Thomas Burchfield: A Curious Man

Notes from a Cat Whisperer: Part I

2012-01-21T13:25:00.000-08:00

Some people—namely my wife—callme the . . . Cat Whisperer

[Cue music sting by Ennio Morricone]

I usually work like this: I walkinto your house. I meet your cat. An hour later, I stroll out with cat tuckedhappily under my arm, while you shake your head in wonder: “But he doesn’t dothat with anybody.” (Or, “You stole my cat, you sonof a bitch.”)

Sometimes, the little goofballscome running after me, weaving between my legs, whipping their tails, chirpingat me not to leave: “Stay, Big Two-legged Cat, stay! Pet me more! Make the kittyfeel good!”

And I rarely rarely feed them either. You don’t haveto feed a cat to earn its fierce affection, to have it hugging your lap and staringup at you like you’re God (which to them you are). You just have to knowhow to work the little varmints. Like any human baby, they’re suckers for atender touch and a soft voice. A lot of cats are pushovers andsaps if you know what you’re doing. They’re babies, really. They have no taste in people.

A theory: Cats like the sound ofhuman voices, much as we like their purring. Maybe it’s one of the first stepswe took in building our relationship thousands of years ago in the Middle East.

So: talk to your cat! Even ifyou’re at a loss for words, “blah blah Fido blah blah” will be enough to drawtheir enraptured attention: “Oh boy oh boy, they’re talkin’ to me, yup! They’retalkin’ to me!” Doesn’t matter what you say.

BUT NOT ALL CATS . . . .

Now, a qualification: I’ve met afair number of cats with whom I’ve failed to bond in any way. Per mynon-scientific experience, I’d say these cats are truly asocial, likelyunintelligent, animals.

For example, purebred felinessuch as Siamese and Persians (“throw-pillow cats,” I call those) seem to fallinto this category; they lie there and buzz like a dial tone, barely conscious,not interactive. Siamese owners swear their cats are the smartest cats of all, but I’ve neverseen it.

God may have given cats slightlymore brains than we sometimes think, but as with humans, He distributed them unevenly.

There are also cats ‘fraidy, whospend my entire visit trembling under the couch: “You’re going to eat me, aren’tyou? Eat me and steal my cat toys, that’s you want to do!”

There are cats bitchy, like asleek coal-black creature I met once, the sweetest darling ever . . . for aboutfive minutes. Then, with frightening suddenness, her claws unfurled with anaudible click like a jackknife, as her back fur rose like porcupine quills. Avicious swat and ugly hiss--“ENOUGH!”--and off she’d angrily dart as though I’djumped up and down on her tail. “Screw you, too,” I muttered, showing her myfinger. That one got left on the shelf.

Out of doors, cats become inaccessible.Outside of the familiar indoor environment, they seem to shed their affectionateindoor personas, transform into fearful, wary creatures . . . but, of course,there’s a lot to be scared of—giant cat-eating dogs, huge cat-hating humans,enormous cat-crushing automobiles, and, worst of all, other cats.

It’s a wonder they even ask to go out. Frankly, it’s best to ignoretheir pleas and keep them inside. They’ll live longer, healthier lives and sowill the birds.

Cats . . . damn them!

ECHO FROM THE MOUNTAIN TOP

This last October, it happenedagain. Elizabeth and I took our anniversary vacation, this time at the ranch ofour friend Julie’s father in the southern Colorado Rockies, a huge cabin on awooded hillside, the nearest neighbor a crow’s mile away.

Caretakers live there for mostof the year. They’d gone on their own vacation when we’d arrived and leftbehind instructions for the care of the house.

Among the instructions: “Feedthe cat.”

With a mighty groan, I promptlyshouldered this Herculean task. The predictable chain of events followed.

As the story goes, Echo, a musculargray tabby sporting a thin scratch across his nose, had wandered in from the forestthat previous spring, having no doubt dodged many a hungry coyote, fox andeagle. It was reasonably speculated that he’d lived with another family nearbyand had been left behind in the cruel, infuriating belief that cats are reallywild animals like any other (or maybe the owners were simply too lazy to care).

The caretakers set out some foodfor him and that was enough to persuade him to stay. He was an outdoor cat who,I was told, didn’t come inside, even when invited. (Note: Julie’s brothers,frequent visitors, are both allergic to cats, one of the sadder ailments thatcan strike a human being).

Despite the scar and his time inthe wild, Echo was a handsome, smart and friendly fellow. When I offered myhand, he marked it immediately. The next morning, he followed mearound the grounds, as loyal as Lassie, weaving figure eights between my feet,climbing up my leg, purring his heart out. I found him waiting for me when wereturned home from outings. When I walked out onto the porch where he spentmost of his time, he’d looked up in delight from his bed, and raise his headfor my hand, rising, stretching, a purr shuddering through his body.

The third night, he actuallyfollowed me inside the house when I went to fill his food dish. Fine catly company,he was. To him, I’m sure, I was awesome.

