Latest Posts

You’ve Got A Friend In Them.

Author: October 12, 2024 4 Comments

It’s that time of year when the Monster Cereals come out. They’ve really been out since September, but I like to hold off until a little closer to Halloween. Maybe I should start earlier too, though—I’m getting older and, since my wife doesn’t like them, finishing off five or six boxes of family-sized sugary cereal by myself isn’t as easy as it used to be, and is a reminder of the passing of time.

I’d really like to say a sincere word of gratitude to the people behind making the Monster Cereals—not just the cereals themselves but also the packaging. I’ve worked in enough businesses to know that nothing happens quickly, especially with established brands. The Monster Cereals are seasonal, not really promoted, and, I suspect, not even that profitable anymore. Their target demographic is a dwindling subset of Gen Xers who grew up eating them—or, in my case, not eating them but wishing I could—and yet there’s care and thought put into making each year’s release just a little bit different.

Carmella Creeper, introduced in 2023, and the first new Monster Cereal in thirty-six years, has made a welcome comeback for this year, and I’m glad. It was about time they brought a woman into the mix and while the “caramel apple” flavored cereal doesn’t taste like either caramel or apples it does have a distinctive tangy flavor that I like. She’s also gotten her own retro-style box, confirming her place as one of the gang.

 

The other big change is the return of the Monster Mash, introduced in 2021 for the 50th anniversary of the first Monster Cereals. It’s not, as the box would suggest, a mix of all four flavors but rather a combination of green Carmella pieces and gray pieces—gray being such an appetizing color for food. The box is also missing my personal favorite Frute Brute (I like werewolves) and Yummy Mummy. The latter’s name has taken on a meaning of its own, and I’m sure Tony The Tiger can sympathize, but that’s another story.

The biggest change has been that the this year’s Monster Cereals have gotten “pets” with their own back-of-the-box stories and a new batch of marshmallows. Not even monsters live forever. There will be a year when it’s just not worth it to bring them out. In the meantime it’s nice that they’ve got friends.

American Graffiti.

Tainted Love.

Author: October 11, 2024 2 Comments

Source: Wikipedia

I have mixed feelings about a new Creature From The Black Lagoon movie. On the one hand it seems like everything these days is a reboot, remake, or remix. On the other hand there’s a belief that there are a limited number of stories to be told and that everything already is a reboot, remake, or remix, the prime example being Shakespeare’s plays which were based on other sources, and he didn’t even pay royalties. And on the third hand, since we’re talking about monsters and anything’s possible, because I’ve always loved all things aquatic and went through a long phase of wanting to be a marine biologist like Jacques Cousteau, before I realized that job was already taken by this guy named Jacques Cousteau, I grew up fascinated by The Creature, even before I saw the original movies. Because the Saturday matinee on the UHF station mostly stuck to various versions of Dracula and Frankenstein’s monster, with occasional appearances by The Wolf Man and a few disappearances of The Invisible Man, I even wrote my own Creature story. It was loosely based on Jaws, although when one of the crew says, “We’re gonna need a bigger boat” they actually go back to land and get a bigger boat, which just gives The Creature more time to wreak havoc, though it’s good because it’s ultimately discovered he’s going after polluters. I was an environmentally conscious kid, and also influenced by Namor Of Atlantis, but that’s another story.

There’s also already been a modern retelling of The Creature From The Black Lagoon: Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape Of Water. Not only did I really enjoy it for its lovely, strange, and dark story but, in spite of only being inspired by, not connected to, the original three films, it seemed to pick up where the original three films left off. Although only very loosely connected the three Creature films still, taken together, tell a story of first love, maturity and marriage, and finally love turned toxic.

The first in the series, the 1954 The Creature From The Black Lagoon, has The Creature as the villain, but there’s also a side story of scientist David Reed and his girlfriend and fellow scientist Kay Lawrence. She’s the one who’s kidnapped by The Creature after he sees her swimming above him. Like a lot of classic monster films there wasn’t any interest in exploring why The Creature would find a human attractive, or even interesting, but what stands out for me is she’s resisted David’s pressure to marry because she wants a career of her own. The Creature is a not-so-subtle metaphor for the pressure put on women to be dragged down.

The sequel, coming out just a year later, was Revenge Of The Creature, with a whole new couple, animal psychologist Clete Ferguson, and his assistant, ichthyology student Helen Dobson. Clete and Helen fall in love and The Creature becomes a surrogate child. Clete is the father figure, disciplining The Creature with a cattle prod while Helen is more nurturing. And because they thought it would be a good idea to keep The Creature in an oceanarium open to the public it escapes and goes on a rampage. Things turn Oedipal—another story thrown into the mix—when The Creature kidnaps Helen and Clete has to come to the rescue.

