Trailer of the Week: The Dead Zone (1983)

Ah, for the good old days when Hollywood chose to concentrate on movies involving nice cheery topics...

Sueños (Dreams)

I usually don't try to read books in my dreams -- perhaps because I do enough of that while I am awake.

However, I have seen dead people in some of my dreams. No, seriously. After certain relatives and close friends have died, I had a tendency to see them in my dreams. I tried talking to them but fortunately they never talked back. Or should that be unfortunately?...

And no, I did not write all that just to win the "oddest blogger on the Internet" award.

However, I'll be sure to let you all know if I ever see Nick Andros in my dreams...

The Good Boyfriend: Adam



Author Stephen King once wrote a short story about a person who had the power to know exactly what his potential love interest wanted -- a power which hypothetically should have made him the ideal boyfriend. However, it did not make him a good person. And eventually his would-be girlfriend caught on to that.

That said...

I was surprised to admit I liked the 2009 movie Adam. After seeing the rather cartoonish way Asperger's syndrome was depicted on Boston Legal -- the show initially showed its sufferer in a sympathetic light and then gradually began more and more to play his affliction for laughs -- I found this movie and its more realistic approach to be a bit of fresh air.

There was a scene in it where it threatened to turn into a bad Lifetime movie -- or worse yet, a bad remake of Happy-Go-Lucky. The ending was disappointing but at least it was more believable than a more audience-pleasing finale would have been.

I must confess that for the longest time I could not help seeing this movie as just one long variation on the old joke about how all women pick up on things instinctively and all men have to have stuff explained to them. After all, we've all seen bad sitcoms in which that same joke is repeated over and over again. And the movie was at its best when it stayed away from that territory.

Quote of the Week

I write fantasies, but draw from the world I see. If that sometimes hurts, it’s because the truth usually does. John Steinbeck was accused of gratuitous ugliness when he wrote about the migration of the Okies to California in The Grapes of Wrath, even of trying to foment a domestic revolution, but most of his accusers -- like those who made similar accusations against Upton Sinclair when he wrote about the corrupt putrescence of the meat-packing industry in The Jungle -- were people who preferred fairy-tales and happily-ever-afters. Sometimes the truth of how we live is just ugly, that’s all. But to turn aside from these truths out of some perceived delicacy, or to give in to the idea that writing about violence causes violence, is to embrace hypocrisy. In Washington, hypocrisy breeds politicians. In the arts, it breeds pornography.
--Stephen King, speech at the 1999 Vermont Library Conference

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Stephen King!

AKA Stephen Edwin King.

Born September 21, 1947.

One of my all-time favorite horror writers has a birthday today.

Quote of the Week

Hemingway and Fitzgerald didn’t drink because they were creative, alienated, or morally weak. They drank because it’s what alkies are wired up to do. Creative people probably do run a greater risk of alcoholism and addiction than those in some other jobs, but so what? We all look pretty much the same when we’re puking in the gutter.
--Stephen King, On Writing

Quote of the Week

Life isn’t a support system for art. It’s the other way around.
--Stephen King, On Writing

Fantasy Quote of the Week

I got enough to worry about without getting into who sleeps with who.
--Stu Redman in Stephen King's The Stand

Resolution of the Week

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C.L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

I will not think of C. L. Moore's "Vintage Season."

Nor will I think of Stephen King's The Stand.

Or Connie Willis' Doomsday Book.

I am kinda glad our local drugstore has a supply of Tamiflu. At least it has right now.

However, I don't think WHO's decision to change the name of a certain disease is going to help matters.

All the Classic Horror Novels That I Have Read, Part One

1. Frankenstein (1818) -- Mary Shelley.

The one that started it all -- at least, historically speaking. Ironically, I never read the whole thing until recently but I do remember reading the plot synopsis in my parent's Masterplots collection over and over again.

2. The Portrait of Dorian Gray (1890) -- Oscar Wilde.

Another book I've read recently. (I did read Robert Louis Stevenson's "The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" in high school, but unfortunately, it's technically a novella, not a novel, so I can't really put it on this list.)

3. Dracula (1897) -- Bram Stoker.

Another one that I've only recently read all the way through.

4. The Invisible Man (1897) -- H. G. Wells.

Horror novel or science fiction? You decide. One of the few classic horror novels I've read in high school.

5. The Werewolf of Paris (1933) -- Guy Endore.

Yes, I already mentioned it on another list, but it really is a good novel.

6. Conjure Wife (1943) -- Fritz Leiber.

One of the first novels of contemporary horror. Also the inspiration of at least two movies.

7. I Am Legend (1954) -- Richard Matheson.

Another co-mingling of science fiction and horror. This book has been ripped off so often it's a wonder Matheson gets any royalties at all.

8. Psycho (1959) -- Robert Bloch.

Yes, the novel that inspired the Alfred Hitchcock movie of the same name. Definitely different -- and more realistic -- than the movie. Save for that decapitation scene.

9. Carrie (1974) -- Stephen King.

The first book from some obscure writer named Stephen King. Whatever happened to him?

10. Ghost Story (1979) -- Peter Straub.

One of the best -- and most artistically ambitious -- horror novels I've ever read. Also way better than its cinematic namesake.

This Week's Excerpt from The Book of the Incredibly Obvious

You are not your shoes.

Nor are you your khakis.

Nor are you your Ipod, your laptop, your website or your blog.

You are not your stuff.

Perhaps a character in Stephen King's Cujo said it best: people who merely buy stuff aren't necessarily better than people who can actually make stuff.

Lies, Lies, Lies, Lies, Yeah

I've been trying to resist the opportunity to comment on the recent James Frey scandal if for no other reason than (1) I haven't yet read his book A Million Little Pieces, and (2) I have no intention of reading it.

However, one can read only so many variations on the old “why make a big deal out of James Frey's lies when Bush lied worse?” line that has been going around the Internet before one feels compelled to say something. After all, I'm no Bush fan but I don't quite see what his lies have to do with Frey's. Granted, Frey's lies are by no means as terrible as the ones that provoked the current Iraqi War, but that doesn't mean that they're insignificant.

Any thought I might have had to the contrary was promptly banished by this op-ed piece I read by author Stephen King, who makes his case against Frey more eloquently than I can ever dream of doing.

28 Calls Later

Stephen King has a new novel out about the evils of cell phones. A fact that I can't help but find ironic since my friends and family have been bugging me to get a cell phone for years.