The 2003 reboot of Battlestar Galactica was full of surprising plot twists even from the beginning, but, for me, the most surprising moment was when Dean Stockwell showed up at the end of season 2. It’s a pretty dark series, but Stockwell was one of those actors who, whenever he appeared on screen, could change the atmosphere entirely. Would change the atmosphere entirely. He didn’t have to be serious to do it either. On Quantum Leap he was second banana to Scott Bakula but, with the exception of that show’s finale, the producers wisely made Stockwell the one who knew everything. He was there to be a father figure, or, really, more like a funny uncle, with his cigar in one hand and, well, an early smartphone in the other, and off-the-cuff references to his ex-wives.
I didn’t realize how long his career had been until I watched the 1947 film Gentleman’s Agreement a few years ago and saw Stockwell’s name in the credits. I kept looking for him, expecting him to, well, appear as a funny uncle probably, waving a cigar around, or maybe a dark, shady character. It didn’t occur to me until later that he would have been ten or eleven at the time of filming, and that he’d played Gregory Peck’s son who sits at the breakfast table quizzing his father about why anyone wouldn’t like Jews. Even as a child actor there was something compelling about him—not just the way he delivered his lines but the seriousness with which he carefully sliced a banana into his cereal and sprinkling it with sugar. His actions were natural yet deliberate.
His onscreen presence got me thinking about the craft of acting and something I’ve thought a lot about when watching really great actors at work. Is it something that can be learned or is it innate? Stockwell had plenty of time to learn—he was acting on stage before he was eight years old and worked pretty much non-stop until just a few years ago, but was he in high demand because he worked so hard or did he get so much work because he was such a talented actor? Maybe it’s a little bit of both. And no matter how effortless he seemed in his roles he worked very hard at the craft of acting, giving special attention to detail. He has a hilarious story about the inspiration for his character Ben from Blue Velvet:
You know that thing that I do with my eyes? Carol Burnett had a character of this super snooty woman and she was always like this. I stole it and I told her one time and she laughed her head off when I told her.
Maybe great acting is a little of both: it begins with natural talent but that talent has to be honed and crafted until it just seems effortless, and that’s what he did.
And, on an unrelated note, when I heard he died I texted a friend and said, “Sorry to hear it. I know you’re a fan.”
He texted back, “Yeah.” Then a few minutes later he added, “But isn’t everybody?”
There’s been a major revival of interest in the detective series Columbo, and since I’ve been a fan ever since I was a kid and discovered late night reruns watching my black and white TV in my bedroom, and since September 16, 2021 would be Peter Falk’s 94th birthday let’s talk about it and why the possibility of a reboot needs to die. Right now. Even if I have to kill it myself.
What hooked me from the very beginning, and why I still love Columbo, is really Peter Falk’s charm. He was rarely angry and had a quiet, unassuming demeanor that set him apart from other detectives of the era, which is also why I think he’s still popular today. Other ‘70’s detectives—Kojack, Rockford, McCloud!—were darker and grittier and, well, there’s a lot of that around, which may be why they don’t get as much attention. It’s telling that one of the other exceptions, Murder, She Wrote, is also getting a new surge in popularity, with its stories of a mystery writer who lives in the quaint New England town of Cabot Cove where the leading cause of death is living in Cabot Cove, maybe because Angela Lansbury is also the woman who murdered Sweeney Toddput Sweeney Todd’s customers in pies, but that’s another story.
There’s also Columbo’s appearance. He spends most of his time in a shabby raincoat and smoking cigars, although at least once he switched to cigarettes and coffee when he was up all night doing research. Some people point to the show’s fashions as being very ‘70’s, but some of the same looks are still around today. I think it’s more a sign of when it was made that Columbo could smoke indoors and there was an ashtray every three feet. He’s also different in that he pretends to be absent-minded, wandering around, frequently talking about his wife, whom we never see, and, as an aside, I’m going to say Kate Mulgrew deserved better. And got it, first in space, then behind bars.
The fact that we never see Mrs. Columbo has spawned a fan theory that she doesn’t exist, which is funny, but the evidence doesn’t back it up. Other people in the series also talk about her and, once, she tries to replace Columbo’s trademark gray raincoat with a bright yellow slicker that he “forgets” and leaves behind several times.
And while Peter Falk became a producer, working hard on the show behind the scenes, Columbo deliberately makes himself small, staying out of the way, often hunched over. Even the show itself frequently makes use of long shots in big rooms or outdoors, making Columbo appear even smaller. When asked what his first name is he only says, “Lieutenant,” although sharp-eyed fans know his first name is Frank, from one of the few times he flashes his badge.