In the end, of course, we saidour good-byes. I can still seeing him sitting in the driveway, blinking and baffled,forlornly watching as we drove away.

Then, I turned away, gritting myteeth, seething, as I stared out the car window: I’d been charmed, seduced andsuckered once again:

Cats . . . damnthem!

[To becontinued]

Photos by author

ThomasBurchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available rightNOW, published by AmblerHouse Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editionsthrough your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, Smashwords,Scrib'dand now at the Red Room bookstore. His originalcomic screenplay Whackers is nowavailable in Kindle, Nook, iPod and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. His screenplay The Uglies, a crime saga about the 99percent, will be out exclusively as an e-book soon. Other material can also beread at The Red Roomwebsite for writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended onFacebook (where you can read his almost-daily movie reviews), tweeted at on Twitter. You can also join his e-mail list via at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot]net.

“Well . . . I’m Big in Brazil”: 15 Years of Online Writing

2012-01-14T16:48:00.000-08:00

Firstly, allow me to apologizefor boring many of you with the following piece, but many other Internetwriters and self-publishers also write year-end summaries of their achievements, providingstatistics to illustrate. Those of you walking the same path I am may find myexperiences, thoughts, and perspectives in this matter useful. I hope you do.

You may have a good idea of your ownshare, too. Please do!

To compensate the rest of myloyal non-writing readers on Blogger and at the Red Room, I will provide linksto entertaining videos throughout, such as the following promoting the upcomingFilm Noir Festival, featuring Eddie Muller:

BASIC STATS AND OVERALL AVERAGES

In the Year of Our Lord 2011, Iposted 49 essays on a variety of topics. posting each essay on three separate websites: Blogger,the Red Room, and, beginning in mid-March, Scrib’d, the most in any year since Ireturned to online writing around 2007.

Based on the stats I keep in aseparate Excel sheet, I had a grand total of 26,292 page views over all threepages for the year.

Why three sites? My sense isthat an unknown writer like me needs to wave his flag in as many places onthe Internet as is comfortable without muddying his footprint or spreadinghimself too thin.

Despite efforts to driveeveryone to my official “A Curious Man” Blogger page, the Red Room had far andaway the most views: 15,318. My Blogger page had not even half that: 7,017; myScrib’d home page came in a further distant third at 3,897 (though it’sprobably more for reasons I’ll explain later.

In fact, all these statistics containsome margin of error. I could, if I were obsessive enough, capture every tinyclick, but then you’d likely look at me in pity: “Doesn’t get outside much,does he?”

I received an average of 2,191views per month or about 505 per week, or about 72 a day. The highest monthlytotal was in December (2,680). The highest weekly total was 894 for the week ofDecember 10, the week I happened to plant a link to a column on HBO’s Boardwalk Empire series in a Slate magazine comments section.

During the first part of theyear, online page views ranged from 300 to 500 per week. Toward the end of theyear, they rose from 600 to 800.

Now for an episode of "Simon's Cat":

ONLINE LIFE ON BLOGGER

What were the most popularpieces? It varied among at least two of the pages.

On Blogger, my essay oncharacter actor Lee Van Cleef’s film noir roles far outpaced everything else I postedthere in the 2011 (328). Two other pieces from 2011 that were popular were mycritique of HBO’s Boardwalk Empire(184) and my annual promise to not watch the Oscars (112) (which received a largenumber of thumbs down when I posted the link in the comments on the San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate—what d'ya say we do that again!?)

All the other top-ten Bloggerarticles were ones I wrote from 2007 through 2010, including my initial page promoting mynovel Dragon’s Ark. Also popular weretravel articles on hiking Mt. Tamalpais; an article on e-books; another onself-publishing; a review of a beer house in Emeryville; and a nostalgic lookat the 1990s retro swing scene in San Francisco.

Most oddly, a 2007 piece where I praise The Sopranos, character “Paulie Walnuts” Gualitieri and mention his “silver hair,” was popular. (Forthose who entered “Paulie Walnuts hair,” the second-most popular SEO, in searchof sound consumer advice on hair products for older men, I profoundlyapologize. It wasn’t that good an article by any stretch, either.)

Comments left by readers averagetwo per article.

Two qualifications:

1) The statistics above areprobably on the low side, as they don’t count the eyeballs that only rolledover the main page.

2) While Blogger stats providenumbers for the day, month and week, they don’t provide them for calendar years,only for the total time period since Blogger introduced their new stat systemin May 2009 (which otherwise is not a bad system for my current needs).

Also: of all the articles thatmade viewers’ top ten, I would pick none of them as my best-ever favorites.This means either a) best does not mean “popular” or b) Burchfield’s a poorcritic of his own work.

As for traffic sources, mostvisits came via Google (many of them from my small e-mail distributionlist); in distant second were the good folks who hang out on Ramsey Campbell’s discussion page hosted by knibbworld.com where I weekly place links.

