Success is a dangerous drug

Safe to say Stephen King has written things that I like. Notably The Shining, Misery, and the stories in Night Shift and Skeleton Crew. But with the volume he's put out I haven't read everything he's written. From the excerpts of it that I've seen, his latest, Holly, looks quite dire.

This article by Kat Rosenfield reviews it and looks at the recent authoritarian turn King seems to have taken. And if I may, there are a few other things that might be going on here. For one thing, having that much money would tend to isolate you, even if you don't want it too. This is the root problem of a lot of celebrities (and wannabes) who express disgust at the corona-spreading MAGA hat people they assume make up the general public. You could call this A-List Syndrome.

Addiction might play a role too. People with substance abuse issues often displace that energy onto other foci. Social media, the chance to gain millions of Twitter followers within days and have them hanging on your every word? It's basically free crack.

No place

I have to admit, I'm wary of utopians. Have been for a long time, I think, although I wasn't able to articulate why. But it comes down to this. There's making improvements, and that's very nice. But when people want to create a better world, who for? You may find that you and yours―and for that matter, people as they actually exist―don't have a place in this future.

This has played out in many areas, I think. Whether it's the idea or the immaturity of those pursuing it is debatable.

Their mark

 

The above picture shows a Minoan seal with what is known as Cretan hieroglyphs. It's rather beautiful in its way. You hear the word "hieroglyph" and right away you think of Egypt. But Crete, off the coast of Greece, had a different set. There were also hieroglyphs in Anatolia, which to us is part of Turkey but which hosted a number of civilizations before that. You could probably call some South American scripts hieroglyphs as well.

Cretan hieroglyphs later developed into Linear A and Linear B, the latter of which was the script for Ancient Greek before they adapted the Phoenician-based Greek Alphabet. I don't know if the other Old World hieroglyphs could have been influenced by the Egyptians'. Obviously a lot was already being said.

Paws for effect

Today while waiting for a bus I saw a woman carrying a small dog. White with brown splotches on the coat, with a sort of pointy snout. As I say, very small. I don't entirely know if this was a puppy or just a small breed. Quiet and well-behaved for either. 

The woman started telling me about her nephew, who had offered to get her some things from the store but apparently (according to her) was just looking for an excuse to get out of the house. Not long after she started my bus showed up, so her story got cut off. I don't regret that.

Still, she was keeping a nice dog. Have to hand that to her.

Men without hats

Current reading: The Mad Hatter Mystery by John Dickson Carr.

Carr was originally from Uniontown, Pennsylvania, which I guess would be considered a suburb or exurb of Pittsburgh. He moved to England, though, because he believed it to be the best place to write detective stories. Moved back and forth between countries a couple of times.

The Mad Hatter Mystery is one of Carr's novels featuring Dr. Gideon Fell. Fell is based on G. K. Chesterton, right down to physical appearance, i.e. heavyset with mustache and eyeglasses on a ribbon. The plot is quite entertaining. And it's a success for Carr as a mystery writer and tourist, as he gets to use the Tower of London as a crime scene.

And I call that education, sophistication

I recently came across an article that was written a couple of weeks ago about David Byrne, a personality in whom I have some interest. The author is evidently a fan too, albeit a disappointed one. And it's true that Byrne's quirky vision seems to have given way to standard wokeness in recent years.

If that's a tragedy, though, it's one that's common to life. There's always been an element of elite judgment to Byrne's work. As Collins himself notes, "The Big Country" expresses disdain towards the natives of America's heartland. It just does so in a bracingly honest way. 

The difference is that in the late 70s and 80s Byrne was a genius, and now he's someone who has been a genius in the past. The spark of divine madness isn't there now.

Again, it's an old story. When was the last great Dylan album? I mean the last that could stand with Blonde on Blonde. It could be argued that David Bowie went out on top with Blackstar, but he certainly had some fallow years. 

So maybe sometime in the future Byrne will return to form and amaze the world with something no one was expecting. Or perhaps not. How much can you fairly expect?

More of the same

Why do the same American politicians keep getting elected, even when they're discredited and/or incapacitated? Polarization, mostly. Most states and congressional districts aren't competitive as regards the major parties. That means that in almost any circumstance, people elected from the favored party can count on being reelected in the general. That being the case, their primary opponents are stymied from making the argument that they'll have a better chance in the November election. And officeholders who don't have to worry about competition from the other party or their own will just keep running until they drop.

How did the states get so polarized when most people aren't extremists? Dunno. Is there a solution? I'm not sure anyone with power even wants one.

John Fetterman beat a weak opponent in 2022 and since then has shown numerous signs of still being afflicted by the stroke he suffered in the middle of the race. The Senate's change of dress code may have been put forward to accommodate him. Whether Pennsylvania is sufficiently blue to reelect him in '28 will be revealed in the fullness of time. 

As for Lauren Boebert, she won't lose her House seat for being a fun date. There's no one in Washington with the right to expect she will be.

Carrying on

Since I came home this evening I've been having hay fever symptoms. Sniffling, sneezing, you know the drill. There is a bright side, though. At least I didn't get all allergic-like on the bus. It was a crowded bus, so you can imagine how popular I'd be.

Different look

As I believe I've mentioned before, I sit on the side with the Spanish-language TVs when I go to the laundromat. Reason being, I find the Anglophone programming―especially news―intrusive. With Spanish I'd have to concentrate to understand what's being said, so it's easier to let it slide into the background.

Just as I was readying to empty the dryer and leave tonight, I saw that a telenovela was playing. I know that these are in the same general genre as American soaps, but I noticed a difference. Daytime soaps in this country are―or in most cases, were―shot on soundstages, and tend to have a kind of underwater look. This was filmed in a real indoor location, with available light. It was a more natural look. Albeit with flawlessly pretty people, because it's still TV.

