I Evoke a Distant Summer

Yesterday, was about as perfect a weather day as I can imagine.  It is yesterday's kind of weather that is summer to me.  Clear skies, temperature in the high 70's, little humidity. It made me think of a summer night 44 years ago.  I and a friend, who shortly would disappear out of the lives of all his high school friends, went to see the Beach Boys in concert at the Auditorium Theatre in Rochester.  This was when the Beach Boys were young.  Long before Brian Wilson went schizo and Dennis Wilson drowned, and Lord, I can't think of the name of the other one, the chubby one. Carl, . . .I think he's dead, too.

The opening act was a duo with only one hit song.  The song was "I Got You, Babe," and the duo was Sonny and Cher before they were famous.  Sonny dressed like a train engineer and Cher dressed in a raccoon coat.  Her hair was almost down to her butt.  Sonny pretended to smoke so he could toss his butt to the crowd.  Strange, sonny.

It was the summer of "California Girls," still my favorite 60's song and my current ring tone.  We had front row seats.  We were so close we got sprayed by band sweat, although, this was long before leaning onto stages or crowd surfing.  Heck, I wore a sport coat to the concert.  It was a madras sportcoat, which means very little to anyone who wasn't in high school from about '63 to '65, but believe me it was cool.  Dennis Wilson twice broke drumsticks and tossed the surviving half to the crowd.  They came nowhere near where I was sitting. Dennis tossed his sticks to girls.

The concert ended with the Boys singing "In My Room," probably the sweetest sounding of any Beach Boys song.  I left that concert elated, wishing "they all could be California girls."  People say that the most evocative of all senses is smell.  If I could have gotten a whiff of English Leather cologne yesterday, I might have been transported back there. 

Remembering

Last weekend I found out that Curtis Cotton had died.  He was 54 years old and had a heart attack at home.  Curt was in my ninth grade English class that met 8th period in 1969-70, the first year I taught.  The first year of teaching is very dear to me.  During that year I discovered my love for teaching English, and I began to fall in love with another English teacher, who would in 1972 become my wife.  Because of these things and more, I remember that year very well.  And although I don't know if I've seen Curtis since 1973, the year he graduated, I remember him as well and as easily as if that long ago year was only weeks past. Curt was handsome, athletic, constantly smiling, and my gosh, that boy loved ROMEO AND JULIET.  We probably spent 6 weeks on the R&J unit, reading it in class, seeing the movie at the old Shoppingtown Theatres, and listening to the record.  Curt knew the story inside out. We used to do quote reviews, where I would begin to read a quote, in anticipation of someone raising his or her hand, shouting, "Oh, oh!" and guessing the identity of the speaker.  In Curt's class, I couldn't get two words out when Curt's hand would be waving wildly.  I'd nod to him and he would say, "Mercutio" or "Lady Capulet" or whoever, and he was always right.  So, I will always remember Curtis as that happy, smiling young man who was a true romantic.

More bad news, I'm afraid.  I have mentioned earlier in my blogging that I have been planning a 40th college fraternity unit for the fall.  I had been trying to find an address for Bob "Mig" Miglioratto, a great friend.  Last night a fraternity brother from Florida e-mailed to tell me that he had contacted Mig's wife, and she told him that Mig had terminal cancer and was currently in hospice.  She also said that it would do no good to call him as he would be unable to take a call.

Discovering the fate of an ex-student and an old friend within days of each other is troubling and thought-provoking.  It's another reminder of how vulnerable we are, and how important friends and family and literature and romance and all the many things we truly love truly are.

Now, a couple of less important parts of this posting.  We went to see DISTRICT 9 this weekend.  This was a major feat for me, because Linda will see nothing scary and the only alien she wants to hear anything about is ET.  She was even scared of Alf.  (That's not true, but I thought it was funny, and this blog needs a little comic relief.)  She went because Edie Pinegar liked it.   She needed a female perspective to get her to lower her anti-horror/science fiction guard.  She actually liked the movie pretty well.  I did, too.  I loved the documentary style and the fact that the actors were all unknowns.  I also liked the fact that the young director who made the film only spent 30 million dollars, which is coffee money for big budget blow-up epics like THE TRANSFORMERS.  Ultimately, I found the film good, but a little bit lacking, and I'm not quite sure why I wasn't totally sold.  See it, though.  It'll make you think.

Quick literary mention:  THE GUERNSEY LITERARY AND POTATO PEEL PIE SOCIETY by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows is a wonderful book.  It's an epistolary novel,in other words it's told completely through letters and telegrams.  THE GL AND PPPS is the story of life on the Channel Island of Guernsey during the Nazi occupation.  When Linda first told me about it, I thought it sounded like chick lit.  No way.  It's lit. for everyone.