Then comes Slate (thanks to that previously mentioned link); Twitter; JoelFriedlander’s “Book Designer”; then Google UK; Facebook; SFGate.com; themysterious Christmas2010shop.com; and the even-more mystifyingdisc.yourwebapps.com (but I’ll take ‘em where I can get ‘em).

Takeaway: As much as has beenmade of Facebook and Twitter as great tools for driving traffic, that doesn’tseem to be quite my experience; I think this only goes to show the sponginessof the Internet and may also relate to the material I’m providing.

As for my Blogger audience,most came from the U.S. Surprisingly, Germany takes second (Danke schön, Judith!). The UK is third; then Russia, Canada,Netherlands, France, Malaysia, Brazil, and Denmark.

Now, here’s the Drifters singingtheir 1964 hit “Up on The Roof.”

SCRIB’D

I only started placing my articles on Scrib’d in mid-March 2011, so those stats cover a shorter timeperiod. The results here have been notably different than on Blogger.

The top four spots were held byadvertisements and promotions for Dragon’sArk (649, including a sample chapter from the novel), Whackers preview sample (349); and a promotional piece for areading I gave at the California Writers Club in April with author Matt Stewart(The French Revolution), who’s morefamous than I.

The also-rans: a serious think-pieceon Osama bin Laden’s death; a pleasing feuilleton on World War II movies; two Dragon’s Ark-related essays on Draculain the movies; a meditation on the Fukushima tragedy and my review of Nabokov’sThe Gift. No overlap with Blogger inthis top-ten list. My Scrib’d readers like different things.

No comments have been left onany of the articles. As for my audience, the stats here don’t seem to be very clear.The U.S. is at the top, of course. India is also a top view-getter.

I am also listed as having 24 “followers,”but these are all Facebook friends and I suspect were automatically connectedby Facebook without any of us asking. (Ahem, Mr. Zuckerberg & Co., I'll create my own redundancies, thank you.)

Naturally, my page views on Scrib’dstarted out on the low side for the first several months. Some days showed noviews at all. I considered moving on, but as the numbers have risen a little, I’llstick around for now.

Scrib’d’s site statistics claimto drill down to a much finer detail than Blogger’s and Red Room’s, capturingnumbers such as “Embed Reads,” “Readcasts” (a form of sharing ala Facebook) and “Engagement” (measuringthe time readers spend with an article.

Except for “Readcasts,” I’munsure how reliable these figures are. (The “Engagement” time stands atpractically zero seconds; I can’t be that boring, can I?) The program hasbugs—occasionally, it fails to include views of specific articles in theirdaily overall totals. I complain. It gets fixed. Then the hamsters stumbleagain.

In this episode of “Simon’sCat,” the cat plays with a box!

THE RED ROOM

Though clearly the most-visitedof my three pages, the Red Room provides the least statistical information of all.Their stats cover strictly overall page views and specific sub-page visits (howmany visit my profile; how many view my blog page; how many view myadvertising, etc.). I also seem able to go back only six months to mid-2011.

I have no idea which articlesreceived the most views. As the Red Room village is populated by highlyliterate and thoughtful people, I’d guess my book reviews are the mostinteresting. I also suspect a higher percentage actually read my postings, asRed Room members are truly purpose driven in the best sense.

So: I cannot complain. The RedRoom remains a good neighborhood, evenafter my efforts to drive traffic to my “Official Site.” After all, I’vereceived over 15,000 page views, won three Red Room Creative Challenges andhave been featured once on their front page.

So, thank you Red Room!

And now, The Vogues with their 1965 hit "Five O'Clock World"!

BRIEF TENTATIVE CONCLUSIONS:

The main purpose behind the burstof essays in 2011 was to promote my book Dragon’sArk. The circus might serve as a useful metaphor:I’m not only the owner and ringmaster, I’m also the barker holleringoutside the tent, handing out these essays as free samples to get passersbyinside to lay real money down for the main attraction—the novel—and a couple ofinexpensive fun little sideshows—the screenplays Whackers and the upcoming TheUglies.

How’s that working? Not too well,so far. Sales of Dragon’s Ark standat around 40 or 50. Sales of Whackers areat one.

What can I do to sell morebooks? I think I’m taking a decent-enough road, but it’s not enough. I’ll have to takeother, further steps in the coming year. One of these will be buyingadvertising space, which I’ve already experimented with some mild andsurprising success on Goodreads.

But, as you’re all clawing the screen for another episode of “Simon’s Cat,” I’ll take up that discussionlater.

Text copyrighted2012 by Thomas Burchfield

2011: A Few Favorite Things

2012-01-05T16:58:00.000-08:00

Yosemite Valleyfrom Glacier Point, Christmas Eve: The best damn thing I saw all year . . .even better than Breaking Bad

In myfifty-seven years, I’ve never known one without turbulence. There have alwaysbeen wars and suffering, great and small; revolutions and reactions; faminesand plagues; violence and assorted crimes. Every year has been—in theidealistic sense—bad, though some stand out historically: 1963, 1968, 1980,2001. “History is just one damn thing after another,” Henry Ford is supposed tohave said. You can take that in one of three ways: as an expression of dismissal,frustration, or resignation.