The show also has a not so subtle anti-establishment streak, which I think is a product of its time but also part of the show’s ongoing appeal. Most of his suspects are wealthy, powerful people, and though there’s always a deeper motive—a fear of losing their wealth or their position, mainly—they still feel they can get away with murder, and it’s satisfying to see them get taken down. In spite of that Columbo does seem to like, or at least respect, some of the suspects he trailed. In “Any Old Port In A Storm”, when the murderer is a high-class winemaker played by Donald Pleasance, Columbo seems to enjoy showing off his newfound knowledge of wine. Drinking while on duty—and, let’s face it, Columbo is always on duty, even when he’s on vacation—may be a violation, but in every other respect Columbo stays well above the law. And, okay, he goes out drinking again in “The Conspirators”, when he joins the Irish poet (and IRA sympathizer) Joe Devlin, and tries to impress him by reciting some limericks, including “The Pelican”:
A rare old bird is the pelican. His bill holds more than his belly can. He can take in his beak enough food for a week. I’m damned if I know how the hell he can!
And then there’s “Swan Song” in which the murderer is played by Johnny Cash, who starts with a good performance of “I Saw The Light” and ends with him being arrested for sending his wife down in a plane crash. But what also makes the episode memorable is how Cash and Falk have such natural onscreen chemistry, complimenting and complementing each other, that it’s not hard to believe actor and singer hung out together after the filming.
Even in “Murder Under Glass”, which is notable for being one of the few times Columbo comes out and says he dislikes his suspect, a professional food critic, but still wants to impress him with veal scallopini a la Columbo.
I’ve been using all this to lead up to why I want to kill a proposed reboot. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reboots in general—I even think some have been great—but, while Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, and even Sam Spade, among other famous detectives, have been played by other people, and while Peter Falk didn’t originate the role, he made it his own. It’s hard to imagine the producers originally wanted Bing Crosby, and I just can’t picture Columbo as a blue-eyed sophisticate standing over a corpse crooning, “Bet she was a beautiful baby, buh buh buh…”
It’s because of Peter Falk that Columbo makes such effective use of the inverted detective story in which we know from the beginning who the murderer is and how they did it. How the detective unravels the mystery is supposed to be what draws us in, although, really, it’s just the pleasure of hanging out with Columbo for an hour or two.
What would a reboot look like? Even the innumerable Law & Order clones that have firmly planted the idea that most crimes are committed by the special guest star look ridiculous when we have darker, more complicated dramas like Broadchurch and The Sinner that explore how crimes don’t happen in a vacuum and are never really resolved, especially after just an hour.
Source: Atlas Obscura
And let’s not forget that part of the appeal of Columbo is that it’s always funny, or at least tongue-in-cheek. The murders may be serious but Columbo isn’t. He drives a broken down Peugeot, and occasionally brings along his Basset hound named “Dog”—I’m pretty sure Mrs. Columbo has given their pet a more elegant name. Columbo and Dog both are immortalized in a funny statue in, of all places, Budapest. Columbo even has his own amusing theme song, “This Old Man”, which he occasionally whistles to himself. Outside of Columbo Peter Falk is best known for comedic roles–the grandfather in The Princess Bride, opposite Alan Arkin in The In-Laws, and an aging performer in a made-for-TV remake of Neil Simon’s The Sunshine Boys.
The show also sometimes really strains credibility with Columbo picking up on farfetched clues like a pair of not sweaty socks, or an episode like “Troubled Waters”. While it’s a great story with a great cast that includes Robert Vaughn and Dean Stockwell, what are the odds someone would commit a murder on the same cruise ship where a great detective just happened to be taking a vacation?
A reboot would almost certainly heighten the comedy, but then it would be too much like the MAD Magazine parody “Clodumbo”, where the punchline is that twenty-seven innocent people have turned themselves in just to get away from the detective pestering them.
Source: Columbo Site
Columbo himself says it best at the end of the best episode, “The Bye-Bye Sky High IQ Murder Case”, when he’s asked if he’d ever consider another line of work. ““Me, sir? No. Never. I couldn’t do that.”
Twenty years ago on this day I was at work when I heard that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center. A group of us, some of my coworkers and some people from other offices, gathered around a TV to watch the news. A woman next to me, whom I’d never met, spent several minutes on her cell phone. Her daughter worked in the World Trade Center and, fortunately, got out safely. I spent the rest of the day in a kind of haze, like most people, I think, who weren’t directly affected by the terrible tragedies unfolding but still feeling terrible about the lives lost and unsure of what was to come. That day seemed impossible to put into words; it doesn’t seem any easier now, really, but I took some time then to go and sit on the steps of Kirkland Hall on the Vanderbilt University Campus, under its tall clock tower, to contemplate time and the world we live in, and to read W.H. Auden’s September 1, 1939. It’s just as relevant now, if not more so, especially line 88.
