Happy Thankerween!
November 26, 2008
At last, the next best holiday after Halloween is upon us. Every Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, millions of people across America hit the streets, debauch on cheap wine, make out, get stopped by the cops, lose a shoe, cry about something that happened in high school because they just ran into a person who remembers what happened in high school, dance to a popular song they hate, get called fat, get called “different”, incorrectly claim Native American heritage, laugh at someone less fortunate than they are, and eventually fall asleep in their cars. It’s a tradition that is as old as Thanksgiving itself–-although Thanksgiving probably came first, cause you can’t have an “eve” holiday without the holiday, now can you?
The point of Thankerween, I think, is to be a hideous human being while disguised as someone who is planning to be thankful the following day. Only, the following day, you’re too hungover and surrounded by relatives you haven’t spoken to since the last Thanksgiving to be thankful for anything other than a nap. Still, it’s a holiday that we should embrace because it is truly the most honest one of the bunch. There’s no religious connotation, no costume and no thanking. It’s pure id. It’s the time when kids come home from college and see other kids that have come home from college and both of them bond over knowing everything. It’s a time when you pull on your first sweater and go out in your home town and all the hugs you get are extra pervy. It’s really the scariest time of the year, and personally, I like to ring it in with some horror of the fantasy variety.
Last evening I started watching Black Sunday for the first time (a.k.a. The Mask of Satan). It stars the impossible looking Barbara Steele and is directed by Mario Bava. Let me say that this movie is 100% pure awesome sauce. It’s perfect for celebrating Thankerween (beginning a film on Thankerween Eve only to finish it Thankerween night is also a tradition that dates back almost 24 hours). Anyway, it’s got loads of style, is relentlessly Gothic and gloomy, and you don’t even mind that the accents are all over the place. It’s all about the sets and Barbara Steele’s eyes. I mean, check her out:
Am I right or am I right? Those holes in her face are from an “iron maiden” mask she was forced to wear two centuries earlier when it was discovered that she was all “down with the devil”. Now let me ask you, will you look this cool tomorrow after a few rounds of Jagermeister shots? Right, I didn’t think so.
Anyway, destroy the evening, cop a feel, feel a cop–just do as you like. And if you wake up with “the fear”, take solace in the fact that so many others share that same feeling. And don’t be ashamed for too long; we’re human beings and we’re a hot mess at the best of times, but that’s what makes us wild children of the night and believe me–you wouldn’t want it any other way.
Now, before I go to watch the second half of my movie, I would like to leave you with what I can only assume is a person embracing the full wondrousness of Thankerween while deciding what to wear for the evening. Ladies and gentlemen, a moment of Zentertainment you won’t soon forget. Enjoy, and good luck.
True Blood Sleeps, Life Goes On
November 24, 2008
So season one is in the can–or the coffin, I guess you could say. We’ve come to learn a few things, a few things have been left for us to debate, and summer 2009 is when we’ll get some answers. But there are a few issues I’d like to address now, and please join me if you’re so inclined. By the way, I’m going to have spoilers spilling like freshly drawn blood all over this blog, so if you haven’t seen the finale yet, be warned.
Okay, we all knew Rene was the killer, they were none to subtle about what he was fixing to do for the entire first half hour, and when he finally got to it we got to see Sam the dog save the day as Vampahhr Bill burnt to a crisp trying to join in. Sookie takes Rene out with a fairly cool shovel finish, and even though his head didn’t roll into the grave like I was hoping it would, at least we got some closure on that mystery. And what a mystery it was: escaping the murder of his sister, whom he killed because she was fang-banging, he drives a few hours to Bon Temps, learns a Cajun dialect that makes him sound different than everyone else (because that’s not going to draw attention to him, although I might have let it slide if we were supposed to think he just “sucked” at it), keeps the dialect tutorial tape and all the incriminating tapes of the women whom he killed in plain sight in the garage, starts killing again, and–here’s the best part–get’s married. Now, some of us might say it was the writers’ way of throwing us off his trail, and I guess it worked. But once he was identified, like so much of what is revealed in True Blood, we’re kind of left with a taste in our mouth like the cream used for the special sauce had gone off a little. I suppose one could say he was looking to get caught. But you know what, as a viewer, I don’t want him to be looking to get caught. I want something clever to slip him up. I guess if it weren’t for Sookie’s special powers it would have never happened because the entirety of the south is rather shit at solving crimes when they can be bothered to try, so good for you, Sookie? Err, yeah.