THE FIELD Revisited

. . .Back at the beginning of July, I posted a blog that included among other things, mention of the first novel I ever completed writing.  This is what I wrote:   "The first novel I ever finished writing was a horror novel.  I finished it sometime back in the very early seventies, when I was still a 20 something.  I wasn't successful in writing a horror novel,  but I was successful in writing a horrible novel.  I was really influenced by and envious of the early success of Stephen King, then, and publishers were releasing horror novels by the dozens.  My horrible novel was called "The Field."  It took place in Colorado.  That was a mistake.  I had driven through Colorado, once, and as I wrote, I didn't do any flora or fauna research or anything.  It was like Colorado was in Lakeport or something.  Secondly, the basic premise depended on the fact that there was a place (in Colorado and not too far from a major highway) where no human being had set foot in hundreds of years. Or perhaps, ever!  Because there were these altars of the dead, there.  Altars built by ghosts, if I remember correctly.  And they got annoyed when some people decided to build a house there.  I shudder trying to figure what I was thinking about.  The novel was chockful of eerie evening happenings, priests getting bitten by snakes, little kids getting sucked down into the earth, and a sort of virginal girl falling immediately into the arms of a handsome guy who happens to ride by on, (get this) his white horse.  I can't believe I am admitting this to anyone on the web (without spiders) who might chose to read it."

Several people wanted to read some of this opus, but I didn't think it any longer existed.  Then I found it in a box in the basement.  I remember more about my motivation or writing now, too.  I was trying to imitate one of my horror heroes, the long deceased writer Algernon Blackwood.  Did you ever hear of a better name for a horror writer than that?  The first truly scary story I ever read was "The Wendigo" by Blackwood.  I didn't get all of it, but it scared the crap out of me.  Still does when I think about it.  There's this part where the main character wakes up and the guy next to him in the tent is being slowly pulled out from under his blankets by some awful thing. . .  Well, anyway, Blackwood posited in that story that there were probably thousands of square miles of forest in northern Canada where no man had ever set foot.  And if no man has been there, who can say what might live there, kiddies?  So my take on it back in the early 70's was: why couldn't there be places like that closer to where people live?  Using that idea, I wrote THE FIELD.  Here's the first chapter, short and sweet, over-written just like Algernon Blackwood used to write, and designed to pull the reader into the tale.  See what you think.

The Field, Late May:

The field could not be seen from the road for it was hidden behind a drumlin topped with scattered pines.  Automobiles roared by only 100 yards away, but the field remained undisturbed, unwatched. 

Gently sloping down to the Cabot River, the field was 30 acres of rampant grass, briars, and Queen Anne’s Lace.  Spotted with daisies an sumac, it everpossessed a cool breeze blowing from the west down the river.

From atop its slope, one could see twenty miles or more to the foothills of the Panther Range and the forests of the State Park.  Rangers in the fire tower would sweep the field with their binoculars as they monitored their timber stand.  For years they were the only ones to look on it, save for the few who passed in boats on the river, but they never realized the field was anything special.

It was a comforting sort of field to look upon, well landscaped, free and clean, dressed with wildflowers.  The only things that seemed out of place were the scattered piles of stones.

Someone in the town of Cabot River had owned the field and the and forest that surrounded it for a long time.  But the owner possessed much land and had never inspected this field until the day he sold it.

The field’s closest human neighbors were in the town, which was 15 miles away. At night from the top of the slope, the lights of Cabor River could be seen.  But no one had ever looked from there.  No one had ever been in the field at night since Cabot River became a town.

It was in that part of the countryside that is beyond the advertising line.  As the road by the field went nowhere important in the tourist and hamburger world, the land was free of signs.

In the depths of the world’s great forests there are certainly places where no human foot has ever stepped.  Ther are also places closer to civilization.  Places that by nature’s kind chance have avoided the human sphere of control.  The field was one such place.  No human beings had ever been there.  Not even the men who had built the road had climbed the drumlin and sidled throught the firs to tramp the land.

But people were there now.  People with bulldozers and with trucks pouring cement into a wooden frame.  Men in jeans with saws and hammers were building a house on the field.  A road now wound over the drumlin and through the trees, and a truck had come and scattered gravel over it.

There was a great deal of noise in the field now, something long missing.  There had not been the scratch of grasshoppers or the thumping of rabbits or the stir of butterflies for more than 100 years.  Those things stayed away, not wanting to be part of the company of the field.  And there were no rats on the bank where the meadow touched the Cabot River.  The only sound that haunted the field was that of snakes bending their ways through the high grass, and that sound is close to silence.

The men were now roofing the new house, and they were being watched by a large rattlesnake who was sunning himself atop one of the piles of rocks.  These incongruous rock piles dotted the field and several had been knocked over during the course of construction.  But more than a hundred still stood.  Piles of rock, 4 or 5 feet high, shaped like crescents, the inside of the curves toward the river.  They would have made handy cover for a soldier to fight behind, but no battle had yet been fought in the field.  Children would have loved the rock piles for they would make good hide and seek spots.  Something could feel secure behind the rock piles.  Something could use them as a last refuge.