(Already,2012 has shown a cruel face. Many of My Great Plans have gone awry, as Itripped over a cunning nasty flu that wrapped me up like a damp, moldy woolsweater as I leapt from the gate; hence the late date for this. Perhaps JohnCusack and the Mayans [that new hip-hop group I’ve heard about, on Wikipedia I guess]are right! The World will end in 2012!)

Stillevery year has its virtues, pleasures and joys, and 2011 was no exception, asI’ll try to demonstrate.

ASLEEPUNDER THE PAGES

Onceagain, as an unpaid book critic, I liked most of what I read in 2012, and whatI didn’t like was put quietly aside.

Myfavorite book of last year, hands down, was Vladimir Nabokov’s The Gift (read my review here). I also encounteredgreat joy in The Amazing Adventures ofKavalier and Klay by Michael Chabon, a passionate tribute to the epic energy and imagination of genre fiction(or, in this case, classic comics).

As timegoes by, I find myself turning away from horror and mystery fiction to wander thefoggy alleys of espionage. It was a very good year for this dense, challenging,and slippery genre. I got a tremendous charge out of Alan Furst’s Red Gold (someday, I’ll catch up withthe rest, don’t worry). My annual visit to the oeuvre of Eric Ambler also ledme down the atmospheric Balkan byways of Judgment on Deltchev. My year in spy novels was topped by John leCarré’s The Honorable Schoolboy, thesecond in his Karla trilogy.

Furtherdown the list, but still worthwhile, were Patrick deWitt’s The Sisters Brothers and Kate Atkinson’s Started Early, Took My Dog, two of the more ambitious genre novelsof the year. I also laughed heartily at Matt Stewart’s engagingonly-in-San-Francisco-farce, The French Revolution.

I read manyshort stories this year in breaks between novels. The best were from PeterStraub’s ambitious two volume collection AmericanFantastic Tales where I re-visited such classics as “The God of DarkLaughter” by Michael Chabon; “The Events at Poroth Farm” by T.E.D. Klein;“Smoke Ghost” by Fritz Leiber; and Mr. Straub’s own “A Short Guide to the City,”a novella I never tire of. The best new discovery in this collection was “TheMysteries of the Joy Rio,” by Tennessee Williams, a writer who, I gather, wenton to greater things after this story appeared in Weird Tales.

Unfortunately,as an actual book-writer, I cannot read everything that tempts my inner eye.Most of my reading is taken up with research for my work-in-progress, Butchertown; therefore, my shelf isnarrow and sometimes dry, based on pragmatic considerations of research, ratherthan the pursuit of adventure. Still, two books I found worth reading were Last Call by Daniel Okrent (a majorsource for the PBS series Prohibition)and California: A State of Change abeautiful coffee table volume by Laura Cunningham, a book I hated to set aside. . . but just wait until you start writing your own books and you’ll get whatI mean, bub.

SouthernColorado . . . Makes the set for Star Warslook like a ten-cent Republic Serial

THEMINI-SERIES: KING OF ALL POPULAR ART

Maybethe most compelling work of narrative visual art—better than most movies—Iexperienced last year was AMC’s stunning, mind-swallowing, and terrifyingmini-series Breaking Bad.

Forthose who stand wisely outside the echo chamber, BreakingBad is the blackest of black comedies. It tells the story of Walter White,a middle-class high-school chemistry teacher in Albuquerque, New Mexico whoseworld is crumbling beneath him: choking on debt, with a new baby on the way,Walter also discovers he hosts a virulent lung cancer and will die soon.

What’sa desperate member of the sinking American middle class to do to protect hisbeloved family, to provide for their uncertain future? Why, turn to methdealing, of course! Breaking Madmanages to convince us that a man—or at least this one—might try anything, ifdesperate enough. Especially in these times.

Eversince The Sopranos, the cablemini-series has grown to become our dominant narrative art form, achievingheights of artistry that movies find harder to achieve nowadays.

Breaking Bad may be the mini-series’apotheosis. Like the best of them, the show combines the capacious room, rich detail,and moral intricacy of the novel with the bracing thoughtful visuals of greatmovies. Watching this show—a classic tale of good intentions gone ghastly—is anexhilarating and terrifying ride full of jarring and hilarious plots twists,pungent, rich characterizations, great performances, and abundant moral sense.(A word of advice: watch it—and other mini-series—on DVD. The absence ofcommercials intensifies the experience.)

We’vealso enjoyed catching up on AMC’s Mad Men,an elegantly visual drama about the lives and fortunes of Madison Avenue adexecutives in 1960s New York. I started out in the same neighborhood and the same economic class, so Iappreciate its carefulattention to detail (though practically all of it is filmed in L.A.).

