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1. Now that I've found old manuscript, not sure what to do with it. 20 years ago - I had a lot of folks read it, and they sent me written responses. Including my father - which I'd forgotten. All said more or less the same thing, too convoluted, the paranormal stuff doesn't quite work, and I needed to condense and simplify.
So, I've decided to re-read the thing and decide what to salvage, if anything, and what to ditch.
But first I need to finish revising my current manuscript. It's odd, a lot of folks state in their comments - "hey at least you completed a book", what they didn't know was that I'd already completed three books prior to that. Completing the book isn't my problem, it's revising, polishing and publishing it. Plus marketing it.
I think our difficulty as humans is that we insist on relating to information through our own experience. When often it lies outside of it, and is not relatable, and that's okay. Actually it makes things more interesting.
2. Television
I've watched television this weekend, but the only thing that held my attention and was at all engaging was The Citadel on Amazon Prime, starring Robert McFadden (Game of Thrones, the Body Guard), Prianka Chopra (the best thing in that CIA series a while back), and Stanley Tucci. It's about a spy who loses his memory (McFadden) and covert spy agency that fell. Kind of Bourne Identity Meets Mr & Mrs Smith by way of Alias.
I found it interesting. It's a series. Also it has a similar trope dynamic to Company You Keep - lovers to enemies to lovers.
Ghosted starring Chris Evans, Anna de Armas, and Adrian Brody (with a bunch of guest appearances by people who appeared in the Avengers, and unfortunately would have been more interesting than the stars). It's about a dumb but buff farmer living with his parents, while writing his book on agriculture's effect on civilization throughout the ages - who runs into a lovely woman at a farmer's market. Also lonely, and unable to maintain a relationship, she strikes up a conversation with him, they argue, flirt. Meet cute. Have sex. She leaves. He texts her a million times. She appears to ghost him - except, whoa she accidentally took off with his inhaler (which he never uses again in the movie - but whatever). He tracks her down - only to get mistaken for a superspy. And taken hostage - she saves him, because she turns out to be a badass CIA field operative. Which apparently isn't something one reveals on a first date.
Most of the film is them bickering and a lot of fight sequences. I was bored. And the bickering got on my nerves. Whomever work the dialogue - is not very good at it. The actors seemed to struggle with it at times.
At any rate, I spent most of it doing other things, and it never really grabbed my attention.
So far the spy trope on television is a mixed bag. I liked Company You Keep, but True Lies bores me. I liked the first episode of the Citadel but Ghosted bored me. Company and Citadel are more equal pairings, both characters are smart and super capable. True Lies and Ghosted have unequal pairings, and kind of incompetent folks who suddenly without warning are competent.
Schmigadoon S1 is kind of boring - I've playing it as background music, sometimes entertaining but mostly boring. I may check out Schmichicago which is a send up of the 70s and 80s musicals.
Ted Lasso S2 isn't bad, but slow going. I liked S1 better.
3. Making my way through the non-fiction audiobook : Killing John Wayne - the Making of the Conqueror
It's literal - John Wayne actually was killed by that film. So was several other people, including Susan Hayward and Agnes Morehead (Bewitched). (I got curious - because my mother told me this - but couldn't remember what the movie was. Probably because she never saw it and it was never released.) They were doing nuclear testing in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. The testing was done several miles south of the film location. They were told it was perfectly safe by our idiotic government. They did look into it. It's not like they didn't know. Dick Powell who was directing the picture, actually halted production when he discovered it and checked it out - only to be told, no worries.
However, the book goes into detail regarding the testing and what now know about it. It was not safe. The winds shifted during it - and blew the radiation hundreds of thousand miles north and south of the site. The radiation contaminated the rivers, the groundwater, and the soil. People over a hundred thousand miles away were falling ill. They had troops train on that site (without being told what was involved) just to see the effects of radiation on them. They were unwilling guinea pigs. Yes folks, tax payer dollars paid for that. The book details how the dirt and sand got into everyone's drinks and how they all inhaled it. So, think about that for a minute, people were inhaling and drinking radioactive dust from nuclear testing just a few miles away.