The last of the original films, The Creature Walks Among Us, gets a lot of hate, and, I admit, deserves it for the ridiculousness of the Creature miraculously developing lungs so it can breathe air, but I like how dark it gets. Also it’s the only one that makes The Creature sympathetic. Finally it’s the humans who are the villains. We get a whole new couple. This time it’s Dr. William Barton—no relation to the real life engineer Otis Barton who designed the first bathysphere—and his trophy wife Marcia. Marcia, Marcia, Marcia is willful, independent, and enjoys shooting at sharks. She attracts The Creature’s attentions when she accompanies the men on a dive. That’s the extent of its interest in her, though. The reduced budget of the third film created a story focusing mainly on the human relationships, and making them more complicated than ever. Barton murders another man who made a pass at Marcia, not caring that she wasn’t interested, then tries to blame The Creature. Somehow aware of the danger it’s in The Creature escapes its cage, kills Barton, and goes to the sea, never to return.

There were plans for at least one more film that would introduce a female Creature, which could have been interesting, but it never made it past the early stages and it would take sixty-one years for The Shape Of Water to make romance central to the story, keeping the third film’s sympathy, and even love for, something not human.

Del Toro’s film seems like a fitting end, and yet relationships are as strange and ever-changing as the sea itself, and if there is a new Creature From The Black Lagoon, I’d like to find out what it says about who, and what, we love, and how love connects us to all life.

Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Strange Magic.

Author: October 7, 2024 2 Comments

I have a strange but very vivid memory from childhood, from a time just after my family had moved to a new house, which, itself, was kind of a strange and disruptive event in my young life. It wasn’t negative. I was only four when we moved, though the memories from our first house seem so much longer than that. And though the new neighborhood wasn’t that far from the old one it still seemed like a very new and very different world.

The early experience I remember so clearly at the new house is a day when there was fog. The new house was on a hill and I could stand in the driveway, or look out my bedroom window, over the backyard and see for miles, all the way to a very distant row of hills where radio towers stood. The fog had spread out over the low lying area between me and those radio towers, and had even reached up to them, obscuring the hills, but I thought I could see construction equipment—tall cranes and bulldozers. Maybe I’d seen them earlier, before the rain and the fog. This seems plausible; at that time there were a lot of new buildings going up in that area as the city expanded.

I was in the driveway looking at this scene and my new friend Troy, who lived at the bottom of the hill, was with me. I thought I could hear the construction equipment, the clanking and grinding of gears, though this was probably just my imagination. Maybe it’s something my mind has added in the intervening years. Maybe none of this even happened and it was all something I dreamed, but I distinctly remember Troy saying, “A cloud fell. They’re trying to put it back up.”

I don’t know if he was serious. He was four too and we both had really active imaginations, and maybe he thought that was really how the world worked: clouds as something people made, shifted into place, controlled. It was a wonderful idea, and I think my mind has held onto it for so long because it makes the world a little more interesting, a little more magical to imagine clouds work that way.

I still like fog, too. It has a wonderful way of making the familiar unfamiliar, renewing my appreciation of the world around me. And then it goes, leaving only a memory, because it can’t last. Or, as King Arthur once sang,

By eight, the morning fog must disappear.

In short, there’s simply not

A more congenial spot

For happily-ever-aftering than here

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p style=”text-align: center;”>In Camelot.

Adventures In Busing.

The Root Of It.

Author: October 5, 2024 6 Comments

I stopped to get a bottle of wine as a thank-you for a friend and as I was walking past the beer I noticed a certain…theme. October is the month for pumpkins, though they’ve been popping up since August. I like an occasional pumpkin latte or a piece of pumpkin pie but I try to restrict my indulgence to the witching month. Pumpkins hold a special place among vegetables even though it’s not really the pumpkins themselves but rather their role as a delivery system for a combination of cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, and ginger. And that got me thinking that maybe there are other seasonal vegetables that deserve some attention as well. Here are the pros and cons of a few contenders:

Potatoes: We’re spoiled by having potatoes available year-round but technically they’re a fall crop. The fact that you can get your potatoes mashed, boiled, put in a stew, and of course fried at any time of year knocks them out of the running.