Yoga and I

               I took my first yoga class at the Y on Wednesday.  People are probably laughing at the thought, but it was great.  It somehow combines exercise and relaxation.  When you are finished your muscles feel challenged but not beaten up.  I also watched a video about establing Feng Shui in a room.  I like Yoga but I can't say much for the whole Feng Shui thing.

               I sent an e-mail to a literary agency today.  I researched in Jeff Herman's book, chose an agency in NYC and an agent who seemed like she might be open to my kind of writing.  But who knows?  Is my letter too long?  Is it too informal?  Does it tell too much of the story or not enough?  Still it's another step, perhaps a misstep (is that spelled correctly?) but a step nonetheless.  Here's the letter for my blog readers to peruse:

I have written a young adult novel called TISHA AND THE GIANT.  It is the story of Tisha Olsen, a high school golden girl.  She is sweet-natured, attractive, has supportive parents, is a really good soccer player, does well in school, blogs, and has a boyfriend she absolutely adores.  But toward the end of her junior year, things start to come apart for Tisha.  In the spring, her mom leaves Tisha and her father, and Tisha, because of her naivete and simple faith in the security and goodness of her life, never saw the signs that led up to it.  In July, she is injured in a summer league game, so her senior soccer season is out.  Then a few days into her senior year, her boyfriend Billy decides he’s interested in a beautiful freshman.  All that was constant in Tisha’s life, save for her friends Becky and Sandra, seems to be gone.

Someone else who cares tremendously for Tisha is watching her.  Kevin Conley is a 10th grader with a super crush on Tish.  When he sees her in the hall or on the sidelines at soccer games, Kevin is thrilled, and when Tisha becomes his math tutor, he is overjoyed.  But Kevin also worries about her, because on the first Friday of the school year, as he watches Tisha recording statistics on the side of the soccer field, he realizes someone else is watching her, too.  A big bear of a man with a snarl for an expression constantly has his eyes on Tisha.  Kevin is short and not too strong.  He also isn’t a very good student, but he is brave and imaginative.  At  home, where he has to deal with an abusive father, Kevin has created an alter ego--a superhero called the Giant. Knowing that the big beast of a man is a danger to Tisha, Kevin decides that the Giant must be her protector.

As September progresses, Tisha works to put her troubles aside, become a stronger person, and maybe even do a little self-reivention.  Kevin the GIant grows more mature and more determined as he watches out for his secret friend.  Only the Lump never changes as he moves inexorably toward a place where he can do to Tisha what he feels he must do.  Near the novel’s conclusion, the superheroic Giant must do battle with the Lump so Tisha will be safe.

I tried to deal with several themes in this YA novel including friendship, family issues, and the tremendous difficutlies that teenagers, especially girls, face growing up.  I have spent virtually all my adult life working with and spending time with teenagers,;in fact, they’re probaby my favorite people.  I believe the teens who live in the novel TISHA AND THE GIANT are like the ones I have a taught and known well over the years, bright, caring, and awfully vulnerable.

When I was teaching, I was always writing, but I never became fully involved until I became computer adept and was able to save and store and rewrite instantaneously.  Since then I have written nine full-length plays for high school and community theatre, all of which have been successfully produced.  In both 2001 and 2003, I  won the SYRACUSE POST STANDARD’s short fiction contest.  I attended two Highlights Foundation Workshops in Honesdale, Pa, where I worked with YA novelist Rich Wallace.

I write both a lot and passionately.  I currently have 3 completed YA novel manuscripts, and parts of 2 others, and have never attempted to market them.  I am really in need of representation and wonder if you might consider reading a bit of or a lot of TISHA AND THE GIANT.

Yours truly,

Greg Ellstrom

Treasure Hunted

               I went on a treasure hunt this afternoon, without realizing that's what I was doing.  Because it was so friggin' hot out, we were hiding in the air conditioning. Bored, we decided to go down cellar to clean.  The place is virtually always a mess, plus it's cool down there.

               Down we went.  I began filling bags with junk.  I had hoped to find the box that some of my old college fraternity stuff was in, because of the reunion we're having this fall.  Instead, I found the mother lode.  My first discovery was a section of a memoir I had written about my college days.  I wrote it at least 35 years ago, and reading brought so much back.  I plan on sharing it with my friends from the past.  I also found a note written to me by my high school creative writing teacher, the teacher I credit most with nourishing my love of writing.  That note is going into a folder I keep that's filled with special correspondence from over the years.  And finally, I found the entire, original manuscript of that bad horror novel I wrote back in the early seventies.  It was called THE FIELD, and it caused a lot more interest than I had anticipated when I blogged about it a month or so ago.  It is handwritten and/or typed on a half dozen different kinds of paper, and apparently, a wind came along at some time in the last 30 odd years and blew the manuscript in every direction.  I have found the first few pages, though, and someday soon, I will let that purple prose serve as my blog for the day.

