gwynnega

I am hennaing my hair on a pleasant Los Angeles afternoon. We may actually get some badly-needed rain on Tuesday. It's been three weeks since my day job ended, and I'm still adjusting to my new working-at-home schedule, but I'm enjoying it more and more. (This week I will attempt to purchase an ergonomic office chair.)

Last night I watched The Hunger (1983) on TCM. Somehow I didn't see it when it came out or any time in the past 22 years. Visually it could not possibly be more eighties. Red lipstick! Black veils! Sunglasses and sunglasses and more sunglasses! Billowy white drapes! Fluttering doves! (There's a hilarious moment when the shit is hitting the fan and there's a shot of the doves walking across the floor like, "We're outa here!") My friend Carolyn said Susan Sarandon looks like she's in the Human League in this film.

I'd seen Dick Smith's name in the credits, and sure enough, David Bowie's Old Man prosthetic makeup is very similar to that which Smith originally designed for Jonathan Frid for Dark Shadows back in 1967.

I was particularly struck by the title sequence, featuring Bauhaus performing "Bela Lugosi's Dead." It must've launched a thousand Goths in its day (though for the first thirty seconds or so, my reaction was, OMG, the eighties.)

Catherine Deneuve makes an undeniably cool vampire. She and Bowie have chemistry; her chemistry with Susan Sarandon is off the charts. I would've liked the film better if it had ended with Deneuve and Sarandon living happily ever after (or at least for a century or so), but alas, no.

It would be fun to see The Hunger on a double bill with Only Lovers Left Alive.

It is Henna Day, and I am drinking hot cocoa on what passes for a winter day in Los Angeles (high temperature in the low 60s). We had a massive storm the other night, and my power went out for about seven hours--but the power stayed off a lot longer in nearby Los Feliz, so I was lucky. We needed the rain, of course. We're supposed to have more this week, but not in such a dramatic form.

Last night I saw The Ghost of Frankenstein for the first time in about forty years. The first of the not-so-good Universal Frankenstein films, it still has a lot to recommend it, especially Bela Lugosi reprising the role of Igor (by far my favorite role of his). Also, Dwight Frye pops up uncredited in one scene as an Angry Villager and demands that the other Angry Villagers bomb the castle (which they do). Lon Chaney Jr. is not good as the monster, and Cedric Hardwicke is not particularly great as Dr. Frankenstein's other son (i.e., the one who isn't Basil Rathbone). Weirdly, they throw in some clips of Colin Clive and Dwight Frye from the original Frankenstein (1931)--but splice in footage of Lon Chaney as the monster on the table. Then a few scenes later, Cedric Hardwicke plays the titular ghost of Frankenstein, but of course he looks nothing like the already-dead Colin Clive. Towards the end of the film, Igor's brain gets transplanted into the monster's body, so Bela Lugosi can (badly) play the monster in the next movie.

Late last night TCM showed The Beast With Five Fingers, which I'd been wanting to see since sovay wrote it up, so I DVR'd it and will watch it tonight.

It is Henna Day, on a pleasant (but not autumnal enough for my liking) Sunday afternoon in LA. We had another heat wave, followed by a dip into autumnal-for-LA temperatures, and now we're somewhere in between, but at least the nights are cooler. Meanwhile I keep eating pumpkin products from Trader Joe's. My favorite new pumpkin item: their mini pumpkin-and-ginger ice cream sandwiches.

I'm working on my book of poems based on horror movies etc. and trying to figure out how to revise my novel Out of Uniform. Last night I watched Fright Night (1985) (after sovay posted about it). What an eighties fest that film is! I watched it mostly because Roddy McDowall's in it, and he's marvelous--but I hadn't made the connection that Chris Sarandon, who plays the vampire, is the guy who played Leon Shermer in Dog Day Afternoon (one of my favorite movies) ten years earlier. So that was an extra treat.

I have finished and sent off the revisions to Can't Find My Way Home (AKA the Jo book). This is the fourth draft. It's 360 pages, 101K words.

Whew.

In other news, it is broiling in Los Angeles, which is normal (though annoying) for early September. Yesterday I finally watched Only Lovers Left Alive and absolutely loved it.

Here is the audio for the Life of Mary Shelley panel I participated in with Theodora Goss and James Morrow at Readercon.

Now I will eat arugula pizza and watch Planet of the Apes movies on TCM to celebrate novel draft completion.

Today is Henna Day. We've been having summer heat, but this morning was overcast. It even rained in other parts of town, but not here in Silver Lake, alas.

Yesterday I drove to broiling Glendale for another trip to Brand Bookshop (which is supposed to close in about a month). Their stock is now selling for 70% off, with no tax. I browsed while Clara Schumann and Mozart played on the radio, and bought books by Sylvia Townsend Warner (the Virago edition of Summer Will Show), Madeleine L'Engle and Karen Joy Fowler. I really wish the store weren't closing. Also, I wish it were autumn already.

