“It’s just that I take riddling seriously. I was taught that the ability to solve them indicates a sane and rational mind.”
― Stephen King, The Waste Lands
I have always loved a good riddle. Surfing around the interwebs, I found an article that starts out with a very, very, good riddle. Maybe the best one.
Rich people need it. Poor people have it. If you eat it, you die. And when you die, you take it with you. What is it?
Can you guess the answer? To be fair, if you can’t you’ll have to
I saw in the news that Dean Stockwell had passed away. He had a long, varied, and successful career. When you look at his IMDB page, the top performances are listed: Quantum Leap, Married to the Mob, Paris Texas, and Dune (the 1984 version). I think of him as a very young actor or as a bizarre bad guy in Blue Velvet.
But I remember him from another really, really, odd role. He was the star of a 1970 Lovecraft-based C-movie The Dunwich Horror. I saw it as a teenager – it really made an impact on me. I wrote about the film in 2012 – and thought I’d revisit it here.
For folks that are around my age, the most influential person in our upbringing and general outlook on this best of all possible worlds may be Samuel Z. Arkoff. Just looking at that name brings a flood of almost subliminal memories from my childhood. Arkoff was one of the founders of American International Pictures – the source of the flood of B-movie oddness that was the main warped window we had into the world at large.
American International Pictures made films for years based on the ARKOFF formula –
Which pretty much says it all.
When I look at a list of American International Releases from say, 1956 up to 1981… It looks like about 232 films – I am horrified by how many, well more than half, of them I have seen – and remember seeing. There were the horror films that I saw late at night on a tiny 12-inch b&w television after discovering the amazing new world of UHF television (more than three channels – wow!…Do you remember the little loop antennas?). There were the beach films. There were the Poe films (capped by The Conqueror Worm). Blacksploitation. Bad Science Fiction.
I lived on a lot of military bases growing up and they would show at least three different movies every week; I think it cost a quarter. One of the oddest experiences I had as an adult is when I realized they don’t play the Star Spangled Banner before every movie (Army brats will know what I’m talking about). American International Pictures schlock…. Most of those would wind their way around the bases sometime.
Now they are on Netflix Streaming… though I wouldn’t advise wasting too much of your time.
But I noticed one film that had really left its mark and I wanted to re-watch it (although I knew it wasn’t a very good film) to see if my memory served me well. This was The Dunwich Horror.
It came out in 1970, so I may have seen it at a theater in Panama, but probably saw it in Managua. We would get three films a week on 16mm there and would show them at the Embassy, the Marine Compound, or our house.
It’s pretty standard Arkoff horror fare – let’s see how it stands up to the ARKOFF formula:
Action them til they’re dizzy. Don’t stop. It must be in your screenplay and in your director’s head. Employ only film editors who are as movement-crazy as you are. Kid’s love action…and they”ll go back…and will tell their peers, inferiors, and superiors what’s good.
-The Dunwich Horror definitely has action – though it doesn’t always make sense. Well, actually, it starts a little slow, but does build to a frenzy of monstrous murders with the traditional villagers pursuing and being pursued by an unseen fiend.
Revolutionary scenes get talked of. Use some new photographic devices…editing techniques…locales…smells…stunts or something. Make ’em so the sheer experience of seeing them is unique. New language, new juxtapositions, new shocks, new relationships, new attire, new oncepts…new, new, new. Revolve situations, relationships, hell, even the camera if it will get your movie talked about.
-Although it came out in 1970 – it is full of (now dated) 60’s psychedelic effects – grating electronic music/noise and solarized stylized colorized fisheye scenes of naked actors in bodypaint making grotesque faces at the camera… the usual stuff. Now it’s silly… it was sort of silly back then… but it was unique enough to leave an unpleasant memory then on a kid watching it – enough for me to remember it to this day.
Kill colorfully and often. Young audiences… like to experience death. Vicariously, of course. But then all storytelling is experiencing something that happens to someone else and you come out alive.
You should be sure to kill and do so in bizarre ways so your audience will get their money’s worth, and so they will tell others…Without death or the glamourous threats of it, I would never have been able to make the highest grossing independently-produced, independently-released film of all time, The Amityville Horror.
-Plenty of death. Again, some of it is diluted by the cheap and garish sixties effects – but still there.
Orate! Tell the world about your picture! Talk about it but more important…get people talking about it. Best way is through publicity. As my old buddy Jack Warner used to say, “The movie good enough to sell itself has not yet been produced!”
