gwynnega

So burger_eater is doing a month of book giveaways to celebrate the release of his novel Game of Cages. One day he featured a book I just had to try to win: Barnabas Collins in a Funny Vein. That's right, a Barnabas Collins joke book, from 1969. By all accounts one of the worst joke books in the world! And...

I won the book! Hooray!! So now I can groan to such groaners as:

"Did Barnabas tell you abou the sexy ghost?
She wore a mini-sheet."

and

"I've heard that Barnabas is fond of RH-type blood jokes. Are you sure that he is?
I'm positive."

Thanks, burger_eater!!

Today I went to the Vista Theatre for a special screening of House of Dark Shadows (1970), the kickoff of this weekend's Dark Shadows Festival. I had worried I wouldn't find parking and gave myself lots of extra time for that. I easily found parking on a side street and then had to stand in line for over an hour in the broiling sun, ugh. (My shoulders are very sunburnt.)

Eventually Jonathan Frid arrived and put his handprints in the cement outside the movie theater. Then we finally got to go inside, and I had a great wide-rangingly geeky conversation with a couple from Chicago before the film started.

It was great fun to get to see House of Dark Shadows on a big screen in a movie house full of like-minded Dark Shadows fans, though, as I'd recalled, the film lacks the charm of the TV series. In its attempt to shoehorn a sprawling soap opera into a 90-minute film, the movie feels like a weird short-hand alternate universe of the TV show. It looks beautiful, and it has a polish the TV show lacks--no one stumbles over their lines--but the story moves at light speed, to the expense of the characters. ( 40 year old spoilers )

Tomorrow I'm off to Burbank for the Dark Shadows Festival!

Meanwhile, in Ryan's Hope-ville: the Writers' Strike of 1981 episodes have begun to reair on Soapnet. Goodbye subtle writing, hello bizarre melodrama!

It is Henna Day, and the henna is on my head. It's another beautiful day in LA.

Welovesoaps.net posted some classic clips of Jonathan Frid, including an amusing blooper scene in which a fly won't leave Barnabas's forehead alone, and one in which Barnabas gloats over the downfall of the Satanically foppish Nicholas Blair.

I've been rewatching Dark Shadows and reading Seanan McGuire's A Local Habitation, which is a real page-turner. I hadn't been reading much while plugging away at the final chapters of the Jo book, so it's a real treat to spend the weekend with a book.

It is the Monday after my birthday and the novel-finishing, and daylight savings time is laying me low. Also, it is deeply weird not to be working on the Jo book (though I have various short writing projects to keep me busy).

This weekend amid the novel-finishing and birthday celebrations, I watched An Englishman in New York, the recent companion film to The Naked Civil Servant. It's an utter joy to see John Hurt reprise the role of Quentin Crisp.

Also I watched the beginning of Jonathan Frid's run on Dark Shadows. In Frid's first full episode, he takes no prisoners. Even though I know he hadn't actually wanted the role of Barnabas Collins when he was asked to audition, he plays it like he's saying, "Six-week role, eh? We'll see about that!" (Barnabas was supposed to have a brief stint on the show and be killed off, but his character became too wildly popular.) In one twenty-minute episode, he (and the Dark Shadows writers) sets the precedent for the conflicted vampire trope that's been mined ever since.

Another bravura performance is John Karlen's turn as Willie Loomis, the former badass heel and would-be rapist who gets cut down to size by Barnabas (although Barnabas only bites him--repeatedly--on the arm!). Hilarious to see all the people of Collinsport who'd hated his guts saying, "Wow, are you okay, Willie?", when he's too sick and scared to want to fight or intimidate anybody. Karlen channels his inner Dwight Frye to great effect. I'm really loving rewatching these episodes.

Here's part of that first full Jonathan Frid episode:

...although I am trying to stave off a headache. I'm also longing to get back to the chapter 26 revisions. I managed to write a fairly good draft of chapter 26 this weekend, and today at lunch I began scribbling all over the printout. I've also been figuring out a lot of elements for the Very Challenging Chapter 27 (the final chapter of the novel). I am so close to the end of the book! But there will be a lot of work before I get there.