Which brings me to the baffling reactions of our characters to the deaths of those near and dear to them. “I’ve got bad taste in men” says Rene’s widow. Her offering flowers to Sookie head first was pretty funny, but no sooner is the man she married declared a serial killer that not only killed Sookie’s dear old gran but even one of her co-workers, she’s flirting with the veteran who thinks she’s “the bomb”. Not a single accusation of being a “dumb-ass”, not one question as to why the evidence was so easy to find even a little kid could do it (literally), nothing. So say “forgiving and forgetting” is just what they do in Bon Temps. Okay, fair enough. Why couldn’t Arlene be a little twisted about this sudden development? Why wouldn’t she possibly blame Sookie for discovering her husband’s “secret”, seeing as it was vampires that drove him to be what he was? We’re not sure why he hated them so much, but I suppose vamp hate is as nonsensical and as primitive as gay-bashing, racism, and general “otherness hating”, and Ball may have been all too eager to give Rene the blade here. He’s just “bad” according to Ball, and he got what he deserved. If you ask me, we’re being shortchanged when it comes to the underlying morality in True Blood, and what we’re getting is a soap opera with vampires. Not bad when there’s nothing else on, but when morality is where the show hangs its hat, it’s hardly deeper than a bite to the neck.
Let’s move on. Sam has a history with our good Samaritan (I can’t find her name anywhere, unbelievably). She’s awfully proud of herself for having found him, although he did open up a bar named after himself. She’s granting wishes to Tara for reasons that are suspect, but at the end of the episode, we’re made to think that Sam is just really pissed about her showing up. Is she dangerous? Maybe. Can she do a mean shimmy? Apparently so. What I’m getting is that we’ve got another season coming of Sam bitching all over the bar about an itch he can’t scratch (and as a part-time dog, that’ really shouldn’t be an issue). Add to that hot prospect the fact that Jason is born again (Zzzzz), Lafayette is probably dead (most interesting character and best actor) and we’ll likely see more of bumbling cop Andy (ZZZZZ).
Whoopee.
As it stands right now, I’ve two things to look forward to in the summer: learning who killed Lafayette (the Senator? Jason? The pig?), and seeing the character of Jessica make life miserable for Bill. That’s really about it. True Blood: Season One felt very much like a writing exercise where you try and draw parallels between Vampires and “Your Favorite Scapegoat to the Ills of Society”. There were some clever bits, and there was no shortage of blood and nudity. But somewhere along the line I felt like there wasn’t enough “grit”. I know that Ball was more interested in setting the table from which we’ll feast for seasons to come, but where there’s shallow plot and sloppy character development, there needs to be an artistic point of view to balance it.
So do I stake it, or is there something residual in its effort to depict the monstrousness of humanity–a quality that makes HBO so addictive and provocative–that “glamours” me back in? So far the mysteries have been secondary to the soap, and not surprisingly, that’s cleaned them up to almost make them bland. And if it’s irritation that’s driving me to know who offed one of the better reasons to watch the show, I’m not sure that’s worth more than a future google when action resumes. I guess it all depends on the same thing that most shows go through great pains to avoid: whether there’s something better on at the time.
If I could say one thing to Alan Ball it would be this: have you even seen the opening of your own show? Because for the first time in a long time, as good as it is (and as they usually are), it really shouldn’t overshadow the stuff that follows it.
Do Vampires Dream of Eclectic Sheeple?
November 17, 2008
As I was watching True Blood: Episode 11 last night, I was struck by a particularly existential exchange between Bill and that club promoter chick–or was it LaFayette and Jason–I don’t exactly remember. Anyway, it’s not that important which conversation it was, because the entire show over the course of ten episodes has taken on the classic Philip K. Dickensian theme of human vs. non-human entity in terms of which one is really “alive”, and what we’ve come to consider as “living”. In many ways, drama sets out to level the playing field, reminding us that at times we can all be the Villain. It also reminds us that the Villain is often misunderstood, or reacting to mistreatment which has spurred his or her devious behavior. In True Blood, the vampires perceive humans as “lesser life forms”, yet we’re led to believe throughout that, because they lack a beating organ that pumps blood, they’ve got no heart.
Of course, Bill and Sookie are going out of their way to prove that ancient adage incorrect. And so is Ball, I think. He knows enough to show the good and bad sides of all of his characters, and rarely presents us with a thoroughly distilled archetype one way or the other. That’s why we begin to care for them: because they’re like us. They fuck up, just like we do. And it’s when True Blood started showing that in storyline after storyline that I started wanting to see more.