Mad Men hearkens back to serious 1960s black-and-whiteTV dramas such as Naked City, East Side West Side andThe Defenders. Its proud literacy is toits credit. It’s also an often lacerating domestic drama, a genre I admit oftenmakes me squirm for an episode of TheUntouchables.

Alsomany of its characterizations seem static—how many episodes do we need to learnthat Pete Campbell is a brown-nosing asshole? Whatever happened to RogerSterling’s heart problems anyway? In the first season, he had two heartattacks. Three seasons later, he’s still smoking like a boiler, drinking like ashark and skipping around like Stephen Colbert. The guy who plays him (JohnSlattery) is excellent, but I swear, any second now, he's gonna fall like a tree.

Finally,Betty Draper (now Betty Francis), once she’s out from under her husband’s shadow,becomes the willowy cipher I expected her of being: not half as interesting a characteras either Peggy Olson or Joan Harris. January Jones as Betty may be agood actress, so blame the writers for that one.

Speakingof Mrs. Draper’s husband, though, what really keeps us captivated is Jon Hammas Don Draper. Hamm, the handsomest male star since Cary Grant and Sean Connery,is also a terrific performer here. He makes Draper into a basically good,artistic man who’s selling his soul and living a great lie and grappling with theconsequences of the lie and the actual truth behind the it and the often terriblechoices it leads—womanizing is just the start—to live in a privileged stylehe’s become much too accustomed to, one that is truly not his.

Evenwhen the plotting goes off the rails, Hamm delivers a great performance. It’s apleasure to watch the waves of torment and confusion rise, fall and rollthrough that handsome face. I keep watching to answer one question: “What’sthis man going to with his life?”

Thatmay be reason enough.

Now,though my chest still feels wrapped in tarnished copper, it's time to charge on into 2012. Let’s see .. . anybody know where can I download musicvideos of John Cusack and the Mayans? I’ll check Wikipedia. They’realways right.

(Edited 1/13/12)

DO NOT CATCH THIS FLU!

2012-01-04T10:45:00.000-08:00

DO NOT CATCH THIS FLU. The Flu first emerges as a deceptively mild cold that lasts for 3 days or so. You may even feel the cold disappearing and your energy flaring anew, but DO NOT BE FOOLED. For verily, on the 4th day, the Flu shall blossom and soak and rage through your helpless flesh, and your only entertainment will be the flashing interior of your eyelids. Yea, even when the second day arrives and the fever has abated, DO NOT BE FOOLED (as I am not), for it may be merely resting and lurking, prepared to ambush, to strike, to attack again, as it chortles and chuckles like Lee Van Cleef, delighting in its boundless evil. I repeat: DO NOT CATCH THIS FLU. Thank you.

Photo by author.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

A Plate of Fudge, a Bowl of Chili and Thou . . .

2011-12-17T13:31:00.000-08:00

Becausehe was scrubby and dirty they took him in . . .

Andbecause he was so dirty, they named him “Harry.”

ThisChristmas, act like a Christian.

Uh-uhhh, I didn’t say be a Christian, your kneecaps squashed on a cold hard floor, your hands steepled,eyes rolled in gooey piety. No prayers at all are always better than insincereones.

I meanact with grace, openness, generosity, tolerance, forgiveness. Pull in yourteeth and claws for once, just for awhile (yeah, I know it’s hard). I havesupped full of rage and here, a little self-denial is called for.

Christianitymay not have been precisely first with the ideas mentioned above, but it wasthe first to synthesize them into a general philosophy in western civilization,a stance toward life, the world, society and the lonely individual that runslike subtle wine through so much that even most fundamentalist atheists pay inadvertenttribute to them (and bless Christopher Hitchens’ peppery serrated soul; I hopehe’s enjoying a Nice Surprise about now.)

Adigression: if you read the Four Gospels (especially the three "synoptic" gospels: Matthew, Mark and Luke) you will learn, among many things, thatthere are absolutely no rich and powerful peoplein them at all; nothing but grubby peasants, bent-backed farmers, battered whores, criminal low-lifes and drunken bums; andwhen rich folk are mentioned, it is not in complimentary fashion.

Youwill also learn that Jesus was neither sulfurous fire-spitting Pat Robertsonnor a boring Nice White Guy from Minnesota who looks just like Willem Dafoe.

Not only that . . . they called him a BASTARD!

Now I’vealways loved Christmas, a stand offensive to anhedonics (who would be bummedout if I took the opposite tack anyway: “Oh, you’re just pandering to me, youtwo-faced phony.”).

But likemany of you, I deeply loathe the insulting heretical Über-Capitalist’s Holiday;a miserable, moneyed tyranny, supported by Fox News propaganda, where WalMartis the True Church; where evenEbenezer Scrooge looks heroically wise and monkish in his self-denial. Allthe color is a mere fig leaf for a desperate materialism. It’s Target we kneeland pray to.