Mutant follies

David Strorm lives in a farming community in Labrador, Canada. Except that "Canada" doesn't really seem to exist anymore, and is never mentioned. Because John Wyndham's The Chrysalids isn't just a postapocalyptic novel, it's long past the apocalypse.

Humans where David lives are in an open war against mutation, be it of crops, livestock, or other humans. That means that the former two are destroyed, while the last are banished to "the Fringes" even if they're still infants. David's own father cheers on this regime from the pulpit. But David is different himself, part of a circle of telepaths. They're going to have to escape.

The Chrysalids was published in 1955. By my count this puts it eight years ahead of the creation of Marvel Comics' X-Men. I note this because its persecuted, "mutants against everyone" tone is eerily similar to what writer Chris Claremont brought to that comic in the 70s and onward. It doesn't take away from the novel's literary quality, but you can't unsee it once you've noticed.

Parallels aside, the book encourages the reader to identify with a new kind of person. Not just new, in fact, and not just different, but actively better than all those who came before. As they say, the golden age of science fiction is 15.

Something had to give

What can I say about this past week? If it hasn't been the hottest week of the summer, it's at least been hotter than any week in August. Days in the 80s and 90s, nights not much cooler. 

This afternoon we had a thunderstorm. Having been caught out in it while I was grocery shopping I can testify that the rain got thick enough so that some streets you couldn't cross without dipping your feet in a flooded curb. That might cool things down some. I'm hoping for a comfortable sleep.

Drama llamas

There were a lot of news stories in 2020, and most of them were stupid, so it was a difficult time to keep track of all the stupid news. So while I think I did read about the foundation of We See You White American Theater* at the time I'd forgotten it until reading this Tablet article yesterday. Anyway, this "Won't someone please think of the theatre kids?" organization has been in business for three years now. Since then there's been a lot of anti-white American theatre that no one will ever see because why the fuck would you? Mission accomplished I guess. 

One thing that has happened in many institutions is a kind of political treadmill. The loudest critics within and without are doctrinaire leftists, so leadership adopts by adopting their demands as its own. So the only permissible critique is from the left. But eventually these radical demands become so homogeneous that no meaningful dissent is even possible. This seems to have happened to much of American theatre. 

While you could say that conservatives have been frozen out, the truth is that in most cultural and artistic matters like this they just don't show up for the fight. They're either not comfortable with the subject or don't think it's important. More enthusiasm for spreading gay rumors about a man who will never again have to stand for election. Those are some priorities.

*No, really, that's their name.

♥

The thing about loving thy neighbor is that it's not just a nice cliché that appears in the Bible. A society that doesn't at least hold it up as an ideal is not going to survive, not as anyplace you'd want to live. 

But no political faction favors people loving each other. Quite the opposite, if you look at the most vocal. The idea has no bloc or sponsor. Which is actually often the way in important matters.

L+L

The team of Richard Levinson and William Link make up one of the more interesting behind-the-scenes creators in TV history. They worked together as fiction writers and playwrights as well, so must have had good chemistry. Among other things they were scriptwriters on Alfred Hitchcock presents, and it was on their advice that Hitch would later read the book that he'd adapt into his final movie, Family Plot. Among the works they can take credit for:

Mannix: I haven't seen much of this, but it had an interesting history. The first season had Mike Connors's title character working for an investigative firm called Intellect which relied on computers to reach its solutions. Only Mannix was an old-fashioned PI who ignored the computers and went with his own hunches. So a variation on the rationalism-vs.-romance theme that's really at the heart of classic mystery fiction. From Season 2 onwards they'd drop the computer angle and make Mannix a private detective.

Columbo: A biggie, maybe the biggie. They first created the LAPD lieutenant for a TV play starring Bert Freed as Columbo. But of course it was after Peter Falk stepped into the role that he really became the character we know and love. And actually Falk needed a practice run. He's off, a little too standard a cop, in the movie Prescription for Murder. In the follow-up, Ransom for a Dead Man, he's more disheveled and disarming. This seems like it could work.

Ellery Queen: Interestingly they took two stabs at Dannay and Lee's mystery writer detective. The first was in a TV movie starring Rat Packer Peter Lawford as Ellery, helping police track a serial killer. They used a pseudonym for this one, perhaps not approving of the changes made to their script. Their second try starred Jim Hutton (Timothy's dad) as Ellery, with David Wayne as his police inspector father. It only lasted one season plus a pilot movie, but hasn't been forgotten.

Murder She Wrote: Their last commercially successful series, as Levinson died a couple of years into production. Also features a mystery writer as the lead, making it something of a Queen companion piece. It's not a period piece, so 80s aesthetics permeate everything. (Femme fatales wear so much product in their hair that they can't even smoke!) Angela Lansbury plays Jessica Fletcher with a mix of warmth and reserve that helps to sell fairly standard crime stories. Then sometimes it pays off with a truly bonkers episode, like one where Jose Ferrer plays a hypnotist who gets murdered in a roomful of hypnotized subjects.

The pair ventured outside of the genre sometimes as well. TV movies they've scripted include That Certain Summer, with Hal Holbrook as a gay father, and The Execution of Private Slovik, a docudrama about a young GI executed for desertion in World War II. They had some impressive accomplishments.

Words upon words

Archive.org gets a lot―probably most―of its content from other video sites. YouTube seems to be a big source. Then they get removed from the other place, but the Internet Archive has them, so that's definitely a good thing. 

Of course, there are occasional snags. If you watch a movie on YouTube and it has subtitles that you don't need, you can turn them off. On Archive.org if the movie has subtitles you're stuck with them. I guess if it doesn't have them and you're prefer to see them you're sort of screwed too.

Ah well, maybe I unconsciously brushed up on my Spanish tonight.