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable odour of death Offends the September night. Accurate scholarship can Unearth the whole offence From Luther until now That has driven a culture mad, Find what occurred at Linz, What huge imago made A psychopathic god: I and the public know What all schoolchildren learn, Those to whom evil is done Do evil in return. Exiled Thucydides knew All that a speech can say About Democracy, And what dictators do, The elderly rubbish they talk To an apathetic grave; Analysed all in his book, The enlightenment driven away, The habit-forming pain, Mismanagement and grief: We must suffer them all again. Into this neutral air Where blind skyscrapers use Their full height to proclaim The strength of Collective Man, Each language pours its vain Competitive excuse: But who can live for long In an euphoric dream; Out of the mirror they stare, Imperialism’s face And the international wrong. Faces along the bar Cling to their average day: The lights must never go out, The music must always play, All the conventions conspire To make this fort assume The furniture of home; Lest we should see where we are, Lost in a haunted wood, Children afraid of the night Who have never been happy or good. The windiest militant trash Important Persons shout Is not so crude as our wish: What mad Nijinsky wrote About Diaghilev Is true of the normal heart; For the error bred in the bone Of each woman and each man Craves what it cannot have, Not universal love But to be loved alone. From the conservative dark Into the ethical life The dense commuters come, Repeating their morning vow; “I will be true to the wife, I’ll concentrate more on my work,” And helpless governors wake To resume their compulsory game: Who can release them now, Who can reach the deaf, Who can speak for the dumb? All I have is a voice To undo the folded lie, The romantic lie in the brain Of the sensual man-in-the-street And the lie of Authority Whose buildings grope the sky: There is no such thing as the State And no one exists alone; Hunger allows no choice To the citizen or the police; We must love one another or die. Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame.
The people we choose to celebrate and remember don’t just tell us who we are as a society but who we hope to be. That was my first thought when I read that Nashville is naming a street after Bianca Paige, the drag queen name of Mark Middleton, a Nashville AIDS activist who passed away in 2010. And my second thought was to write something about the art and history of drag. Thanks to RuPaul drag queens have gone mainstream but drag has a long and colorful history which some sources trace back to William Dorsey Swann, a former slave who organized balls in Washington, D.C. in the 1880s and 1890s. Wikipedia also traces the term “drag” to the 1870s, but history is complicated, especially the history of people who had to hide who they were for so long.
Anyway I kept coming back to Bianca Paige’s work to raise awareness and money for research on AIDS because, having grown up in the ‘80’s, I remember how terrible the AIDS crisis was. I remember that the worst part of it wasn’t the disease itself, which was horrible, but the irrational fear it created. It wasn’t just a disease that affected gay men but, because they were the main victims, the AIDS crisis brought out the worst in some people. In high school a girl named Kay sat behind me in some of my classes and we’d talk. One week Kay was out for a few days. When she came back she told me her best friend, whom she’d left behind when her parents moved from Atlanta to Nashville the summer before, had died. He was gay and he’d learned he was HIV-positive. It was difficult for Kay to talk about it because of how he died. He got on his motorcycle late at night and drove straight into an oncoming car.
If you’re inclined to judge him negatively for that consider what having AIDS meant at the time. For too many, even those who could afford treatment, it meant a slow, agonizing death as their body’s ability to fight off infections broke down, and for too many it meant more than that. Too many lost their families and so-called friends. Even those who had families who loved and supported them were treated cruelly by strangers.
Kay wrote an essay about her friend and what his loss meant to her. A teacher wrote, in red ink, at the top of her paper, “He got what he deserved.” That attitude was far too common. There wasn’t a principal or counselor in the school Kay could turn to. There were very few teachers who would have sympathized and the ones who did would have been afraid to say anything.
Things haven’t entirely changed either. Tennessee is one of several states passing laws that specifically target transgender people. Those like Kay’s teacher may be fewer now but they haven’t gone away; they’ve simply found new targets.
Still progress has been made and it’s because of Bianca Paige and others like her. It seems almost too on the nose that there’s now a street named for Bianca Paige because she provided a place for people to go and showed us a way forward.
I can’t remember how many Beverly Cleary books I read as a kid. There must have been at least half a dozen on my bookshelves, not counting the ones I got from the library. I’m pretty sure a battered hand-me-down copy of Ribsy was the first full-length non-picture book I read by myself, and there were several Cleary books I went back to again and again. It wasn’t just that she wrote about childhood in a way that was really appealing—in Henry And The Paper Route, one of the ones I owned, one of Henry Huggins’ newspaper customers is a woman who’s nice but mistakenly calls him “Harry Higgins”, and Henry is too shy to correct her. He’s also bothered on his paper route by his friend Beezus’s younger sister Ramona. It’s not high drama but I could relate to it. And Cleary could get into some heavy topics. The book Ramona And Her Father dealt with unemployment: Ramona’s father loses his job, her parents argue, and even the family cat becomes a point of contention as the family tries to save money but Ramona’s father still spends money on cigarettes. And yet the heaviness is balanced out with lighter drama, like when Ramona builds a crown out of cockleburs and then puts it on her head. Her father has to carefully cut out the ones that get stuck in her hair. And Ramona Quimby, Age 8 would do a similar job of balancing the heavy and the light as Ramona’s father goes to college, her mother keeps working, and Ramona is left in the care of the Kemp family after school. Ramona’s expected to be nice to their daughter Willa Jean, who’s younger and who annoys Ramona. And, in a memorable scene, Ramona’s parents are late picking her up and the Kemps eat dinner in awkward silence while Ramona sits in the corner of the room. I’d had that same experience once. I think lots of kids have. And even if you haven’t had that specific experience I think we can all relate to learning that adults are fallible.