Turnips: Although turnips can be harvested in the spring too they’re a cool weather plant which makes them ideal for fall. Both the leaves and the root are edible and the original Jack-o-lantern was a turnip. Carved turnips, a Celtic tradition, are so much creepier than pumpkins. So I’d definitely put them in the category of being worthy of consideration.

Source: The Scotsman

Broccoli: This is another fall crop that’s available all year, most often as an overcooked side dish or taking up space on crudité platters where it begs to be dipped in ranch dressing. Broccoli’s resemblance to miniature trees would make it great for decorating but you can’t really stick a candle in broccoli so I’d give it a pass.

Gourds: Aside from pumpkins there are lots of gourd varieties that are great for turning into birdhouses and other craft projects. Here’s a fun idea for your Halloween porch: get a pumpkin and a tall skinny gourd for a Bert and Ernie theme.

Beets: I think beets are delicious so I’m biased here but there are dozens of varieties in colors ranging from blood red—which is perfect for Halloween—to orange and even striped. If you’ve read Richard Connell’s The Most Dangerous Game you may remember that, before the hunt begins, General Zaroff serves borscht, the soup named for the noise it makes as it passes through you, with a big dollop of sour cream in the middle. It’s very evocative, resembling blood and bone, or an eye with the colors reversed. Why aren’t they more popular around Halloween? Beets me.

Source: Giphy

American Graffiti.

Time And Tides.

Author: October 4, 2024 6 Comments

The Moon is finally getting a time zone. This is exciting because, though there still aren’t any residents there, giving it a time zone seems like part of a long-term plan to eventually establish lunar bases. Time zones are also very important. My wife and I realized this once when we drove three hours to a concert. The whole trip was almost due north but time zones have jagged edges, as though time cares about geography, and we ended up being an hour late. This worked out perfectly because we didn’t want to see the opening act anyway, but that’s another story. For most of human history time zones didn’t matter because going from one place to another, especially crossing oceans, was such a slow process no one noticed the time difference. Faster ships and, more importantly, trains created a need for standardized timekeeping, which is at least one thing most of the world can agree on. Trains also created word problems, which is at least one thing most of the world can agree are terrible.

A specific time zone for the Moon also addresses a big problem I’ve had with most science fiction. I’m willing to suspend a lot of my disbelief but in most science fiction shows and movies that involve people traveling from one planet to another how is it they almost always manage to arrive during daylight hours and when everyone’s awake? I can accept that somehow ships that are able to travel vast intergalactic distances in a matter of hours, or even days, have somehow found a way to deal with the time distortions that would be caused by traveling at or even faster than the speed of light, but statistically someone who’s on the run from space pirates or aliens or trying to get a shipment of cargo delivered has got to arrive at a spaceport at two a.m. on a Tuesday and sit in a holding pattern until the planetary rotation moves it into a reasonable hour. I’ve gone to parties and because I’m very concerned about being on time I’ve ended up circling the block because three hours is stretching the idea of “fashionably early”.

Star Trek, especially The Next Generation, did address this occasionally. Less experienced officers got the graveyard watch, and on at least one occasion an important message from Starfleet arrived in the middle of the night so Admiral Narrative Device had to start by saying to Captain Picard, “I’m sorry to wake you.” Although that just made me wonder how a ship on a long-term space voyage, where there is no “day” or “night” determines what time it is. No matter what the ship’s standard time was they’d eventually show up at a planetary bases or space stations at odd times. Shore leave always goes in shifts and it would be inevitable that at some point Yeoman Smith would have to beam down at two a.m. on a Tuesday after the bars were all closed and he’d be wearing a red shirt.

At least Doctor Who never had this problem. When your hero is a Time Lord they never have to circle the block waiting for the right time to show up at a party. A Time Lord is always right on time. And there is some science fiction that does deal with time zones. At the start of Larry Niven’s novel Ringworld Louis Wu is celebrating his birthday and starts hopping into transporters so he can go from time zone to time zone, extending the day until he hits the International Dateline. Imagine having a day so amazing you wanted to keep it going as long as possible and had the potential to do it by bouncing around the globe. Alternatively if you were having a really bad day you could use the same technology to head in the other direction, making your day shorter. That’s what I’d do if I had a math test with a bunch of word problems.

Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

Old Friends.

Author: September 30, 2024 2 Comments

Source: San Francisco Art Exchange

An old friend of mine came to Nashville and we met for lunch. And “old friend”, I realized, has taken on a whole new meaning. We’re both close to the same age and haven’t seen each other in person in over twenty years. Instead of talking about old times, as I expected, we ended up talking about everyone we know who’s died and comparing medications.