-I guess this is more concerned with publicity, which I can’t speak for. The characters do like to orate within the film, of course…
Fantasy is what audiences spend money for. Give them fantastic adventures. Entertain them by rushing them into worlds you dreamed up for them. Avoid the prosaic and commonplace. When they’re in those fantastic environments, keep everything moving ultra-fast. Action will help suspend disbelief.
-There was the fantastic element that I didn’t know anything about when I first saw the film – Lovecraft. The movie is adapted from one of his short stories. I didn’t read any H.P. Lovecraft until I was in college – they had these cheap paperbacks at the bookstore with lurid covers.
I would read a story from one of the collections and think, “no big deal,” and then try to go to sleep. It is only in the half-world between waking and somnolence that the true horror of the tales would emerge. I was hooked and am still a fan.
The Dunwich Horror of the film only bears a passing resemblance to Lovecraft’s tale, but it features more than a few touchstones of his fiction: Arkham, Miskatonic University, Yog-Sothoth, The Necrominicon, and the strong hint that the protagonist and his twin brother are actually children of Cthulhu.
Fornicating is the answer to an exhibitor’s dreams. You can’t get an ingredient in most movies that draws better than sex. Of course, you have to use it wisely…You gotta have taste. Foreplay is as important in dramaturgy as in bed. But avoid too much visual sex. It is embarassing and if it goes on too long it puts audiences to sleep. Arouse but don’t offend!
-Ah… here it is. This is what etched The Dunwich Horror into young minds. It stars Sandra Dee, for God’s sake… Gidget. She was the symbol of the innocent, wholesome teenager – so much so that she is now known mostly as the subject of ridicule in a song from “Grease.”
The Dunwich Horror, for all its Lovecraftian touchstones, is really the story of the sexual corruption of Sandra Dee. She starts out as a prim and proper university librarian that trusts an odd but handsome stranger too much, offers him a ride home, and falls under his evil spell. Before she knows what’s going on she’s up on writhing around on an altar in an unforgettable skimpy costume as the centerpiece of a ritual to bring a monstrous race of ancient horrors back to life.
At the very end, even after the sudden, inexplicable, defeat of the evil brothers, it is shown that now she is pregnant with Cthulhu’s grandson… the horror continues.
There is nothing explicit here – a modern film would not even bother with this sort of silliness. That’s sort of a shame – the schlock masters knew what they were doing, how powerful on a subliminal level the image of once innocent Sandra Dee writhing on that altar would be. Nothing much is shown, everything is implied, the imagination fills in the blanks so powerfully.
I’ve rambled on too long about a second-rate B movie that’s almost a half-century old and deservedly mostly forgotten. But these are the memories that we live with every day – some are so deep we don’t even know they are there.
PS – a fellow blogger wrote a post on this subject:
The ARKOFF Formula and the Peter Pan Syndrome
All of us know people who have more energy than we do, but the science of the phenomenon is just coming into view.
Studies show that your emotions spread further than you think
Stop worrying and start growing.
Tips and Tricks for Building a Better “Memory Palace
I am, of course, describing a book cover—or rather, the book cover, that of the current literary zeitgeist, whose abstract splotches are a ubiquitous presence in the new releases display at your local bookstore.
All artists have a lot in common. Whether you’re a comic artist or a painter – you still experience similar situations like lack of inspiration or constantly being asked “Will you draw me?”
From my old blog, The Daily Epiphany, Friday, March 23, 2001 (just a few months before 9/11 changed everything)
The border between the US and Mexico is a big deal in most places – controlled bridges, customs, crowds, fences, razor wire, a complete difference from one side to another.
Here in Big Bend the border is a greenish sluggish river, barely waist deep, and the crossing is a decrepit old rowboat called “La Enchilada.” A ride across the Rio Grande cost $2. “Pay me on the other side,” the boat’s captain told me – apparently to avoid the onus of doing business in a US National Park. Two quick strokes on his paddle and we were in Mexico.
A busy crowd on the gravel bar was hawking handmade jewelry, walking sticks, and rides by burro, horse, or pickup truck into the village. I walked past the jabbering, bargaining crowd (a handful of elderly tourists were renting some burros) and hoofed it the mile or so into the village.