As a kid I didn’t appreciate how revolutionary Cleary’s books were for their time—how they were really a new kind of children’s books. Sometimes they looked at adult problems from a child’s perspective but more often they dealt with how the world of childhood can be strange and baffling—how matters that are, from an adult’s perspective, minor or even inconsequential, can seem like, well, heavy drama to a child who lacks an adult’s experience. Even as an adult Beverly Cleary remembered how it felt to be a kid.
There was something else, though, something I haven’t read in any reviews of Cleary’s work, ever. Maybe you remember it too, or maybe you’ve spotted it while reading this. She didn’t write fantasy or science fiction like Madeleine L’Engle or even Tolkien—aside from the Mouse And The Motorcycle series—but her books were sequential, following a single character’s life over years, but while Ramona is a character in the Henry Huggins books she’d go on to get her own series. Like many science fiction and fantasy authors Beverly Cleary created a shared universe. It just happened to be one we, the readers, were also part of.
Certain corners of the internet are exploding with the news that the new streaming service Blitz will launch with a reboot of the classic sitcom My Mother The Car. The show’s premise was typical of the ‘60’s, and perhaps even less ridiculous sounding now: attorney David Crabtree, played by Jerry Van Dyke, buys an antique car, specifically a 1926 Reichenbach, only to discover that it’s inhabited by the ghost of his deceased mother. She talks to him through the car’s radio and only he can hear her. She helps him through various difficulties with his wife and career as he evades the unscrupulous Captain Manzini, who’s determined to acquire the valuable antique car.
With its moody lighting, lack of a laughtrack, and muted performances My Mother The Car continues to be widely acclaimed as the worst sitcom of all time but still managed to develop a loyal cult following. It even spawned a series of comics published by DC with Crabtree and Mother becoming crime fighting quasi-superheroes.
Most attempts to bring back My Mother The Car since its 1966 cancellation have failed. Perhaps the most notable was Steven Spielberg’s 1986 big screen adaptation. Because of the film’s raunchy humor, including a subplot of Mother working for an escort service, it barely got by with a PG-13 rating and posters of Mother sporting an oversized cigar under her hood were quickly pulled from theater lobbies. Fans who continued to hold occasional “car-ventions” at Jerry Van Dyke’s Ice Cream Soda Shoppes around the country lamented the steady decline of their beloved franchise.
Then in 2018 interest was renewed with the cinematic release of the four and a half hour superhero epic Justice League: Quantum Fracture, which pulled together a vast range of DC characters, including David Crabtree and Mother. Although Jerry Van Dyke, who sadly passed away before the film’s release, was too ill to appear as himself he did record the dialogue and the onscreen David was played by a digitally enhanced Andy Serkis, who also provided Mother’s voice.
The new series features a cast of largely unknown actors and, while the producers say they want to remain faithful to the original, will feature greater diversity and much less reliance on mother-in-law jokes. They also describe the new series as “a mashup of Herbie The Love Bug, Knight Rider, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, Speed Racer, Wonderbug, The Magic School Bus, Speed Buggy, and Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman”.
Environmental concerns will be addressed too. Reichenbachs of that era operated entirely on whale oil, an issue that will be dealt with both in the series itself and through the Blitz service’s new sponsored conservation program My Mother The Narwhal.
I’ve now watched the three screener episodes Blitz provided to critics, social media influencers, members of the official My Mother The Car Fan Club, and pretty much anyone who asked and I think it’s safe to say it will be universally acclaimed as not too bad.
So a bomb blew up in downtown Nashville early on Christmas morning, near the AT&T building that’s also known as “The Batman Building” because, well, if you see it you’ll understand. It’s a feature of the Nashville skyline and although I can’t see it from where the building where I work–or rather where I worked until last March when everything shut down, and where I’ll eventually go back to work sometime in the coming year–I could go to the roof of the parking garage next door to where I work and see The Batman Building from there. For all that Nashville has grown and is still growing it’s still got a fairly compact downtown area, easy to get to and, in normal times, easy to walk around in if you don’t mind the crowds. Needless to say these aren’t normal times and when the bomb went off a lot of people just sighed resignedly and said, “Thanks for one more thing, 2020.” Although why the bomb in an RV was sent off downtown is still a mystery at least it went off early on Christmas morning when not many people were out and about–and it even made an announcement that it was a bomb and that people should get out of the area. For all the damage it did to the surrounding businesses, and as much as it would have been better if it hadn’t gone off at all, at least there’s a bright side. It’s also interesting to me that Nashville made it to the front of The New York Times, which we still get in actual print, delivered to our driveway, on the weekends, the day after Christmas because of the bombing and also on Christmas Day because photographer Ruth Fremson made a trip across the United States to document the way various cities around the country were celebrating the season in these not so normal times.