If youreally want to rebel against Christmas, to avoid both the trap of Wal-Mart andthe barrenness of Scrooge (as theseChristians do), try the following:

Be acheapskate. Instead of buying that $200 Popeil potato masher, even if it is forthe person you love most in the world (the damn thing will just break after theyslice off their fingers anyway), instead buy your Someone their favorite food,drink or even a charming little what not; something that will bring more thantemporary delight, that will carve deeper than an electric carving knife. A book would be nice.

Or, if they're a real friend, like this guy, you can send them a holiday card loaded with the most vile, spectacular and funniest insults your imagination can conjure. (Thirty years going and he still loves me for it.)

Anotherfriend of ours from a certain somewheretells us he and his family go dirt cheap on gifts; so cheap that the firstquestion they ask on receipt is “How much did it cost?” Instead, they blowtheir budget on the best food and the best drink and bury their faces in thedining room table. I find this deeply appealing (and screw the Health Nazis;they’re nearly as bad as WalMart). There’s a companionship in sharing food andsparkling conversation that the complete DVD set of Buffy the Vampire Slayer can never capture.

Another thing to do: If you happento go outside (this is the Internet Age after all), store some of your cash in aconvenient pocket. Then, if you run into a needy person, give some to them,with no conditions and no questions. Loyal readers of Bay Area columnist JonCarroll know this as the “Untied Way.” He recommends $20 bills . . . but anyamount will do I believe. And throw in a smile.

Thatreally could be you hovering over that gutter someday. It was once almost me.

Thenstop by your favorite drinking establishment, coffeehouse, or tavern, and buy around for one or everyone (difficult for me this year, as I’m on extremely limited alcohol intake,doctor’s orders.)

Inother words, try and keep it simple, as simple as a Bethlehem manger of sweetlegend, though maybe a little warmer.

Sometimesa plate of fudge, a bowl of chili and thou is all I need.

MerryChristmas, Happy Holidays and see you all in the New 2012.

(re-edited 12/19/11)

Photoby Author

ThomasBurchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available rightNOW, published by AmblerHouse Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editionsthrough your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, Smashwords,Scrib'dand now at the Red Room bookstore. His originalcomic screenplay Whackers is nowavailable in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. His screenplayThe Uglies, a crime saga, will be outexclusively as an e-book soon. Other material can also be read at The Red Room websitefor writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted aton Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Boys with Guns: Thoughts on The Sisters Brothers

2011-12-10T10:54:00.001-08:00

A couplemonths ago, I was chatting with Bob, the proprietor of Walden Pond Books on Grand Avenue inOakland (where you can pull a real paperback copy of Dragon’sArk from the New Mystery sectionof their fine wooden shelves and mosey up to the register to buy it). Bob and Iwere chewing the fat about the merits of such vintage western authors as Luke Short whenhe pressed into my hands a copy of The Sisters Brothers by Patrick DeWitt, a new novel that he promised wouldbe the best hired gunman novel I would ever read (and I’ve read quite a few).

The Sisters Brothers made the short-list for thisyear’s Man Booker Prize, and is about as good as promised. It’s a violent, picaresqueserio-comic tale of Eli and Charlie Sisters, two hired killers on what may be theirlast murdering ride.

It’sthe Pacific Northwest in the 1850s. Our tale-teller is Eli Sisters, Charlie’syounger brother and the larger and deceptively less clever of the two. BrotherCharlie is the trigger and hammer behind their bloody partnership, but is alsomore the trigger-happy, hard-drinking and ill-tempered. Brother Eli looks downon himself from his own saddle, as his brother and most everyone else does, buthe’s clearly the more soulful, more aware sibling, both to the beautiful landscapethey ride through, the sordid civilization nestled within its valleys and thetruth behind their vile work: that he and Charlie are not much more than simplebrute murderers.

As thestory goes, Eli and Charlie ride out from Oregon City on a job for their remoteand malevolent employer, known only as the Commodore. Their destination is GoldRush San Francisco and their target one Herman Warm, the inventor of an unnamedinvention the Commodore claims Mr. Warm stole from him.

And sothe brothers saddle up on a long, strange, and twisted trail, involving a sickone-eyed horse that Eli cottons to; broken-down, dying prospectors; lostpioneers; gimlet-eyed whores; assorted thieves; and other pungent low-lifes andgrubs that would spark a twinkle in the eyes of SamPeckinpah, Larry McMurtry, and DavidMilch.

Alongthe way, the Sisters Brothers, possessed of a dread reputation, leave swirlsand splashes of crimson in their tracks. And yet, in perverse poignant fashion,they are revealed as innocents in their own way as they confront the truthbehind their mission. Their colorful ride takes them through a vividly picturedGold Rush San Francisco and from there out to the heart of Gold Country in theSierra Foothills to a kind of showdown both hair-raising and genuinelysurprising. In the end, to loosely paraphrase Peckinpah, these bad bad men becomethe children they always were again.

AuthorPatrick deWitt writes his entertaining book in the argot of its day. It flowswith the flowery elocutionary prose that everyone spoke and wrote back then, amostly rural world where everyone learned to speak and write from the Bible andShakespeare. Formal turns of phrases turn delightfully about, with only a fewcontractions in sight. He commendably takes the genre seriously, avoiding thetrap of cold-hearted, post-modern superiority that would tempt lesser hands.