It was a dusty, sandy walk through the floodplain thicket of Mesquite into the village of Boquillas itself. It’s a dirt-poor border town, a few short dusty gravel streets lined with scattered adobe huts. Each hut has its own table covered with rock crystals, scavenged from the nearby mountains, for sale. The main street has one restaurant, Falcon’s, and a handful of cantinas – some very shady looking.
Above the village rears the amazing escarpment of the Sierra del Carmen. Those cliffs, jagged like broken teeth dominate the skyline of the entire park, visible clear up to the headquarters thirty miles away.
I settled into the breezeway of Falcon’s – surprisingly seat once I was out of the burning sun and shaded by the roof of traditional vigas. A few others were already there – a big group of tourists sitting at one long table and a couple of local Texas ranchers with their families – the men were bargaining with the owner of the restaurant over the sale of a pickup truck.
Two rooms selling really bad Mexican handicrafts flanked the open breezeway. I had hoped to buy Candy a birthday present there, but there wasn’t anything worth looking at. At the end of one room was the restaurant kitchen, which looked like one from a small apartment. The owner’s daughter stood there looking bored and cranked out the food. One tourist asked to, “see the menu” and the daughter replied, “tacos y burritos.” Each were three for a dollar.
I ordered a Corona and a plate with three tacos and three burritos. The food was greasy and good – small handmade corn tortillas served with a bowl of diced jalapenos and onions. The beer was cold. I sat and ate and drank my beer and wrote a little in my notebook.
Local children selling little woven bracelets carried on pieces of cardboard swarmed the restaurant. I bought two for Nicholas, one said Big Bend the other Boquillas. The pesky kids were really bothering the big table of tourists. Eventually the wife of the restaurant’s owner came out and shooed them away – even the few that were standing around my table.
“El hombre escribiendo!” she shouted at the children near me.
After finishing a second beer I decided to walk around a bit more, having to constantly fend off the little street vendors. I decided I was still thirsty so I stopped by one of the cantinas for a cold Dos Equis. It was a roomy bar with tables and two pool tables at the back; Spanish rap music blared out of an unseen boombox somewhere. The long bar was lined with every imaginable brand of cheap Mexican tequila, mescal, and sotol.
A sunburned Mexican drunk conned me into buying him a Tecate – then left me alone. A couple of American college girls came in for beers and then three guys wearing Chi Omega Intramurals T-shirts came in for shots and bought a round for the girls.
“Where you from?” the bartender asked the girls.
“Indiana.”
An older couple came in and bought four bottles of some odd colored liquor. The bartender carefully wrapped it so they could get it back across the border.
The owner came and sat with me and we spoke a bit, mixing English and Spanish. It is so rare that I speak Spanish anymore my mouth felt odd forming the sounds. The Mexican beer helped.
He made some rude remarks in Spanish about the girls at the bar; then asked me where I was from. I told him I drove through Monahans to get to Big Bend.
“Big prison in Monahans,” the owner said, “I have nephew in prison there.”
Then he indicated the sunburned drunk, “He the police here, only police in Boquillas.”
I considered asking to see his badge but thought better of it. With the sleazy cantina, the dusty streets, and the mountains rising high overhead things were getting way too Treasure of the Sierra Madre feeling for me, so I decided to head back to Texas.
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was – I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road
“I haven’t heard from Elana,” Sara said to the ghost of her nephew Jimmy.
“Really? Did you expect to?”
“We’ve been friends for years. We used to meet for coffee almost every week and lunch on Fridays.”
“And now?”
“She ignores my texts.”
“She ghosted you.”
“Yeah.”
“That sucks. I would never do anything like that.”
“But you’re a ghost.”
“Sure. But still. I never liked that term. It gives us a bad name.”
“Do ghosts ghost people?”
“Well, eventually we move on. To another plane – hopefully higher, but sometimes not. If we have been visiting people, live people, ordinary people, that can come as a shock. We disappear. Like ghosts.”
“So you do ghost people. As a matter of fact, you ghost people inevitably.”
“Well, it doesn’t count. We have no choice. It’s always a surprise, unexpected, when we have to move on. That’s how it works.”
“So you are going to ghost me? You said it was inevitable. You just don’t know when.”
“I guess. I’m sorry.”
“You and Elena. Both of you.”
“Which one is worse? Who will you miss the most, me or Elena?”
“That’s a hard question. With you, there is that feeling of guilt.”
“Guilt? Because you were driving. That drunk hit the passenger side of the car. You never saw them. That’s not your fault.”
“I know. I know. But I feel guilty. I was driving. You didn’t want to go. I talked you into it.”