The Gospel According to Target

Don't worry!  This is not one of those urban legends suggesting that people stop buying from Target because the powers that be of that shopping giant are doing something awful, evil or ungodly.  Why I chose this title will be clear shortly.  A couple more questions about FACEBOOK first , though.  No one has still explained what it means to "poke" someone.  So I poked my sister Polly, because there was a note on the right side of the screen saying she had poked me.  Maybe, we can both figure it out.  I am also amazed by the number of friends that people have.  I am quite delighted that I have 172.  But I checked two of my friends at random and discovered that one had 787 and one had 725.  Both these friends are only a year or three out of college.  Tell me, do college students invite the entire football team to be friends?  Or the entire junior class?

To present the major reason for today's blogging, I need to explain that we have been attending CrossRoads Community Church for two and a half years and really love it.  Back in the winter of 2007, Linda was looking for a church where she felt comfortable.  A lifelong Catholic, she felt that that church simply wasn't providing what she felt she needed in a place to worship.  Because I wanted to make her happy, I went searching with her.  I have always considered myself a spiritual person.  I have never faltered in my belief in God; in fact, it would be about impossible for me not to believe.  But I have never been religious.  I attended the Congregational Church as a kid, but never got much from the attendance.  So we met with Pastor Mick Keville, whom we had known for nearly 40 years, and began going to church at CrossRoads.  Like I said earlier, we loved it and felt fulfillment from attending.

Then came what Linda said was our official sign from God.  Only a couple months after we started at CrossRoads, I was stricken with congestive heart failure and found out that a virus had attacked my heart causing cardiomyopathy, an enlargement of the heart.  The heart failure was a result of that.  Through my ten days in the hospital and the convalescence that followed, I was the beneficiary of wonderful prayer.  Prayer from CrossRoads, the Presbyterian Church, the Congregation Church in Webster, and who knows where else.  And I improved at a pretty dramatic rate.  I had a great doctor, lots of medicine, a wonderful wife watching me like a hawk, great friends and family helping out, but I truly, truly believe that the power of prayer was instrumental in my recovery.

Now, last weekend, Linda's sister and mother came to visit us.  We had an absolutely fabulous time.  When Sunday rolled around, Linda went with her mom and sister to St. Pat's.  I wanted to go to CrossRoads, but Linda's mom doesn't know that Linda and I attend there.  So that I could go to church, we hatched a little plot. If when they returned from St. Patrick's, Linda's mother asked where I was, she would be told I was at Target.

This is the sad irony of organized religion in miniature.  We would love to tell Linda's mom how happy we are at CrossRoads.  What a wonderful thing it would be to share, but we can't because of what is too often the nature of religion.  Sadly, Linda's mom might be hurt or angered or frightened, we don't know for sure, if she knew Linda was going to a church other than a Roman Catholic one.  The reason is the too often professed doctrine of "my church is right and yours is wrong and that's all there is to it."  

  When I was a kid my catholic friends told me I was going to hell for being a protestant, but we all know it isn't just catholics who once made or still make this horrifying claim. Also, we all realize that religious differences are the source of so many problems in our world.  What is most troubling to me is that we don't seem to have made much progress addressing this sad state of things over the centuries. There's nothing new in what I have written tonight, but I wanted to share it as the Gospel According to Target.

FACEBOOK. . .

. . .is a lot of fun, but I have to admit I don't understand a lot of it.  I don't know how the invitations are launched, or how you make your own advertisements.  I've been on several lists of some sort, and I don't know how I got there.  What is MAFIA WARS anyway?  I have no idea what it means to "poke," someone, but I can't help but think it might be a little off color.  When I hear the term poke, I think of the song "Lovely Ladies" from LES MIS, which is sung by the sailors, who have come into port and are looking for ladies of the evening.  Poor Fantine, of course, has joined the oldest profession at this point.   The lyrics say, "Lovely Ladies, smell 'em through the smoke, seven days at sea will make ya hungry for a . . ."  Which is why I have yet to see what poking on FACEBOOK entails.  I also don't know how people post the notices along the right side of the screen advertising their photo albums and such.  I actually, don't really know how my blog makes it to FACEBOOK.  I just did what Scott Rezsnyak told me to do.

Even though I don't understand it, I repeat that FACEBOOK is fun.  BMHE, (that means before my heart event), I did lots of Adirondack hiking with my dad, who hiked into his late 70's.  We summited Cascade, Porter, the Brothers via Johns Brook Lodge, Panther, Mt. Arab, Mt. VanHoevenberg, a great little mountain called Owl's Head and more. One of my favorite photos of myself, (and I hate most photos of myself), is in black and white and was taken by one of Jan's past boyfriends near the summit of Pitchoff, which is definitely my favorite mountain.  The photo is on the wall of our Adirondack themed family room.  So I was delighted when I saw Jackie Owens' album of a climb up Algonquin listed or noted, whatever the right word is, on the right side of the FACEBOOK page.  Seeing the photos of a climb on a beautiful, sunny day, made me want to hike again, and someday, I hope I will.