What struck me last night was either a bit of lazy writing or another concerted effort to blur the lines. Not to give too much away for those who haven’t had a chance to see the penultimate episode, but there’s a moment when Sookie confesses to Sam that she was bitterly angry at Bill for going off without any guarantee that he’ll be back. Erm…that’s not how I remember it, Sookie. Basically, Bill killed one of his own to save her, and did everything he could to let her know that he had no choice but to leave immediately to face what he’d done. It may have been several days in Bon Temps time, but in narrative time it was a only a single episode before Sookie was again trying out that dirty dog from work. People forget easily in Bon Temps. Maybe it’s the heat, I don’t know, or maybe Ball is trying to mix it up a little too much in order to push things in the direction he needs them to go.
Without looking at it too closely (something almost impossible for me, I admit) as things became even darker last night (and funnier, too–Bill’s “makee” was definitely one of the highlights of the season for me) we got a lot of mixed signals and ambiguity that made me wonder if the characters remained true enough to their essence for me to pine for them over the long, winter months. Right now, I’m sort of in mourning for two characters that won’t return (some people do just “die” die on True Blood, come to find), and the others are sticking with me in a rotating state of flummoxed flux. I do love a competent series, though, and waiting for last night’s episode to start brought back that great anticipatory feeling that I hadn’t had since BSG. Regardless of any narrative weaknesses one might clearly or not-so-clearly perceive, wanting to know “what happens next” is a powerful drug; it’s almost as powerful as “V”. Well, okay, that might be overdoing it.
Anyhow, we were dropped a bomb last night, and the coming attractions pretty much left very little doubt as to who might be behind the reign of terror in the town. And if I’m right, you’ve got a better chance of getting out alive after a debauched night at Fangtasia than you do in the comfort of some close friends. We also saw the introduction of a new character which tempts me to guess what page of mythology she comes from, and I suspect Ball will leave us with plenty to think about over the close season. I just hope he stays consistent with what we’ve seen thus far.
One more piece of business before I’m out: I’m considering producing a podcast that will consist of reviews, comments on the world of dark fiction and horror (with perhaps a little “light side” thrown in for balance), and a serially narrated story of my own original fiction. I’ve got tons of it, and I’m always writing more. There’s been a resurgence of interest in “Horror Radio” since podcasts and the like have become so popular, and I like the idea of giving my visitors (which have grown in number lately, and for which I am very grateful) a few minutes of drama to stew over every week like they used to do back in the day. As someone who does lots of voice-overs and impressions and so forth, it would be a fun way to get my ideas out. Now I’d like to know what you think. Comments below or by email would be muchly appreciated.
That’s all for now. Tune in next Monday – or earlier, I haven’t decided yet – and I hope you have an exciting week of stories to look forward to. As for me, I’ve got to go plan some shows.
A Sucker for Sookie? Nearly.
November 10, 2008
Having sat through six back-to-back episodes of HBO’s new Southern Vamp-Gothic series “True Blood”, I am reasonably pleased to report that there’s more to this Alan Ball infection confection (based on the Sookie Stackhouse book series by Charlaine Harris ) than I first believed. But we’re not home and safe yet, tenderloins, so don’t you put away that garlic just yet.
Let me first say that I’ve been guilty of bailing out on a number of TV shows before returning to them with my tail between my legs. Ball’s “Six Feet Under”, his first foray into the ultra-permissive theater of HBO, had me stifling a gag reflex at every melodramatic touch. There also seemed to be a statement being made about everything from gay sex to family dysfunction in every single narrative beat. It felt forced and self-righteous, and I began to wonder if Ball had any idea that other people besides himself lead real lives where some of these issues were serious, everyday matters and that he wasn’t being revolutionary and brave simply by dramatizing them in as graphic a manner as he could. At some point I was expecting one of his more depressed and neurotic puppets to start humping the scenery. To say the least, I switched off and waited for “The Sopranos”. Being from Jersey, that rung a little more true, even if it also tread a little heavily now and again.
Then, several years later, I returned. I’m not even sure why. Prompted by nothing whatsoever I switched it on and began to notice the color schemes of the various scenes. Then for some reason, the dialog began to hum and refresh like a finely tuned water pick. Maybe my life had gotten more interesting over the gap years, or maybe the show had loosened up a tad. Whatever it was, I started tuning in from the first minute it kicked off, and once I saw what was probably one of the most hilarious opening death scenes wherein a family man accidentally runs over his own head while trying to retrieve the paper without leaving his SUV, I got it. The uncomfortable high humor, the tragic and twisted honesty, the unbridled passion and love – I got it all. It became my favorite hour of TV, and yes, I had all the air crushed from my lungs when the last episode showed me it had been holding my heart in the mortuary refrigerator the whole time and then proceeded to bury it in an avalanche of blessed and perfectly pitched melancholy. Damn you, Alan Ball. I’ve not been as tough in any way, since.