The New York Times, December 25th, 2020. Nashville is the city with the Grinch.
The New York Times, December 26th, 2020. Below the fold but still on the front page.
That reminded me of when I was a kid and I’d been with my parents to the Tennessee Performing Arts Center downtown to see, of all things, CATS. As we were coming out we heard a woman say, “You know, this town reminds me of New York thirty years ago.” My mother groaned and said, “Oh please no,” and about twenty-five years later when my father retired my parents moved to Florida which is the most New York thing they could possibly do, but that’s another story. One of the down sides of the bombing is because it affected the AT&T building it’s left a lot of people not just in Nashville but even in Tennessee and Kentucky without internet access. It’s left a lot of people, in other words, disconnected at a time when they want and need to be connected. It’s only temporary but here’s hoping it can all be restored before the end of the month–here’s hoping people will have a chance to say, thanks for bringing us back together, 2020.
Unlike most other game shows, especially those that proliferated in the 1970’s, Jeopardy! is beautifully simple, almost minimalist. Sixteen categories—or seventeen if you count the final round—and one hundred and twenty-eight questions—or one hundred and twenty-nine if you count the final round—and the only real strategy is be quick with your buzzer and stick to what you hopefully know. Oh yeah, and don’t forget the final round—if you’re far enough ahead you won’t have to do any complicated math for your final wager.
It’s the game’s simplicity that made Alex Trebek the ideal host. I don’t mean he was a simple guy, but he knew that when hosting Jeopardy! less is more and he was perfectly understated and kept the same even tone throughout everything. Yes, I laughed at the SNL parodies, but, with all due respect to Will Ferrell, I don’t think he ever really got Alex Trebek. If Sean Connery—who, sadly, also left us recently because, well, 2020–really had been a competitor on Celebrity Jeopardy! first of all I think he would have been too classy to make crude jokes about Trebek’s mother or draw pictures of him having sex with a horse, but if he had I think Alex Trebek would have chuckled politely, given a sardonic look to the audience, and moved on.
With that in mind I’m reposting this as my way of saying, or rather asking, what is hail and farewell, Alex Trebek?
[Jeopardy! theme music plays. Alex Trebek stands center stage.]
ALEX TREBEK: And we’re back to this very special episode of Jeopardy! Let’s take a moment to talk to today’s contestants.
[He crosses over to the contestants.]
ALEX TREBEK: Count Dracula, you’re an undead Romanian prince. I understand you can assume the forms of a bat, a wolf, and a white mist, and you travel extensively. Tell us a little about the charity you’re playing for today.
COUNT DRACULA: Is blood.
ALEX TREBEK: Can you elaborate on that?
COUNT DRACULA: Of course. Is great need for blood in Romania. I bring people of all kinds to castle in Wallachia. I take blood and dr—uh, give…give to those who need blood.
ALEX TREBEK: That sounds like a great cause. Moving on, Frankenstein’s Monster, you’re an assemblage of body parts from different corpses. Some people call you “Frankenstein” but that was in fact the name of the doctor who first animated you.
FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: GAKH!
ALEX TREBEK: Okay then. Tell us about what charity you’re playing for.
FRANKESTEIN’S MONSTER: GRRRRGH! HANNNN! GARGH!!!
ALEX TREBEK: Yes, the Firefighters’ Association is a noble cause. All right, and our third contestant was going to be The Invisible Man but we couldn’t find him.
VOICE FROM AN EMPTY SEAT IN THE AUDIENCE: I’m right here!
COUNT DRACULA: Children of the night, what music they make.
ALEX TREBEK: We were very lucky to get as a replacement the Creature From The Black Lagoon. Creature, I’ve been admiring your suit.
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON: Thank you, Alex, it’s specially designed to pump water through my gills and keep my skin moist. It’s made by Armani. But I’d really like to talk about my charity.
ALEX TREBEK: Go ahead then.
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON: It’s called River Run, an organization that purchases, preserves, and reclaims large parts of the Amazon rainforest. Once we lose biodiversity it’s impossible to get it back.
ALEX TREBEK: Well okay. Maybe later we can talk more about that suit. I get a little dry under these lights myself.
[Trebek crosses back to his podium.]
ALEX TREBEK: All right, we have one two-thousand dollar clue left in the Double Jeopardy round under the category Sci-Fi Food, and the clue is: Revenge is a dish best served cold, but this Klingon dish should be warm and wriggling.
ALEX TREBEK: That’s correct! I have to remind you again that we ask contestants to phrase responses in the form of a question, but since we’re playing for charity we’ll bend the rules again. Frankestein’s Monster, that brings your total up to seven dollars.