FACEBOOK has brought me into contact with people I haven't seen in years, also.  Just last week, I got a request to be a friend from Jenelle Terwilliger. Jenelle was a Chittenango grad of the late 80's, an actor, singer, runner, and all around great person.  She lives in Phoenix, Arizona,  and it was terrific to exchange messages with her via FACEBOOK.  Linda and I now have a standing invitation to happy hour by her pool. 

I really should mention what's happening with my writing, since that is what I'm supposed to deal with in this blog at the Blue Moon Grille.  I have proofread about 150 pages of TISHA AND THE GIANT.  Mostly it's just spelling and punctuation, stuff, but ever so often I add or delete a paragraph,.  Re-reading the first half of the book is fun, because it's been some time since I read it, and occasionally I'm surprised.  Proofing the second half will be more difficult.

Back on July 14, I blogged about. . .

. . .two poems by William Carlos Williams including "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain beside the white chickens."  I was watching a "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" repeat today, and the contestant won $100,000, because he knew that the "white chickens" were beside the "red wheelbarrow."  I'm sure that's a lot more money than William Carlos Williams ever earned for his poetry.  Have you noticed how no one on "Who Wants to be A Millionaire" ever gets close to winning a million dollars? I think it should be called "Who Wants to be A Twenty-Five Thousand Dollaraire."

Another brief observation:  If you read the right wing comic strip "Mallard Fillmore" you know that he has recently been attacking public education.  Sometimes, "Mallard" is really on and funny.  For me, most often he isn't.  I'm sure that's how "Mallard" readers feel about "Doonesbury."  Anyway, yesterday's comic involved a father trying to get his son acclimated to public school by looking down his nose at him and shouting, "People!"  In 33 years of teaching, I don't think I ever called a class "people."  "You guys," "ladies and gentleman," "everybody be quiet," statements like that, but never "people!"  I think "people" might be an elementary school call to order.  That's all.

I was amazed in noticing that. . .

. . .I have blogged 75 times since starting back in March.  I guess I have a lot to say.  Speaking of blogging, we saw JULIE AND JULIA yesterday.  It's about a young woman who blogged for a year as she cooked her way through Julia Child's MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING. I really liked it.  I think Linda loved it.  As usual, Meryl Streep was amazing.  What really amazed me was how tall she appeared to be in the movie, when Celebs.com, (that's a real site), says she's 5' 4 and 1/2".   They must have filmed her with a lot of really short people.  Amy Adams, as usual, was sweet and cute.  Quite short, too, I think.

I got off my metaphorical butt today, stopped worrying about rejection, and sent ARTHUR REDUX to Eldridge Publishing.  Enough whining on my part.

The great thunder and lightning storm that just passed, brought back to my memory something I've wanted to blog about for a couple of weeks.  When I mentioned my early attempt at novel writing, the horror non-classic THE FIELD, I was surprised at the number of people who commented about it, in a positive and interested way.  That reminded me of how much some people enjoy horror stories and movies and such.  This is not true of my wife, by the way. The only horror movies I ever get to see are on pay-per-view.

Last week when I visited with my English teacher friend John, we got to talking about books, and he told me that I had once said that Stephen King's CUJO was "pornographic."

John is positive that's what I said.  I suppose I was a lot younger and prone to overstatement, then, but I know what I meant.

I need for a moment to step back.  To get to where my train (or roller coaster) of thought is headed, I need to start by talking about the basic reason that people like horror stuff.  They like it because fright can be fun.  As has been pointed out hundred of times before, horror novels and movies are escapism.  We like them because they take us to a place that's scarier than our day to day world.  There, we get to watch folks being scared awfully.  We enjoy it, and we know the monsters aren't real like the real scary things in our real daily lives are. We also want these characters, with whom we sympathize in the story, to emerge triumphantly just like we want to emerge triumphantly from the IRS audit or the dentist or the boss's office in our real lives.

I believe for a horror novel or movie to be good, it must have a basically, happy ending.  Sure a few bodies are going to fall along the wayside, but at the end, most of the people you care about better well survive.  If not, then the story is cruel and twisted.  CUJO is not pornographic, but it is nasty, too.  If you have read it, you know that at the end the little boy, Tad, who we have rooted for throughout the novel, dies.  That is not escapism; that's meanness.  An often used metaphor for a work of horror is a ride on a roller coaster with its ups and downs and sometimes upside downs, its twists and turns and lots of screams.  We don't want our real-life roller coaster rides to end with the cars going off the track and crashing into a pile of twisted metal and maimed people; therefore, we don't want our metaphorical one to do that either.