Next tohorror fiction, the western novel may be the most dismissed and neglected ofgenres. Sad to say, the success of this book, as with McMurtry’s Lonesome Dove, will likely send fewreaders back to Luke Short, CliftonAdams (whose 1962 novel Reckless MenI think another excellent hired killer yarn), or the westerns by National BookAward nominee Loren D. Estleman. Still,it’s heartening to see serious writers turn to the old structures of the genrenovel and find new trails to wander and bright flowing seams of new gold.

Photoby Author

ThomasBurchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available rightNOW, published by AmblerHouse Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editionsthrough your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, Smashwords,Scrib'dand now at the Red Room bookstore. His originalcomic screenplay Whackers is nowavailable in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. His screenplayThe Uglies, a crime saga, will be outexclusively as an e-book soon. Other material can also be read at The Red Room websitefor writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted aton Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Extra Bites and Other Draculas (Conclusion)

2011-12-03T10:58:00.001-08:00

FRANCISCOPPOLA’S (NOT BRAM STOKER’S)

Ithappens to all actors, even the greats such as the De Niros and Streeps,Oliviers and Hoffmans. They’re cast in a role that doesn’t suit them, that’sbeyond their skills, range, or type. Often the casting is not even theirdecision (Like all of us, they have bills to pay. Acting is a job after all.) Asan actor in college, I sometimes found myself playing characters I couldn’t fitinto at all, but I was the guy that was there, so I did my best and hoped everyonewould forget.

Sometimesthe actor makes wrong choices as to how to play the character. But mostly theactor, great as he may be, simply doesn’t belong there. (I visited this problemin a recent piece on Boardwalk Empire.)

In thiscase though, I’m speaking here of poor Gary Oldman as Dracula in 1992’s Bram Stoker’s Dracula.

I say“poor,” because while Gary Oldman has done much to be proud of (and I’m lookingforward to his turn as George Smiley in the upcoming remake of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy), hiscasting as Dracula is about the most egregious and ineffective since, well, LonChaney, Jr’s.

GaryOldman is an excellent performer, an earthy, urban actor, a kind of grown-upstreet urchin as he showed by excelling in films such as Sid and Nancy, State of Graceand Romeo Is Bleeding.

Sad tosay though, he doesn’t have the fierce demonic charisma to play a driven and driving hellfire like Dracula; nor is he the exoticyoung-man type that Winona Ryder’s Mina Harker is yearning for in this romanticBrat Pack conception that seems steered toward the Gen X audience.

Theopening scenes of this Dracula cake Oldmanwith a thick crust of make-up, turning into him a laughable Punchinello handpuppet, swirled by a preposterous silk red cape. He regresses to his youth whenhe invades England—maybe because he’s invigorated as he draws near to his lostlove—but once out from under the makeup, he seems uncomfortable and ineffectivein the role. He and Winona Ryder never lock together (even with that nifty“oceans of time” line).

We havehere a “tormented” Dracula for the Psychobabble Age: “My girlfriend got killed,so I decided to join the Forces of Darkness. Wahhh!” Call it Diary of a Whiny Vampire. Poor baby, ifonly someone gave him a hug. I would have felt perfectly safe doing it, too. This Draculanever struck fear in my fear-strung heart. He’s no Shreck or Lugosi creepingout of the darkness; no Lee hurling his shadow from the top of a staircase. Henever wraps his arms around his evil. Dracula can be seen as pathetic, butsympathetic, a diminished object of pity?

Unlike Son of Dracula, much else is wrong withthis movie. The official title alone—BramStoker’s Dracula makes a promise it fails to keep, forthis adaptation, written by James V. Hart, changes the narrative enough so thatadding Stoker’s name above the title constitutes false advertising. Or maybe anattempt to blame the author for what follows.

Irecall an interview with director Francis Ford Coppola where he referred to Dracula as a book that not many peoplehave read. OK. Then why put Stoker’s name above the title? Nothing wrong withmaking changes, but why fob it off as a purist’s Dracula? For one, the novel makes no mention of the historical Dracula’s lost love, and that’s justthe beginning. It is not BramStoker’s Dracula. It is its ownmovie. Only wish it were a better one.

Mygripes don’t end there, because this is an over-stuffed, poorly cast and acted,slackly paced and edited movie. Having seen it twice, I admit it dazzles attimes, like a Macy’s Christmas window, but it also feels like a tossed salad ofvisuals, some of them clever and beautiful (the eye-in-the-sky in thebeginning; the conception of Dracula’s castle as an M.C. Escher world).

Butwhen edited together this movie becomes a bloody mishmash of stops and starts,of quick dabs and broad slashes. The scenes with Renfield are so sketchy, theymight as well have been cut (a tack some Dracula films have taken withoutdetriment). Anthony Hopkins makes Van Helsing crazy fun, but, like Renfield, heseems to flash in and out of the movie, desperately trying to keep things busy.