I am also one disc away from having watched all of Dark Shadows (aside from the two feature movies, which aren't on DVD yet, and a handful of episodes I missed due to defective Netflix discs). That's 1,245 episodes! I was delighted last night to see the first appearance of Barnabas Collins's portrait (a couple of weeks before Willie Loomis opens Barnabas' coffin and gets bitten--on the wrist, as apparently a male vampire biting a guy on the neck was verboten on 1967 TV!).

Thank you, glimmergirl, for the snowflake cookie!!

***

This evening I watched Dexter and more early Dark Shadows (oh noes, the crazed caretaker kidnapped Vicki in the Old House!). Then I wrote about 1000 words of chapter 21. Now I must try to sleep, because I have to get up way too early tomorrow...

Chapter 19 of the Jo book is being a bit recalcitrant tonight, possibly because I'm gearing up for World Fantasy. Cons always seem to sidetrack my writing brain a bit, beforehand and afterwards.

I've been watching the Dark Shadows compilation DVD The Vampire Curse, which mostly deals with Barnabas Collins' origin story (i.e., how Angelique cursed him with vampirism and made his beloved Josette marry the wrong guy and fall off a cliff). They did a good job of boiling the story down to essentials, though a few of my favorite bits are missing, such as the aftermath of the Barnabas/Angelique wedding, with Angelique pouring champagne that turns out to be blood, and the ghost of Jeremiah burying Angelique alive. I love how the compilation starts out with the 1795 story, which concludes with Barnabas being chained in his coffin, and then caps that off with Barnabas being freed from his coffin in 1967 (though the story aired in the opposite order).

I finished reading Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey (via dailylit.com) and Edna O'Brien's House of Splendid Isolation, which I found quite impressive aside from one shockingly clunky plot point towards the end.

Meanwhile, a piece of the inner workings of my dishwasher seems to have snapped off. Weird.

Noveling ate a large chunk of my weekend, and the Jo book kept me awake last night suggesting edits. Ugh, I hate Sunday night insomnia. Chapter 17's not done, but it's in pretty good shape. I should be able to move on to chapter 18 by some point next weekend.

This weekend also included Dark Shadows viewing. In 1971, nearing cancellation, the show turned into a bizarre blend of Wuthering Heights and "The Lottery," with Jonathan Frid and Lara Parker playing star-crossed lovers Heathcliff Bramwell and Catherine.

Yesterday afternoon I met up with an old friend at Skylight Books to see Eileen Myles read from her new book, The Importance of Being Iceland: Travel Essays in Art.

Also this weekend I rewatched Truffaut's The Story of Adele H., which figures in the Jo book. As I'd remembered, it's a beautiful downer of a film. It reminded me that I once wrote a poem based on various Truffaut films after binging on a TCM Truffaut marathon sometime in the late 90s. I looked up the poem, which was published on the Exquisite Corpse website, and discovered I still liked it. So here it is:


an American ending


their heads from side
to side on pillow
faces gleaming with sweat
hair attractively mussed
Isabelle Adjani falling in a heap
& those two English girls
tubercular & wearing dark glasses
"love doesn't complicate life
but the uncertainty of love"
apparently most women in love
have guns in France
the woman next door
shooting Gérard Depardieu
& herself after sex

unlike Truffaut
shooting another movie
or me
writing another poem
because of love
or in spite of it

Henna: On my head. Very drippy. Twenty more minutes until I wash it out.

Noveling: Still working on chapter 15, but the chapter's getting close to done, I think.

Torchwood miniseries: Finished watching it last night. Well-done, gripping, but not really my cup of tea.

Dark Shadows: Julia Hoffman managed to reattach the Malevolent Head and the headless body of the decapitated warlock Judah Zachery, but when he came back to life, he was engulfed in flames! (Weirdly, the Head actor was still credited as "The Head" even when he was reattached to the body.) Not sure if that's the end of him.

Ryan's Hope: Tomorrow's ep #1 is where this icon comes from!

Weather: Summer summer summer. I'm taking refuge in air conditioning. The Garage Kitty is doubtless napping under a car and waiting for the sun to go down.