And now for final Jeopardy! The subject today is Renaissance Artists. Take a moment to think about that while you make your wagers.
And here’s the clue: this Italian artist was both a painter and a sculptor, known for both the Sistine Chapel ceiling and a statue of David, and he made a mean Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Thirty seconds, contestants.
ALEX TREBEK: All right, let’s see your answers. Count Dracula, we come to you first. You had $200 and you wrote down…“is blood”.
COUNT DRACULA: Is answer to everything.
ALEX TREBEK: And you wagered two-hundred dollars, so I’m afraid that leaves you with nothing. Next we come to Frankenstein’s Monster. You wrote down “Abby Someone”. Interesting, but incorrect. What did you wager? Nothing.
FRANKENSTEIN’S MONSTER: GARGHHHH!
ALEX TREBEK: So you still have seven dollars. Finally we come to the Creature From The Black Lagoon who looked like he couldn’t be caught with a score of fifty-four thousand, seven-hundred dollars. Uh oh, you’re shaking your head. It looks like you wrote “Michelangelo” then crossed it out and replaced it with “Donatello”. I’m sorry, that’s incorrect. And what was your wager?
CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON: I figured go big or go home, Alex.
ALEX TREBEK: You bet it all. Well, that means Frankenstein’s Monster is today’s champion. Congratulations!
The following is by Allen Walker, reprinted with the author’s permission from Catchall, October 2019.
Part 1-In Search Of…
It’s Bessie’s fault that I stole a boat.
A lot of circumstances also led to it, but circumstances are notoriously difficult to hold responsible, and while I did the stealing I feel the burden rests on Bessie’s shoulders. Or would if Bessie had shoulders.
Let me back up a bit.
I was at the Beaver Creek Lodge, a sprawling complex that combined a frontier theme with the luxury of a golf resort on the shores of Lake Erie. Comprised of seven buildings of hotel rooms, a clubhouse, an enormous main center containing the lobby, pool, gift shop, fitness room, three restaurants, and a twenty-foot indoor waterfall, the lodge could easily double for Stephen King’s Overlook, only east of the Mississippi and with an eighteen-hole golf course instead of murderous topiary or hedge maze.
I had come to write about a golf tournament before three days of torrential rain cancelled the event and the golfer I planned to caddy for decided to stay on the drier west coast. The lodge was also playing host to the National Vizsla Specialty. “They have us so well-trained,” a bedraggled handler told me before being dragged away by her pack of copper-colored hounds. Picking up lunch at the gift shop I learned from the manager that the lodge regularly hosts dog shows. I’d just missed Afghans and Borzois, and Dalmatians would be arriving next week. The Hungarian horde was an alphabetical outlier.
I stayed thinking I might find something in the dog shows, and to take advantage of the amenities, if you could call them that. The hotel restaurant offered three-star prices and one-star service. My first night my medium-rare steak took an hour to arrive and could have been revived by a competent vet. The second night, for a change, I walked up the street to Bessie’s, a white cinderblock building with a funny-looking sea serpent with gold earrings on its sign.
I passed on a second plate of all-you-can-eat-perch since three-fourths of one was all I could eat, but the peanut butter and chocolate Buckeye Pie was positively ambrosial. Over a second piece I started to talk to Eunice, who told me she was the granddaughter of the restaurant’s founder. I asked her about the sea serpent.
“That’s Bessie.”
I was confused and said, “I though Bessie might be your grandmother.”
“No sir.” Eunice eyed me me owl-like through her oversized glasses. “Bessie is the Lake Erie monster.”
“Like Scotland’s Nessie?”
“Mm-hmm. Some people say Lemmy, but most of us around here say Bessie. I think there must be more than one. Biology, you know.”
Parthenogenesis in lake monsters did seem unlikely, and yet I’d never thought about it even though I was familiar with Lake Champlain’s Champ, and even British Columbia’s Ogopogo. I’d never heard of Bessie or Lemmy, though. Presumably this was because even Midwestern monsters don’t like publicity, but I decided not to share this theory with Eunice.
“My grandfather saw it, you know,” she went on.
“Bessie.”
“Yes sir. He was out there fishing for walleye early one morning. He said he kept catching perch. Then it came up out of the water. At least twenty feet long, he said, right alongside the boat.”
“With earrings?”
Eunice smiled. “No, the guy who made our sign put those on. My grandfather said it was more like a snake with a cold eye that looked right at him. Then it formed a circle out there, and a whole bunch of perch came up, and it disappeared.”
“Did he ever see it again?”
Eunice shook her head. “Never went back to that spot, wherever it was, neither, and from then on he only fished for walleye when the sun was up.”
After a second piece of Buckeye pie I started back to my hotel room. I felt a little nausea and the wind off the lake was bracing so I took a detour down to the marina where small boats bob next to narrow docks. One, powder blue with the Beaver Creek Lodge logo on its side, caught my interest. As a guest, I thought, there couldn’t be any harm in taking a self-guided tour, so I stepped aboard. I went to the front to check out the throttle and steering mechanism. Then, just out of curiosity, I looked under the, well, I assume even on a boat it’s called a dashboard.