Even though we haven’t gotten together in so long we’ve stayed in touch and I have a pretty good idea that he’s open to, well, just about anything, but going back and forth making plans prompted me to post this online and, funny enough, it hit a nerve:

Maybe this is just my experience but any two people making lunch plans need a third person to say “Here’s where you’re going, here’s when you’re meeting, and you can thank me for sparing you fifty text messages over twelve hours.”

I had a similar experience when Ann Koplow came to Nashville. To be clear I really enjoy doing things with people, whether it’s an old friend or a new friend, and I’m sorry scheduling has prevented me from meeting some fellow bloggers—I keep hoping there’ll be another time, and that will be another story. Meshing schedules and deciding what to do can be a fun puzzle but a puzzle nonetheless. I want to be a good host. I want someone visiting here to have a good time, to do things they enjoy doing. Most people are agreeable and upfront about what they like to do and, thanks to the internet, it’s a lot easier for someone who’s never been to a place to figure out what it has to offer regardless of your likes, dislikes, and general interests.

On the other hand I know some people like to be surprised. Some people—yeah, I’m thinking of myself here—will, when asked what they’d like to do, say “Whatever!” and mean it. I’ve visited friends and family in other places and, for example, go-kart racing is never something I’d have thought of, but some friends and I had a great time doing it.

I also know how badly that can go. I know someone who once hosted a well-known writer. He’d written a book about educating children and she thought it would be fun to take him to the circus. It wasn’t.

My friend and I had a really good lunch at an Indian place and then we just walked around, going nowhere in particular, and that’s when I realized that, really, it’s not the place or the activity that makes for a fun experience—it’s the company. And though we didn’t talk about old times or drink any beers we are both still crazy after all these years.

Adventures In Busing.

And I Feel Fine.

Author: September 28, 2024 4 Comments

It’s been a very long time since I was a student but I work at an academic institution, in the library. One of my favorite parts of my job is the start of the fall semester and helping out with the ice cream social the library holds to welcome new students and welcome back the returning ones. Mostly I just scoop and hand out cups of sorbet but if I could dispense some advice too it would be this: You’ll probably fail something at some point and it’s going to feel terrible but you’ll be fine. Sometimes, no matter how much work you do, no matter how much you prepare, you will fail, but you just keep going.

I’ve forgotten all the tests I failed. I’ve forgotten most of the tests I aced, too. The only test I really remember is one I did pass, barely. It’s the one D I’m proud of.

In my first few days at college I, along with all other freshmen, took a series of tests to gauge aptitude and to place us in classes not related to our majors. I’d already settled on majoring in English, but there was a biology test and I had two advantages: first, I’ve always been interested in science, and, second, I was lucky to have had some good science teachers. The counselor looked at my test and said Biology 101 would be a waste of my time; I should take Biology 125.

There were over a hundred of us in the classroom. I sat near the front and started talking to people around me. Everyone else was pre-med or nursing or something in science. I thought this was funny.

Then Dr. Barnstable came in. He was tall, stocky, with a dark combover. He wore a lab coat over his dress shirt and solid gray tie. He gave all of us a very stern look and said, “This is not a class for English majors. If you’re an English major leave. Now.”

I was rolling with laughter. I was an English major who’d killed the biology test. I could handle this.

The next day there was an ice cream social. Dr. Barnstable was there. I went over and introduced myself and said I was an English major. He told me to drop his class. I said that since I’d done so well on the introductory biology test I thought I’d stay.

“What’s a phospholipid?” he snapped.

I wasn’t expecting to be tested but I gave him a pretty good textbook answer.

He glared. He hit me with a few more questions, standard cell biology stuff, I thought, and I was able to fire back with answers. Finally he muttered, “Well, fine,” and walked away.

The truth is I struggled. The reading I could handle—hey, English major, reading comprehension is in the job description. The lab work, on the other hand, required math. I could have taken Physics or Chemistry 101 but I went for biology to avoid math. Nobody told me I’d need algebra to determine the oxygen consumption of mealworms in a tube.

Then there was the first test. I’d studied hard but I still sweated every question. When I got the test back with a big red D at the top I thought, okay, maybe this isn’t a class for English majors. When I told Dr. Barnstable I was dropping out, right before the start of the next class, he said, “I’m sorry to see you go.” I assumed he didn’t recognize me and said that to all dropouts.