What is ironic is that Stephen King recognized the nasty side of horror when  Stanley Kubrick made the movie version of THE SHINING.  He thought that Kubrick had made a movie that was design to hurt, and I agree with him.  Those who know and love the book, and I think it is King's finest work, were shocked and angered when Kubrick chose to kill the old cook Dick Halloran, (Scatman Crothers, in the movie), who also had the "shine" as soon as he arrives at the Overlook Hotel.  That old cook is supposed to save the day, dammit!  When you take our hero away, it's a painful, nasty punch in the stomach for the viewers.  Interesting how Kubrick had Jack kill the old man with an ax to the stomach.  Guess he knew what he was doing.  (I recently read that Kubrick contemplated killing all the main characters.  Wouldn't that have been deep!)

I remember reading in an interview early in Stephen King's career that he had yet to kill an important child character in any of his works, and he suggested, if I remember correctly, that it was because he so feared the death of one of his own kids, which is every parent's worst nightmare.  I wonder if he killed the little boy in CUJO, because he needed to face that fear as a writer.  It ruined the book for me.  I mean, I hate the book!  

You know the old saying, "what goes around, comes around."  Kubrick changed THE SHINING movie and made it nasty, while the movie CUJO ended with the little boy surviving, which at least made it bearable to watch.  I wonder if Stephen King was responsible for the change?

There are some horror novelists and filmmakers that believe it is their duty to kill everyone good in the end.  The author John Saul comes to mind.  Avoid him like a plague. . .of zombies.

I'm not talking about the really gross stuff that used to be called "splatter-punk."  There aren't any characters in those books that anyone would identify with so you don't care if they get put through a wood chopper.  Those books basically for people who get off on a lot of blood and guts.  The books of that type that rise above the sty are the ones that have senses of humor.  It's its sense of humor that makes SCREAM such a great movie.

For me horror films and novels must end with good triumphant over evil. Otherwise what's the purpose of reading or watching?  As I said earlier, why would I want my roller coaster to crash.  

There's only one thing worse than allowing evil to triumph.  That's not finishing the damn story.  There's nothing worse than when a novel ends something like this.  "The last of her guests had left as Marissa closed and locked the door.  What a fine party it had been.  All the terror and horror of the weeks before had passed.  This time the dead would stay dead.  No coming back.  Marissa sighed happily and leaned back against the door.  It was then she heard the footsteps coming slowly and lightly down the stairs. . ."

P.S.  I hope some of you choose to argue with me or agree with me or debate me or whatever!

Just got back from. . .

. . .a sweat producing walk with Lucy.  Lucy loves a walk, gets very excited before we start, and is very determined as to where we are going to go.  She also likes to stop and sniff every mailbox post.  Occasionally she also slams us to a stop so her nose can examine some particularly disgusting item.  Lucy's problem is that she usually goes too far in the direction away from home, so that when I finally get her to start back, the return trip is daunting for her furry frame.  Thank you to the Durfee's of Post Lane, who offered her a drink as we trudged up the final rise before home, but it was easier not to stop, and soon we were back, and Lucy was drinking from her favorite toilet before tumbling to the cool kitchen floor.

This sweaty walk was good for me as it cleared my head. I had tried to do some proofreading earlier in the afternoon and had been struck by the two-days-after-you-got-rejected-my-stuff-sucks-and-who-would-ever-want-to-read-it blues.  I had to stop working before I decided to delete a couple of hundred hours of work just because I was in a pissy mood.

Amanda Horning (LA), the once and future Stacy Foxx, stopped over yesterday.  She and Wendy (Phoenix) are in from the left coast to go to a wedding in Joisey.  It was great to see her.  She looks terrific, but we didn't get to talk for very long, and she told absolutely no juicy Bonnie Hunt stories.

Hamilton was today's site for a mother-in-law and sister-in-law excursion.  It's a great place to visit for a few hours.  We started at the farmer's market in the park, went to lunch at Nichols and Beals (I think that's right) and ended up at the Colgate Bookstore, which is in the center of the village.  If you love bookstores, and haven't been to this one, then go.  I purchased a new literary classic called PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES.  It's a novel about Jane Austen's world if it also happened to be inhabited by the brain-eating, walking dead. The first sentence of the original PRIDE AND PREJUDICE reads, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."  The first sentence of P and P and Z reads, "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains."  The catch phrase for the book is "PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES transforms a masterpiece of world literature into something you'd actually want to read."  This is more than Mark Twain ever dreamed of when he said of Jane Austen, "It's a shame she died a natural death."

On my first day of blogging. . .