When I was ten I spent the summer on my uncle’s farm in Nebraska, and one hot lazy afternoon my cousin Sam taught me how to hotwire a tractor. Well, I thought, a boat’s mechanism must be very different, so I was surprised that, when two ignition wires touched, the boat’s motor chugged to life. There were a few bumps since a boat is subject to inertia in the way that land vehicles aren’t. Fortunately the marina’s walls and docks were padded with tires. I expected someone to raise some alarm, but the row of brown townhouses to my left—I supposed now I should say “port”—and a shack to the starboard were impassive, as though asleep in the fading light. After a few more bumps I was out of the marina, then past the rocky shore. I pushed the throttle forward, headed for deep water and, I thought, Bessie.
Part 2—Lost
My cousin Sarah, half-sister to Sam through circumstances that are still murky to me, can find true north even in a cornfield. With the stalks high enough to block the sun she could still find her way as though she had a compass in her head. A few times Sam tried to convince me to leave her but she didn’t like to be alone. He’d run ahead but she and I would always find our way out first.
I let the boat chug along for, I think, a half hour or so, eyes to the empty horizon, one hand, then the other, to the wheel. When I turn to look back the way I’d come there’s only more open water, and I realize there’s no easy way back. In the east the moon that had been on the surface of the water like a deflating balloon has now it had slipped below. Among the stars overhead one, I know, is Polaris, the North Star, but I don’t know which one. I grew up in Kansas and shared an alma mater with Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of former planet Pluto, but astronomy never interested me. A bright speck moves directly overhead. It’s probably a satellite, facilitating communications, pinpointing locations. My phone has a GPS device, and a compass app, but I’m out of signal range.
A sign at the marina said, “GPS devices are not allowed on private charters.” Captains jealously guarding their private fishing holes, I thought. A compass should still be standard equipment on the high seas, or lakes, but a search of the lockers along the gunwales only turns up a variety of lifejackets, a toolbox, an anchor shaped like a big white mushroom, and a dead spider, an unlucky stowaway. Also a flashlight. Turning it on only deepens the darkness.
After the summer we stole the tractor my uncle sold the farm, took a job in hardware, managed his diabetes as best he could. Sam and I only saw each other intermittently: when we drove through on our way somewhere else, or occasional holidays. I was home for Thanksgiving when he told me he’d bought a motorcycle.
“I think I might drive down to Marfa, maybe, or even Roswell,” he said. I could tell he was eyeing my chocolate cake that I suddenly didn’t want. “You want to come with? Maybe see some UFOs?”
It was tempting but I had school, exams coming up. Sam didn’t make the trip either.
It would be a decade before we’d talk again. Halfway across the country news still trickled through. Sam got a job as a messenger, working at the local library. He was putting on weight. He was in the hospital for a week, then ten days. After Sarah told me about the accident, how he’d lost his right leg below the knee, I called. He sounded tired, weighed down, but he brightened up strangely when he talked about the blackout before the crash.
“It was like swimming, you know? You go down and it’s just nothing and you never want to come up again.”
I didn’t know. I never was much of a swimmer, which just added to the irony that I was now on a boat. Surrounded by nothing, water and sky together to infinity, I thought, I never did ask why he wasn’t taking better care of himself. I never asked if he’d like to get together. Or how it was we took such different paths. Was it just circumstances?
“You know anybody who wants to buy a bike?” he went on. “It’s hardly been used aside from being busted up.”
I knew it would be the last time we’d talk. Some might call it a premonition. The truth is it was more of an educated extrapolation. When Sarah called the circumstances surprised me but not the news. Sam had been found in the back of a public library in Bridgeport. Paramedics carried him out. He’d had an insulin pen with him, but it was unused.
Lake Erie’s size, something I’m all too conscious of drifting in the middle of it, makes it difficult to search, and yet many of its two thousand or so shipwrecks have been rediscovered and explored. None of the expeditions has ever seen a monster, though, or even any evidence. It seems strange that an animal that, according to some stories, is twenty feet long and sheds scales the size of silver dollars, hasn’t left anything tangible. Actual silver dollars are easier to find.
I realize the boat is drifting and send the anchor overboard. The attached rope buzzes against the side until it goes taut. A tag where it hooks to the floor tells me the line is fifty feet, less than a quarter of Lake Erie’s deepest point. The waters, once famously polluted, are cold and must be very clear. I can see the anchor hanging greenly more than eight fathoms down. I wonder if it attracts any attention.
In the distance there’s a splash.
Part 3-It’s Alive!
When I asked Sam why we were hotwiring a tractor he said, “Something to do. Got nowhere else to be. You need a reason?”