So after loving American Beauty, and now Six Feet Under, you could imagine my delight when learning that Ball was at it again, and this time with a series about vampires. I could scarcely believe my good fortune. It had taken me at least a year to properly mourn the Fisher family, and even though a part of me still wanted them all to come back to life (except for maybe Billy, who nearly drove me and Brenda to will ourselves to death), serving up a tasty portion of the undead was the next best thing. Anna Paquin only sweetened the pot. Sure, vampires had been done to death by then, but I knew that Alan would find a way to steal my soul again. And there I was, leaving the doors and windows unlocked, waiting as one does for it to happen.
The opening, as are most of HBO series’ openings, was as appropriately interesting and mouth-watering as the food photos on a Friday’s menu. But once I took my first taste, I spit it right back out. I was horrified, alright, but not from the danger of a vampire’s hunger, but instead from the thick “I do declare” southern dialog that rolled off the character’s tongues – not like freshly withdrawn blood – but more like warm chocolate milk. It was Tennessee Williams as envisioned by the Podunk Senior Center doing a play written by third graders from Podunk Elementary. And then came the nudity and sex, slathered over top like extra butterscotch on a butterscotch sundae with butterscotch morsels. In short, I thought it was a gratuitous mess that seemed to have no point but to present yet another allegory for fringe societies done with a paint-by-numbers grid. I’m mean it: I was confused, and more than a little pissed-off.
Shaking off my initial reaction and recalling how I’d made the mistake of bailing too early before, I got stuck in and waited for the second episode. Then the third. By the middle of that one, I’d switched over to something else and to be quite honest, forgot the damn thing was even on. I didn’t want to admit to myself – someone who had taken a year to catch on to the wondrousness that is “Battlestar Galactica” – that this time I’d gotten it right. True Blood was just bad. Ball had failed me. Finally. Badly.
So after a few weeks of saying as much in as many online horror forums as I could find, I began to listen again to those who had agreed with my initial reservations but had stuck it out and had come to find that there was something here besides hokey blood-sucking humor and overwrought performances. There were “surprises” apparently, and things had taken a turn for the bizarre. Some had even mentioned that, despite the wicked humor, they’d felt “disturbed”. And as I took it to mean in a good way, I decided to take the weekend, retrace my steps and take the show into another few episodes. And that’s what I did. Having gone all the way to episode 6, I’m hear to tell those who may be curious about this series a secret…
…the magic number is 5. I’ve yet to go back to SFU and see if the same holds true there, but it would appear that by episode 5 I forgot I was watching a new show and started to feel something for some of the characters. A good sign is being a little annoyed with the cumbersome way one needs to download the next episode in order to keep the train rolling. And I can tell you now, I was annoyed – take that to mean in a good way.
So, I’ve three more episodes to go before I’m all caught up, and I reckon I’ll be watching at least one of ‘em tonight. Possibly two if I get started early on my supper. I still don’t know if I’d pay two bits for a peek at the rest, but daggone-it, somethin’s tellin’ me I need to stick it out fer a coupla more.
*spits*
Hmm…maybe a bloody mary whilst viewin’ would spice things up a notch.
Whatcha Watchin’?
November 3, 2008
I’ve been very busy writing and rewriting and traveling, so my entries have taken a hit to say the least. It’s given me time to decide how my “live writing experiment” has been going, and early reports suggest I’m still getting more hits for Emile Hirsch (there goes another one!) and freckles than for my chapters. After checking my blog stats for while I was inactive, I stayed pretty even in terms of visits. I would love to say that’s because people kept checking back as part of their routine, but there’s no real way of knowing. I was hoping to see some very low numbers, and I did, but then I’d get a spike that made me think that the numbers during the sWitch series was largely due to Speed Racer (Ding!) and fetish sexuality. Hmm…maybe there’s an idea in there, somewhere.
Despite a lack of offers to help promote my stories or a landslide in the sales of my last book, I have to say the experiment taught me a few things I wasn’t expecting, and that those things may turn out to be more valuable than I’d hoped.
For one, committing to publish three chapters a week forced me to write at least three chapters a week. As it was, I wrote ahead and was done a good three weeks prior to the final entry. That was a pleasant surprise, and despite a longer rewrite process to get it from “blogtastic” to “proseworthy”, I think my writing benefited greatly from the experience.