. . .; it was March the 23rd, I believe, I made the following statement:  "In this blog, I plan on chronicling, among other things, the progress of my writing and my attempts to get published.  I have decided that maybe if I blog about it, I will actually send some of my work to some real publishing houses and see just what the heck might occur.  Perhaps, a few people, will enjoy following my efforts.  (I'd call them struggles, but they really aren't, because I am really loving writing these days.)"  Then sometime in April or early May, I announced that I was sending THE LAUGHING MAN to Dramatic Publishing. Yesterday I got a letter from the Acquisitions Editor Linda Habjan who has developed a nice way of saying "NO!" Still it is a bit of a kick in the stomach.  Kind of like being told your kid, who you created and nourished and brought to adulthood, isn't quite good enough.  The letter contained this sweet

(?) sentence:  "Although your work has much to offer, we do not feel we can market it advantageously at this time."  Of course!  Now I understand! I  mean what is marketable about a play that requires a single set, has a cast of 22, is suitable for high school or community theatre, was tremendously received, and made people laugh hysterically while scaring the hell out of them as well? Am I sounding, bitter? Shame on me.  Let it be known that I have already sent THE LAUGHING MANoff to Baker Plays in Boston.  We'll just see what happens there.

Riding home from the Y provides me with some thinking time.  At 9:00 this morning as I headed back to Chitt, I started thinking about next year's SUMMERPLAY.  I couldn't believe as I rode, that three weeks had passed since ARTHUR and the cast trod the boards.  Anyway, there are a few things I think I know for sure about SUMMERPLAY 2010. For one thing it's going to be a little deeper and a little darker.  I hope that we'll be in the aud, where I plan on limiting seating to say the first 12 row, push the scene forward as far as possible, use furniture and platforms but no walls, and have a somewhat smaller cast.  The last play I wrote that had fewer than 20 people was STACEY FOXX in  2001.  The theme I hope to explore is the idea of how often falsehood plays a role in people's daily lives.  I hope to explore some other stuff, too.

I had another bit to blog about today, but I will save it.  My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are here, and Linda just summoned me to cocktail hour!!

"You can't go home. . .

. . .again."  "You can't get there from here."  Regardless of those or other serious or silly sayings, let me assure you that it is possible to go to the Anne St. Cafe in Little Falls, sit down with an old friend and his wife, and start talking as easily as if it were 40 years ago.  We had a great time being with Johnny B. and his wife Amy.  John is a retired teacher of English, currently director of plays, actor, and writer.  As such we have a lot in common.

We went to Canal Place in Little Falls, two old mills now serving as homes to the shops of many antique sellers.  I was looking for Whitman Books, and John found one for me almost as soon as we entered the store.  Its title is GENE AUTRY AND THE GHOST RIDERS, which combined two of the favorite things of my kidhood, cowboys and ghosts.  It's in the best condition of any of the books in my collection, and it only cost 8 bucks.  I read the first chapter when we got home yesterday afternoon, and on p. 13, I found a paragraph I just love. It is the quintessence of the philosophy of all the cowboys who rode across the black and white, 17 inch tv screens of the 50's.  In the novel, Gene is on his way to help an old friend who is having trouble with some BAD GUYS.  The author Lewis B. Patten waxed poetically as he described Gene Autry's old western ideal.  "In truth, nothing pleased Gene more than a chance to help someone who needed his help.  And if there was a chance to fight the forces of lawlessness in the process, then his pleasure was doubled."  I can almost hear the theme from THE BIG COUNTRY playing behind this narration.

In case some are unaware, Gene Autry went from being a singing cowboy in movies to being a billionaire entrepeneur, investor, and owner of a major league baseball team. This singing cowboy was no dummy.  Even in 1955, when it was rare, he was getting a cut on all aspects of his fame.  On the title page of my new/old book, below the title, is the statement, "An original story featuring GENE AUTRY, famous motion picture, radio, and television star as hero."  On the copyright page, is the legend "Copyright 1955 by GENE AUTRY."  Roy Rogers didn't copyright the Whitman book I have that features him as hero.  Neither did Hopalong Cassidy.  I have another Gene Autry title from 1951, and way back then, the financially savvy singing cowboy was copyrighting the books in which he was featured.  Gene Autry's past fame always includes mention of his great wealth.  Roy Rogers' always includes mention of the fact that his horse is stuffed.

Just a bit to blog about. . .

. . .today.  I finished TISHA AND THE GIANT this afternoon.  I think this is the third time I finished it.   I think it will be the last, save for a few changes here or there as I do the final re-read.  Of course, 5 years in the making doesn't begin to rival another novel I wrote (am writing), which is currently titled NO, DUH!  That has been 20+ years in the making.  TISHA topped off at about 285 pages, definitely the longest of my writing projects. Although if I wanted to, I could create a Collected Works Volume of my plays, and that sucker would be, my goodness, more than 700 pages long.

I am suffering from a minor writer's ailment.  Too much typing makes Greg's shoulders ache.  But big deal, to mix a metaphor sort of, Beethoven was deaf and Homer was blind, so what are a couple of sore shoulders?

Our mortgage was officially paid off today.  That is a rite of passage I will gladly experience.  We went to Borio's for dinner to celebrate.  Great view, outside seating, but so-so food.  "Borracio" in Italian means "drunk."  I wonder if "Borio" means only slightly drunk?