“You didn’t twist my arm.”
“Yes I did, a little bit.”
“What about Elena? Do you feel guilt for her too?”
“Why? Well, maybe. I must have done something wrong.”
“Maybe she just moved on, like I will some day. Living people move on too.”
“Moved on? What, moved up? Without me? How does that make it better?”
“Maybe she moved down.”
“That makes it even worse. And I am so lonely. You are the only friend I have left.”
“You need more friends. Living friends.”
“Finding new friends, now, today, at my stage of life… it’s impossible.”
“Your stage of life? How about mine? You need to get out there more. You need to do something.”
“What?”
“Anything. Everything.”
“I miss Elana. I miss her so much. Does she miss me?”
“I’m sure she does. I’ll bet Elana misses you even more than you miss her.”
“Will you miss me? Will you miss me when you move on?”
“Of course I will. Of course.”
“When the heart speaks, the mind finds it indecent to object.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, December 14, 1998.
I’m writing another entry sitting in the van, waiting in a parking lot. This time it’s a long way from home. I have a focus group at eight thirty, on the tenth floor of a big office building, at Park Central on the northern arc of Dallas’ LBJ freeway loop. I have better things to do with my time than sit here, but they’ll pay me a hundred dollars, cash. Allowing an hour to get here, it only took twenty minutes, so I found this lot in a commercial strip right off Central Expressway. About a half hour to kill before I drive back to the building, that’s how long the batteries in this old Dell can hold out.
I had wanted to go exercise after work and there is a club located between there and here. I fogot my damn shoes again, can’t very well work out in steel-toed safety boots, so I stayed in my office a couple hours late. Time is becoming so precious, it drove me nuts. Nowhere to go, no money, nothing much to do .(I was so sick of work, it was tough to get anything extra accomplished). So I sat and did some light computer stuff and watched the hands turn.
At least the van is a good place to type. The middle bench seat is roomy enough for me to hold the laptop on my lap, there is enough stray light from the parking lot to illuminate the keys without washing out the screen. Also, the van isn’t stalling. I was about to give up yesterday, when I put another fresh tank of fuel in her, and presto- no more problems. My guess is that the recent cold snap condensed water into the gas tank, it took a refill to work itself out.
Across the street from here is a big hospital. This is where both Nick and Lee were born. It seems like I’ve been there a hundred times, for childbirth classes, medical emergencies, routine checkups. We don’t have the HMO anymore, so we don’t come back here now. One reason I dropped it was because I was concerned about the drive from Mesquite, it scared me to think of Candy driving over here in the awful traffic with a sick kid strapped in beside her.
The traffic is scary. The intersection of LBJ and Central may be the busiest in the Metroplex, maybe the country. Lines of white, lines of red. Going either seventy or stopped. I constantly look at these thousands and thousands of cars speeding past and wonder where all these people are going. What are their dreams? Are they happy? Do they really want to go where their car is pointing? Why are they in such a hurry to get there?
Honk! Honk! Honk! The car alarm on a big sedan is going off. A woman gets out. Is it her car? Is she confused by the alarm and can’t shut it off? Or is she stealing the thing? I don’t care. It stops, she gets back in. Nobody calls the police. There the car goes.
Behind this strip, this line of office supplies, fast food Chinese, medical equipment, and podiatrist, is the dark slash of a creek. I know that linear wilderness better than I know the wild street; the White Rock bicycle trail runs back there. It starts five miles to the south at the lake and winds along the creek embankment, using the floodplain to cut through these civilized islands unseen and undisturbed. The day was dry and warm, I wish I had my bike and was able to get some late season fresh air back there today. Or I wish I had a nice light and could run the trail now. Swooshing along in the dark, heart pumping, legs pumping.
Oh, well.
I think I’d better wrap this up, save the file and get going. I’m not sure exactly where to park (there is a maze of garages around the office complex) and I don’t want to be late. They won’t give me my money.
Thanks for listening to me ramble, thanks for helping me kill a few minutes away from home, thanks for the memories and the city at night.
And a piece of flash fiction for today:
Anyone who has ever attended a keynote, lecture, or presentation of any kind knows how important it is to take good notes. How many times have you been at a presentation for work and afterward wished you had written down that key idea that you somehow can’t remember?
A while back, in my corporate days, I was experiencing this far too often. So I went back to my college days and pulled out a note-taking method I used to use, one of the most popular note-taking methods of all time, the “Cornell Note-taking System.” It’s named after a Cornell University educator who invented the system in the 1940s. Here’s how it works, as explained on the Cornell System official website.