Isuppose this Dracula was meant to bea “dream film,” but I found it to be dream-like only in tiny bits (If a real dreamfilm is what they wanted, they should have called in David Lynch). It never roilswith suspense as does Horror of Dracula.It has no passion, no drive. It feels weighed down by its production in thesame manner as such early 1960s thumpering epics as Cleopatra.

LATERDRACULAS, AND THEN TO SLEEP

Yes,Coppola’s version did turn out to be popular. (Therefore, it must have beengood! Right? I mean, look at Pirates of the Caribbean III! Right?) Enough so, that my own screen-take on this tale wasgreeted with graveyard silence when I finished it in the late 1990s. (Look forits publication next year.)

And so Draculavanished into his crypt again for a time, emerging again in 2000 in a moviecalled Dracula 2000. Produced throughthe clever auspices of Wes Craven (whom I met once and who actually saw my script,but declined in gentlemanly but evasive fashion). It’s not a good movie, thoughit contains a neat twist on Dracula’s origins. Scottish actor Gerard Butler asthe Count leaves no fang marks at all. As other versions have shown, casting ahunk with a thick Mittle-euro accentis not enough.

In2006, the BBC released an interesting mostly non-supernatural version,featuring an actor named Marc Warren as the Count. Here, Warren, who reminds meof Gary Oldman, plays the Count as a low-life thug, which is interesting, buthe’s not very effective or scary. More fascinating is the great David Suchet asVan Helsing and how the film weaves themes of decadence and disease into itsnarrative. You don’t miss Renfield either. It’s no classic, but it’s worth alook.

Sincethen, silence. Dracula sleeps again, waiting for a certain color of night tofall. I’d like to think my version will see moonlight, next, but I’m notcounting on it.

I usedto fantasize that my screenplay would be the “definitive” one, but that vainnotion has turned to dust. It’s just another version, I hope better than most of the rest, as itbrings up tones and themes I believe have not revealed before. There’s yet anotherside, another face to this grand myth.

Irecall a critic saying some years back that a “definitive film version” of Dracula may not be possible. Some greatstories are all but impervious to remakes or “retakes” (for example, classicslike The Maltese Falcon and JamesWhale’s Frankenstein films). Dracula maybe too fungible, too much of a palimpsest, to ever define that clearly, thatprecisely. He’selusive like a dream and may never be perfectly captured in the bell jar of a movie.

He’snot the only one who’s the shapeshifter here. With each generation, ourattitudes and view of him reshape and shift with the times. However time turns,a new face of Dracula will blaze from the darkness.

(Re-edited 12/5/11)

ThomasBurchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available rightNOW, published by AmblerHouse Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editionsthrough your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, Smashwords,Scrib'dand now at the Red Room bookstore. His originalcomic screenplay Whackers is nowavailable in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. His screenplayThe Uglies, a crime saga, will be out exclusivelyas an e-book soon. Other material can also be read at The Red Room websitefor writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended on Facebook, tweeted aton Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net.

Slices of Space and Time

2011-11-27T10:11:00.001-08:00

Decidingwhat the best photo I’ve ever taken for this week's Red Room's Creative Challenge was a medium-stature order because, forone, my lists of favorites are always fluid and, two, I’m a fairly competentamateur with a camera. So picking the best—or more fairly, my favorite—tooksome cogitation. The one above is currently first with me (but check backtomorrow).

Themagnificent metal creature above—maybe 20 feet tall, maybe defending us fromGodzilla—was captured in pixels in October 2008, during my wife’s and my fifthanniversary vacation. It was marching across the autumn hills of themagnificent Storm King Art Center in Mountainville,New York, west of the Hudson River, near West Point. Storm King is a stunning open-airmuseum featuring landscape sculptures from around the world. The camera was35mm Canon digital, which I should really learn to use someday.

Thesculptor’s name, unfortunately escapes (though I suspect it may be one Mark diSuvero; corrections encouraged).

Anotherhighlight—and initial draw--of Storm King was AndyGoldsworthy’s “Wall.” Goldsworthy is perhaps my favorite living artist.

Acouple more follow, strictly for your entertainment:

Strictlyfrom Artiness: taken on the same trip, Museum ofModern Art, New York.

I lovecemeteries. James Whalewould smile. Mountain View Cemetery, Oakland, California. June 2009.

ThomasBurchfield's contemporary Dracula novel Dragon's Ark is available rightNOW, published by AmblerHouse Publishing. It can be ordered in both paperback and e-book editionsthrough your local independent bookstore, through Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Powell's Books, Smashwords,Scrib'dand now at the Red Room. His original comic screenplay Whackers is nowavailable in Kindle, Nook, iPad and on Scrib'd, also from Ambler House. Other material can also beread at The Red Roomwebsite for writers. Not enough for ya? He can also be friended onFacebook, tweeted at on Twitter and e-mailed at tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot]net.