As I alluded to above, writing for a blog first gave me the freedom to stretch a little. My tone seemed more accessible, and my style adjusted to be more suited for shorter attention spans. I learned with HorrorCon that some people who derive their written entertainment from online sites and so forth don’t always like to dig in. They want it out there and up front, and they don’t like to wait for the goods. So, I gave them the goods, or at the very least tried to. But where I relied on a photo to get my readers going and a lot of “telling” rather than “showing”, when I went into revise mode I had to tweak things to fit the rules of the literary elders who would throw my manuscript away if I kept it the way it was. I did choose to keep the prologue-heavy, back story-dumping of my “Meet the Characters” entries, but I did not because I thought that was the only way to get their stories across, but rather because they were well-written, set the tone well and were fun. Fun, I decided, was something I wanted to survive the transition, and for now they stay.
Also, I found writing in more easily digestible chunks of 1,500 – 2,000 words a great way to maintain momentum in my narrative. At first I was a little wary that the story would feel shoe-horned or wedged into a style that was a little too monotonous, but I’m not sure that’s the case anymore. Monotony comes from bad writing, not chapters of uniform length. And by “uniform” I mean varying between the word count I mentioned above. Sometimes it was below 1.5k, and a few times towards the end it poked its ambitious eyes above 2k. In rewriting, those numbers were invisible since I pasted the chapters into a doc one after the other, so I’m sure the uniformity issue is even less pronounced.
Lastly, I think my style was made to be even more pithy and direct. I always prided myself in capturing an image or feeling in a very short amount of time by trying to get to the essence quickly and as cleverly as I could. I’m not a writer who wants to paint a hyper-realistic portrait so that the reader is given all the info they need to see my vision, but rather I want to spark the reader’s own creative juices and make them do a little work. Again, the word is “fun” – as long as they’re being entertained, they’ll help move the story along. So by not wasting time hovering over every crack in the steps that lead to Hellhole’s front door, I floated a few interesting details about the sounds made when scaling its rickety heights and let my visitors fill in the rest as per their experiences. Also, I never really describe my main characters. I give you plenty of inner qualities by describing their circumstances or attitudes, and based on that information I hoped to bring them to life in your mind. If I told you that, because Ken Sr. was ruminating on the similarities between softball and and the Hadrogen Collider, he missed an important fly ball and was subsequently left out of an invitation to play golf with some of his teammates, I’m counting on the reader to conjure an image of a man, not in the best shape of his life and possibly less athletic and “cool” than he fancies himself to be. By doing that, I’m not relying on any literary archetypes, but allowing you to pluck someone from your own lives who may be something of an unusual character who falls a lot, but isn’t afraid to get back up despite making a bit of a fool of himself.
So all in all, I feel I know how Scott Norton writes and what my readers should come to expect from one of my books. I’m into dark fiction with a literary bent that is both heavy on voice (considered to be presentation fiction, as in “Catcher in the Rye”) and sharp on imaginative detail. You also get a heavy dose of humor with my stuff, but sometimes I’m just setting you up to be terrified. And it’s my brand of humor – a bit twisted but always character-based and heartening, kind of like a very sour cocktail with a little too much of the hard stuff hidden by the taste – not garden-variety, broad slapstick that wobbles on the surface like a cheap, department store raft. My rafts have holes, and they’re likely drifting to dark and revealing shores.
As a final note, I want to invite more participation to the blog. I want this place to be about readers and their lives as well. I want to know what people think about fiction and popular culture and, hell, pretty much anything. I’ll still offer my stories and anything else I can think of that might entertain you, but it would be pretty cool to get some conversations going. Because if I’ve learned anything about writing, you can’t do it worth a goddamn unless you’ve got the energy of other souls percolating your waters.
So I ask you, what are you watching on TV? What’s really surprising you? What’s letting you down, and why? Personally, I’ve been trawling for good movies and waiting anxiously for “Battlestar Galactica” to resume. I’m also planning on giving HBO’s “True Blood” another shot by starting from the top with On–Demand. And you can laugh, but reality TV is one of my guiltier pleasures, the brasher the better. I’m definitely going to check out “Estate of Panic“, where contestants win prizes by being tormented in a haunted house of sorts. Nice.
And thanks to all who did read sWitch. Knowing you were out there and chiming in now and again made all the difference. Next up, I’ve got a trilogy of short stories I want to do with the dominant theme being demonic possession. And I plan on seriously fucking with your heads, this time.