It is Henna Day, on a warmish Los Angeles day. We have had a spate of unseasonably cool (for us) weather, and are apparently about to have a mini heatwave. So long as we keep not having more earthquakes, I'm okay with this.

Once again I have not posted here in nearly a month, though I keep meaning to post about books. A few books I have recently finished reading:

Hangsaman by Shirley Jackson. This is early Jackson, and she hasn't quite worked out her style yet. The novel (mostly set at a college supposedly based on Bennington) doesn't quite work as a narrative, especially compared to the ultra-propulsive style of, say, The Haunting of Hill House. Weirdly, the book suddenly kicks into Quintessential Jackson, with bonus paranoia, in the last thirty pages or so. The book is peppered with some amazing set-pieces, like this one about the posters at a movie theater: "One of the pictures showed a glorious scene between a man in a cowboy hat and uncomfortable pistols, who backed against a door to face a darker, equally weaponful villain; in the background a damsel wrung her hands and all three seemed to turn anxiously to the camera, which alone could justify the violent emotions they ravished themselves to feel. It was plain from the picture that it was near the end of the day; the sun was setting dramatically outside the backdrop window; the hero had the look of one who would shortly remove his guns and his spurs and go home in a car he had bought but could not afford; the heroine seemed to be thinking, under her beautiful look of fear and concern, that perhaps she should keep the children out of school until this chicken-pox scare was over." (Weaponful is my new favorite word.)

Death in Midsummer and Other Stories by Yukio Mishima (loaned to me by Lyman). "Patriotism," in which an army officer and his wife have sex for the last time and then commit ritual suicide, is probably the story that stood out most for me, though I found it hard to read. A story I liked a lot was "Onnagata," about the infatuation of a kabuki actor for the clueless director of his latest play.

The Little Disturbances of Man by Grace Paley. I am a huge fan of Paley's later short story collections (Enormous Changes at the Last Minute and Later the Same Day), but in the past I bounced off her first book (aside from a few stories like "Goodbye and Good Luck"). I finally made it through the whole book, and I see why I bounced off. Unlike Shirley Jackson, Paley nailed down her style early on, but it took her awhile to fully figure out her subject matter and, maybe more importantly, her approach toward her subjects. Or maybe it's that Paley succeeds most fully as a writer of middle-aged and old characters, rather than young ones.

Books I'm reading at the moment include: Hild by Nicola Griffith, Chimes at Midnight by Seanan McGuire, and The Baron in the Trees by Italo Calvino.

...and apparently I haven't posted here since last Henna Day. Yesterday I had about five inches cut from my hair, so Henna Day required about half as much henna as it did last month.

This weekend I've also been working on Jo book revisions, trying to finish up a prose poem, and reading The Fifth Child, which my friend Lyman loaned me. It's the first Doris Lessing I've read in awhile, and it reminds me that I've never read the Martha Quest series and would still like to.

Last night I watched The Heiress on TCM--an adaptation of Washington Square from 1949, with Olivia de Havilland, Montgomery Clift, and Sir Ralph Richardson. It was excellent, though I suspect Henry James rolled over in his grave at the way the end of the story was changed so that Catherine Sloper gets to have bravura revenge on Morris Townsend.

It is Henna Day, on a pleasantly warm LA December day. I have a neck ache, but the cool henna on my head seems to be helping.

Apparently I haven't posted on LJ since last Henna Day. Last time, Doris Lessing had just died, and now it's Peter O'Toole, who I adored.

Last night I went to a lovely holiday party at Carolyn and Dave's house. Their cat Nora dealt fairly well with her house being full of people.

Here is a link to a gorgeous song about infinity that my friend Steve Gregoropoulos wrote and performed:

Infinity

I've been having a lovely long weekend, in spite of ridiculously hot and humid weather. (I can handle dry heat, but humid heat just does not work in Los Angeles!) The weather makes me feel like staying inside, but I'm planning to drive to Stories Bookstore this afternoon (though episode four of Orange Is the New Black is calling my name).

On Friday night I went to the Echo to see reunion sets by Velouria (dear friends of mine who comprised one of my favorite local bands in the '90s) and Popdefect. In the process I saw a ton of old friends and acquaintances. The club was too hot and too loud, but it was a lot of fun.

It is Henna Day, on a warmish day (while a Gilmore Girls rerun airs on SOAPnet and I mourn the cancellation of Bunheads). Though the weather hasn't been too broiling, we're having un-LA-like humidity, which I hate. I'm dreaming of autumn, though autumn weather doesn't usually show up in LA until the end of October.

I've been working on the Jo book and other writing projects, and tackling a massive weekend to-do list. Also I've been rewatching the Dark Shadows Ghost of Quentin Collins storyline, in which David and Amy become creepy possessed children à la The Turn of the Screw. Good times.

As usual, the weekend is just too darn short.