A week later I passed one of the guys I knew from the class. He asked why I’d dropped out. I told him I didn’t do so well on the test.

“Yeah,” he said, “almost everybody failed. I think only three people passed it.”

I still don’t regret dropping out. In the spring I took Chemistry 101, and did pretty well. For an English major.

American Graffiti.

Someday Never Comes.

Author: September 27, 2024 4 Comments

Source: FromOldBooks.org

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Not Non-Fiction, Submitted For Your Approval., The Weekly Essay

The Kids Are All Right.

Author: September 24, 2024 2 Comments

Source: Invaluable.com

When I heard about an eight-year old who drove a car thirteen miles to get herself a Frappuccino, after spending $400 at Target, it just confirmed that I would be a terrible parent because my first instinct was to laugh for an hour. After that my second instinct was to be relieved that no one was hurt, although she did say she hit a mailbox, and then my third instinct was to start laughing again.

Maybe I’d feel differently if it were my child but I’m generally a terrible role model. The six-year old son of a friend of mine didn’t get something he wanted and yelled “I’m gonna hold my breath until I pass out!” My friend said, “Fine, go ahead and do it.” The kid ran into the other room and was quiet for about ten minutes then he ran back in and said “I did it!” I patted him on the shoulder and said, “We shall watch your career with great interest.” That earned me a look from my friend that said, “Don’t encourage him, and also I’m trying really hard not to laugh right now.”

That also reminded me of a time in ninth grade gym class when, for some reason, a popular girl named Danielle and I were sitting on the bleachers. I was feeling pretty awkward, though that had nothing to do with Danielle. I was awkward around other people, even my friends, from the ages of twelve to, well, I still am, and sometimes I’m awkward even when I’m completely alone, but that’s another story. Danielle turned to me and said, “You’re a smart guy,” and I had to look around and make sure we were alone because it was rare that popular girls talked to me in the first place, though I figured maybe it was okay because there was no one else around. Also I didn’t realize anyone thought of me as smart. “Maybe you can help me out with something,” she went on, and told me she’d been taking her mother’s car out when she was home alone. This seemed like a perfectly normal thing for a fourteen year-old to do, or so I thought, since I never even tried to start my parents’ car when they weren’t around, and I was about as far from being a normal fourteen year-old as you could get.

Danielle told me she’d hit a wall and while the damage wasn’t bad—just serious scratches on the side that could probably be buffed out and repainted—she was afraid. “My mom won’t think it’s a big deal but her boyfriend’s gonna kick my ass if he finds out.”

My first thought was, your mom needs to find a new boyfriend, but that didn’t seem helpful, but I did suggest that she admit what happened to her mom when the boyfriend wasn’t around and maybe they could work something out.

This didn’t seem like a smart solution so much as a really obvious one but Danielle thanked me. And a few days later, in the hall, surrounded by her friends, she actually called out to me by name and said, “Hey, it worked!”

Adventures In Busing.

You Really Got Me.

Author: September 21, 2024 2 Comments

Because I’m not a professional art critic I never have to write about anything I don’t like. Maybe professional art critics don’t either. I read a fair amount of art criticism and it’s very rare that I read anything that’s even subtly negative. I did write for a short-lived arts publication—so short-lived it ended after only two issues, which was unfortunate because my third review was really good, but that’s another story—but got lucky in that I really liked the works I was assigned to review. Well, that’s not entirely true. There were some paintings in an exhibit I was supposed to write about that I really didn’t like at first. I started off making a lot of negative notes but, as I looked at the paintings more closely, I started to really like them. And the more I liked them the more positive things I found I had to say.

Something I wonder about with professional art critics, or professional critics of any kind, is, do they ever have trouble coming up with something to say? Especially with something they like. There’s nothing special about critics—they’re just people with opinions, although their opinions are, or should be, more informed. If you’re looking at, say, a painting, and you like it but you can’t explain why maybe, just maybe, a critic can offer some words. Maybe a critic will point out something you missed. And maybe if you don’t like something a critic can give you a lengthy explanation of why you should like it. You can still hate it after that.

This is a long-winded way of saying I really like that RAZ tag. It’s clean, it’s simple, but it also leaves me wondering if RAZ is short for something. Razmatazz? Razberry? Razputin?

Yet after spending a lot of time looking at it and thinking about the details—look at how that white triangle in the center must have required careful thought and planning, and how the brick behind it is painted while further up has been left raw—there’s not a lot I can say about it. And I hate that.

American Graffiti.