Scientists believe that the answer lies in the workings of our metabolism, the complex set of chemical reactions in our cells, which convert the calories we eat into the energy our body requires for breathing, maintaining organ functions, and generally keeping us alive.
Composer Danny Elfman discusses venturing into new territory, taking criticism with a grain of salt, and the difficulty of understanding your own creative process.
Anxiety is energy, and you can strike the right balance if you know what to look for.
I am a self-confessed ‘bad replier’ – if I could add an out-of-office to my phone which would tell all of my friends to expect a reply within five to seven working days, I would.
I am ploughing through “Foucault’s Pendulum” with my Difficult Reading Book Club. There is surprisingly little useful information out there on what is really going on.
“In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them.”
― Mark Twain
From my blog (I called it an “Online Journal” then), The Daily Epiphany, Monday, October 30, 2000.
After school, Lee went to a friend’s house while Nick played basketball at the recreation center. Candy did some yard work in front of the house. Lee and his friend came over, walking in the back door and not seeing Candy – but seeing the van was there and assuming she was home. They never thought of looking in the front yard.
Candy’s mom called the house and Lee answered the phone, upset.
“I’m home but Mommy isn’t here!” said Lee.
“Now, Lee, you know you’re mother wouldn’t go off and leave you,” Candy’s mother replied.
“I’m afraid she’s been kidnapped… No, I’m afraid she’s been Mommynapped!” cried Lee.
Candy’s mother called Lee’s friend’s mother (they live across the alley) and she came over, finding Candy working in the front flower garden.
“Someone’s looking for you,” she said.
And a piece of flash fiction for today:
“Purple is such a twisted, complex color – it conveys the passion of red, the sadness of blue, the depravity of black. Purple is neither happy nor sad. It is pain and despair but longing, too – fiery desire, beaten and bruised but struggling onward, determined to overcome, to move forward rather than retreat.”
― James Patterson, Invisible
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Prior to this pandemic thing, one of the things that I liked was to go The Dallas Theater Center plays on their “Pay what you can” performances. These are basically dress rehearsals that you can attend and pay whatever you feel like. I usually pay five dollars. I realize reading this written here makes me sound cheap. I am… although there is a fine line between cheap and poor… a line I straddle.
I have seen maybe a dozen plays this way. It is worth five bucks just to visit the Wyly theater in the Dallas Arts District – a very, very cool venue.
So now, as we return to normal, the plays have started up again. Next up was a world premiere, “The Supreme Leader,” and I scored a couple tickets for a tenner. I was planning on going down to the Wyly when I looked at my confirmation email a little closer and realized the play wasn’t there – it was at the Kalita Humphries theater.
Which was cool. I saw a play there, “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,” a handful of decades ago – but haven’t been back since. The Kalita Humphries is a historical venue – the only theater designed by Frank Loyd Wright.
I couldn’t get anyone to go with me (Candy and Lee had plans to see a movie) so I wasted a ticket and went by myself. The Kalita Humphries is in a beautiful spot along Turtle Creek north of downtown Dallas… it was a beautiful day so I drove down early and spent some time on a park bench reading Humberto Eco.
The play was good. It is the story of Kim Jong-Un in his final days of being a high school senior at a private school for the children of diplomats in Switzerland. His frustrated relationship with a beautiful and headstrong classmate is the final straw that changes him from a nerdy shy teenager to the monster he became, “The Supreme Leader.”
All in all, a good bit of fun. It is so nice to get out again – to see actual live people again.
Your brain does not process information, retrieve knowledge or store memories. In short: your brain is not a computer
This one goes out to anyone who has ever pretended they can’t hear their ringing phone…
Tom Justice was once a cyclist chasing Olympic gold. Then he began using his bike for a much different purpose: robbing banks.
New research suggests that the highest-performing teams have found subtle ways of leveraging social connections during the pandemic to fuel their success. The findings offer important clues on ways any organization can foster greater connectedness — even within a remote or hybrid work setting — to engineer higher-performing teams.
Movement is key.
A surprising grant of certiorari places a high-stakes regulatory case on the Court’s docket, with profound implications for EPA authority to regulate greenhouse gases.
A miracle occurred this week. Everyone I have talked to about it, myself included, is shocked that it happened. It’s important to
Bill Chance 