There are at least as many ideas about lake monsters as there are lake monsters. Some believe they’re dinosaurs left over from the Cretaceous era. The long snake-like necks of Nessie, Ogopogo, and Champy make some think they’re plesiosauruses. Lake Erie’s only about four thousand years old, so it’s an unlikely spot to find a marine animal from three hundred million years ago. Based on the description Bessie could be a giant snake, like the Lagarfljót Worm and the Flathead Lake Monster. That seems unlikely too. Cold-blooded animals don’t fare well in cold water.
Some other ideas seem a lot more plausible. Lake sturgeon, a bona fide living fossil, can grow more than seven feet long and have a reptilian look. Schools of fish, even groups of otters swimming can look like a single large animal. Rotting logs that sink to the bottom build up carbon dioxide and can pop to the surface like a monster surfacing. When my uncle took us to Lake Minatare Sam tried to convince Sarah a floating log was a crocodile. She wouldn’t fall for it, but he was so earnest he nearly had me convinced. After supper we took a walk through the woods along the lake, just me and Sam. We heard something in the water.
“What was that?” he said. We both got quiet.
“Maybe there really are crocodiles here,” Sam whispered. “What do you think?” I walked with him down to the water. Sam knelt down.
“I think I see something. It’s—AAAGH!” He grabbed my leg and I screamed. Then we both laughed. Well, I pretended to laugh, and now, alone out here with no other sound but the gentle slap of waves, I really laugh.
That night as we lay next to each other in our tent Sam said, “What do you think it was splashing out there? We should see if we can find a boat and go out there and check.”
I didn’t want to. I know it disappointed Sam but I’d been scared enough of my uncle’s wrath over the tractor. I didn’t want to get grounded for sneaking out to the water. I suggested we go check out the lighthouse instead.
“That’s not a lighthouse,” Sam snapped. “That’s just an old tower they built for observation.”
“Observing what?”
“Maybe something lives out there in the lake.” That started Sam on the Lambton Worm, a giant snake that poisoned a well in England until it was killed, and we talked about it until we fell asleep.
The sky is getting lighter. Summer nights on Lake Erie are short but still chilly. I shiver. I still can’t see land but I think I see mist on the water. It moves like a living thing. Tulpas, an idea from Tibetan mythology, are creatures willed into being. They’re meant to be servants but can turn malicious. Why do we imagine monsters? As soon as the question comes to my mind an answer follows: to make sense out of chaos. Confronted with the strange, with things we’ve never seen before, we look for an answer. But they also fill a need for chaos. Order gives us comfort, but we need disorder to go with it. Maybe it’s also submission, admitting there are things bigger than ourselves. Another, more practical answer comes to mind: maybe navigators wrote “Here be dragons” on maps to protect their own routes, to keep away the wary. Maybe there are many reasons. Maybe we don’t need a reason.
The sun will be up soon. A thousand miles, more than three hundred leagues, and two time zones away the same sun rise over Sam’s memorial service. I would have been there but I had a golf tournament to write about, or maybe a dog show, or a lake monster to find.
I lean over the side and look down. It’s light enough that I can see my half reflection, but dark and indistinct. Is something down there looking back?
I realize my boat has no name. At least I didn’t check to see if it had one, probably printed on the stern, when I embarked. Why do sailors name their boats? As soon as the question comes to my mind an answer follows: because on the open seas they depended on their boats. On the water, away from land, a boat is a sailor’s whole world.
The sun will be up soon and I’ll know which way is east. I’ll have an even chance of knowing which way is south and finding my way to the right shore, or at least a signal, before the fuel runs out. I put a hand on the steering wheel.
Public tributes to Chadwick Boseman, like the one in Graffiti Alley in Cambridge, Massachusetts, are a reminder that he was a public and very prominent figure. And yet he kept his cancer diagnosis private so that many of us who are fans were shocked by his death. I know some have criticized him for not speaking up, saying he missed an opportunity to educate the public about colorectal cancer and its changing demographics. It’s rising among younger people and Black people. I won’t repeat or even link to the critics but at the same time I will acknowledge them. He didn’t choose to get cancer, but he could choose how he responded to it. I don’t know why he chose not to talk about it but I know when I was diagnosed with cancer I didn’t want to talk about it, and didn’t tell anyone outside of a few people for three weeks. And when I did talk about it I joked about it because it was hard for me to admit even to myself, even after I’d started chemotherapy, that it was really happening.
There are a lot of reasons my own fight with cancer is different: I had a different, and much more treatable, cancer, and my own treatment was probably a lot easier than his. And yet I remember days when I didn’t even feel like getting out of bed. I was out of work for six months because my immune system crashed. He kept working, filming and co-producing Marshall, Black Panther, and two Avengers films. He was even confident he could finish Black Panther 2.
Also consider four major roles that help define his career, a career that was cut too short: Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and T’Challa, the Black Panther. There was some luck involved—in art and in life none of us can control everything—but he chose to portray four people, three real and one fictional, who are all legendary. He chose roles that contributed to discussions about race in the United States.
