should want to do nothing but curl up with family and shower each other with (ideally meaningful) gifts. You should want to cook dinner all day, feeling the warmth and smelling the smells of something roasting in the oven. Preferably an animal. You can’t eat anything with gravy when it’s 100+ degrees out. It’s just a fact. And until I leave and arrive in NY in mid-December, I will continue to feel that way. Christmas in the summer gets a big thumbs down.
3) I did something today that shocked me. Given that it’s hot, I’m sick, and I was trapped at the mall waiting for the next showing of ‘The (aforementioned) Box,’ I ate in a mall food court. My options weren’t terribly varied, but I fell prey to some combination of marketing and a sort of… Nationalist instinct as an American, I guess. I ate at McDonald’s. Now hold on, I can practically hear all four of you who read this standing up and hurling vitriolic fat-jokes at the computer screen. I have to say this.
In Australia, McDonald’s does something rather remarkable: it serves food. I don’t mean the wholly processed, semi-gelatinous food-like products we get back home. It’s straight up food. Admittedly not very healthy, but food nonetheless. Lately they’ve been playing nonstop advertisements for some new ‘Fancy Angus’ burger, an example of their frightening business plan of assimilating to the culture their franchises operate in while simultaneously assimilating said culture into fatties. They claim to use Australian angus beef, which they flatteringly advertise as being world renowned for its apparent greatness. They also top said burger with a slice of Australian cheese, red onion, and relish. The relish is a bit odd, because it bears no resemblance to the chopped up pickles we think of as hot-dog fodder. It’s sort of more like chutney. I couldn’t tell what was in it.
But I could tell this: the beef was beef, seared slightly crisp on the outside, with the texture of actual meat on the inside. It was cooked to grey, but I’m not going to ask Micky D’s to gimme something medium rare, am I? It tasted beefy and not all that seasoned. The cheese appeared to be actual cheese, melting slightly in the heat of the nearby patty (also the heat of the day), and the red onion was crisp and bitey. I swear to God, it was food. I don’t know what to make of it. Also, in Australia, the portion sizes are utterly under control. Back home, you get a large and you get a bucket of everything. Here, I was satisfied and not overfull, and felt like a respectably human being afterwards. Which is in sharp contrast to US McDonald’s. At a McDonald’s in its country of origin, I usually wind up feeling (metaphorically) like a used condom, thrown lazily and left to hang on the edge of a vomit filled plastic trash can.
That’s kind of gross, but then again, so is American fast food. It’s not really food, it’s not really that fast, and it’s not cheap. The only reason I don’t want that to change is that I don’t want to eat it that often. Even if it did get better, our health would still suffer due to the painful meat-and-potatos-ness of it all. So, in closing, I did it, I liked it, I may or may not do it again. Huzzah.
4) Lastly, I have embarked, yet again, on a fiction writing escapade. It was inspired by a random Tweet (internet talk for 140 characters of bullshit) made by an old friend. Something about setting a goal and going for it. This has taken up the better part of the last 2 months and is slow going. My aim this time is to produce something longer, something more interesting. At the same time I working steadily to reduce my use of flowery language, bad metaphors, and my literary best friend, the listing, run-on sentence. See what I did there? At any rate, I feel like I’ve made enough progress without quitting to share a tad of it with the internet public. The beginnings of this came about from a series of vivid nightmares I had, mostly while reading my typical blend of dark fantasy and sci-fi. The first line is directly inspired by Chuck Palahniuk, although more by his style than his content. This will be the first page or two. Enjoy if you can, skip if you must.
Imagine a world without adverbs.
Imagine your most baseless fears.
Imagine, if you will, threads of mucosy saliva stretched rubber-band taut in the gaping jaws of some unnamed creature. The clattering of a pearlescent carapce in a darkened cave. Imagine running late, unprepared and undressed, aboard the bus to your daily grind.
These worlds come to life as you sleep each night. They wink in and out of your existence as your body lies slowly breathing. In and out. In these worlds, we are gods — creators — made powerless. Trapped by the things we handily dismiss in the cold light of day.
Imagine deep sea fish, luminous, toothed and skeletal, floating through the air before you. Their eyes onyx pebbles in the sun.
The world’s don’t go away just because you do. You wake up. Shake off the sense of wrongness, the anxiety, the fear. They carry on.
The dead still walk. The plane keep crashing. Co-workers point and laugh at the empty spot in the center of the room, your bare footprints etched into the carpet. The creature you could only see in the periphery as you ran into darkness; it hangs leaping at where your back should be.
You are conspicuous by your absence.
And that is where the Cheroi get in. They fill the holes. Molding themselves to fit the shape you imagine yourself to be. They accept your fears, your fantasies. These sustain them, for the time being. They are the surrogate gods of the dream world, and their power grows each time you wake gasping. As you sit, sweat-beaded and wide eyed in the dark, know this: They are there.
That’ll do for now. Comments are, as always, welcome.
RJC