Question to the psychology devotees among you:  I was just rereading what I had written, and I discovered in the fourth sentence that I had typed "revile" instead of "rival" in the phrase "to revile another novel I wrote."  Is this a Freudian typing slip suggesting that I revile the aforementioned novel because I have spent so much friggin' time on it.  Could be?

Tomorrow we are having lunch with my old friend and fraternity brother John Birchler and his wife Amy.  For those who remember TV KIDS, I was not in Beta O.  I was in Alpha Lambda Chi.  I haven't seen John in 25+ years.  My most vivid memory of Johnny B. is a vision from my back.  We were playing for the League II Flag Football Champion.  Until the final game against Alpha Pi Alpha, we were undefeated and unscored upon.  In the waning seconds of that classic tilt, I long snapped the football to Jerry Calvario who set it.  I promptly got knocked to my back knowing Johnny B was about to kick it.  From the ground I watched the 40 yard field goal attempt fly through the air and. . . split the uprights!  Bedlam! Joy! Youthful foolishness and exuberance!   I bet we'll talk about that tomorrow.

If yesterday's post seemed maudlin. . .

. . .I didn't intend it to be.  Sorry.  Actually, I meant to write about what I'm going to write about today--engineheads!  The stuff about the ladder just came out.

             "Engineheads" or "motorheads" are slang terms from my youth.  An enginehead back then was a guy who lived and breathed all things car.  An enginehead worked on his car, talked about his car, polished his car, read car magazines, talked about his car some more, and even occasionally drove it.  With an enginehead, the basic male ulterior motive for owning a car, which of course was to get girls, didn't even seem that important.

             I got thinking about engineheads because of a guy I saw at a little restaurant in Lansingburgh where I had coffee.  He was a wonderful, throwback, 60's kind of motorhead, sitting down the counter, grease ground into his knuckles, a copy of CAR AND DRIVER in front of him.  And he was even wearing engineer boots, a particularly clunky wardrobe accessory of engineheads everywhere in the 60's.  He was a big guy, too. I mean really big.  Two hundred eighty or two hundred ninety pounds style of big. Seeing this extra large motorhead sucked me back in time to the spring of 1965 just prior to my graduation from R.L. Thomas High School.

               My recollection first took me to two guys who weren't engine heads but were the biggest guys in our class.  They both topped 300 which was huge in a time when the average NFL lineman might have weighed 250 or 255.  I'll recall these two as D and R.  Although, I can't imagine them searching the internet hunting down references to their one time girth, I will still protect their identities.  This is after all a gentle kind of recollection.  D wasn't quite as big as R, but he was big, and generally in a pleasant mood.  Although, he seemed to be struggling to get where he was going sometimes because of his size, he was always smiling.  And although his front teeth were decaying and not pleasant to look at, the smile seemed always genuine.  R was a nice guy, too, and really the biggest of the bigs.  He had a Humpty Dumpty kind of build.  I remember that people loved to be in his gym class, because when we did tumbling and gymnastics, R loved the trampoline.  He wasn't bad at it, either, capable of doing a truly gigantic somersault.  But what captivated the others in his class and caused them to watch was the possibility that while bouncing, R might actually make the canvas cover of the trampoline touch the gym floor.  I recall those guys fondly and hope they are doing well.

The third big guy was the enginehead of my recollection.  I can't call him by a single initial because I would have to use D or R, one which signified his actual name, and the other a name often used in place of the actual name.  So, I'll call him EH.  In our senior year, EH sat next to me in study hall.  He brought one notebook but never did homework, because the notebook  was full of car magazines, which he read and drooled over day after day.  Often he pretended to drive, working the imaginary clutch below the desk, shifting through 4 speeds, and making the accompanying transmission/engine noises.  What I remember most is that every time he would see another enginehead, he would say, "Beat ya quarter pedal!  Beat ya quarter pedal!" and then grin broadly.  I didn't know EH well enough to ask him what that meant.  If he hadn't been such an imposing enginehead, all 260 or so pounds of him, I might have inquired.  I decided that he must have meant that his car could beat the other guy's car even if he only pressed the accelerator a quarter of the way to the floor.  Certainly, if that were true, such a car would be amazingly fast.

               Like the enginehead in the restaurant in Lansingburg, EH always wore engineer boots.  He also wore green work pant like old guys who used to be mechanics like to wear, white socks and bowling style shirts with flat tails, which were usually worn out.  I also remember his large head of greasy dark hair with the sprinkling of dandruff visible along the part.  Strangely, while most of the engineheads drove their cars to school, EH didn't.  Maybe he had really big parents who wouldn't let him, but  I've often wondered if EH's quarter pedal car was imaginary.

               So, thanks to the guy in Lansingburgh, who started, and to D and R and EH, the subjects of my journey down memory lane.  EH, I hope you are still beating folks "Quarter pedal!"