It's harrowing. Hard to feel too sorry for Wayne though - he campaigned for a part, he was completely wrong for, and worshipped Genghis Khan, saw him as amazing. It was a macho, male centric romance made by white men. It was also a dangerous shoot. There was no sunscreen - that didn't exist back then. It was filmed in the 1950s. They had little cover or shelter. The crew had no shade. They brought a live panther on the set to place next to Susan Hayward as a prop - until it allegedly attacked her twice, and had to be removed and replaced with a statue.
If you've never heard of this film? Most haven't. It's become a bit of an urbane legend. It is not available. Mainly because ...well, outside of being really bad (and not in a good or fun way), it's racist. Also misogynistic and sexist, if unintentionally so. (I mean, hello, 1950s Hollywood). They cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Also Susan Hayward, a redhead, whose hair was still read in the film, as the love interest and motivator for Khan. The Native Americans living nearby were hustled into being extras - because they looked like they could pass for Asian without makeup. Yellow makeup was used. See, racist.
Powell did hesitate, but not that much. It was the 1950s, Marlon Brando and Mickey Rooney were portraying Asians in films. Actually Dick Powell was more interested in the television series he was producing and starring in with David Niven entitled Four Star Playhouse. He felt television was the future. (Again 1950s). Also, he didn't have a lot of control between powerhouses Wayne and Hughes. Howard Hughes produced, but was largely hands off after casting and location. He was more interested in producing/testing airplanes and doing a passenger Jets.
This story makes the filming of RUST and well everything Whedon did on the set of Buffy or Kubrick's stuff sound rather tame by comparison. Honestly, Hollywood is a tough business.
4. One of my favorite singers from my childhood and beyond, died this week.
Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96.
He will be missed.
A lovely man. A humanitarian, singer, song-writer, and activist.
Among my favorites?
The Banana Boat Song aka Day-O
"Daylight Come, and we want to go home..." - which he said before he died. Just like my dad actually, who told my mother it was time for him to go home. He wanted to go home. Harry said the same thing, it's time, I want to go home.
I grew up listening to Harry Belafonte - my mother loved his music. They had his albums when I was a kid. He also did Free You and Me with Marlo Thomas in the 1970s, and was close friends with Martin Luther King and Sydney Poiter.
Here's Harry Belafonte singing Turn the World Around on the Muppet Show.
And the The Kennedy Center Honors for Harry Belafonte in 1989
A quote attributed to Harry Belafonte, is "the artist can be caged but not the song."
So, I've decided to re-read the thing and decide what to salvage, if anything, and what to ditch.
But first I need to finish revising my current manuscript. It's odd, a lot of folks state in their comments - "hey at least you completed a book", what they didn't know was that I'd already completed three books prior to that. Completing the book isn't my problem, it's revising, polishing and publishing it. Plus marketing it.
I think our difficulty as humans is that we insist on relating to information through our own experience. When often it lies outside of it, and is not relatable, and that's okay. Actually it makes things more interesting.
2. Television
I've watched television this weekend, but the only thing that held my attention and was at all engaging was The Citadel on Amazon Prime, starring Robert McFadden (Game of Thrones, the Body Guard), Prianka Chopra (the best thing in that CIA series a while back), and Stanley Tucci. It's about a spy who loses his memory (McFadden) and covert spy agency that fell. Kind of Bourne Identity Meets Mr & Mrs Smith by way of Alias.
I found it interesting. It's a series. Also it has a similar trope dynamic to Company You Keep - lovers to enemies to lovers.
Ghosted starring Chris Evans, Anna de Armas, and Adrian Brody (with a bunch of guest appearances by people who appeared in the Avengers, and unfortunately would have been more interesting than the stars). It's about a dumb but buff farmer living with his parents, while writing his book on agriculture's effect on civilization throughout the ages - who runs into a lovely woman at a farmer's market. Also lonely, and unable to maintain a relationship, she strikes up a conversation with him, they argue, flirt. Meet cute. Have sex. She leaves. He texts her a million times. She appears to ghost him - except, whoa she accidentally took off with his inhaler (which he never uses again in the movie - but whatever). He tracks her down - only to get mistaken for a superspy. And taken hostage - she saves him, because she turns out to be a badass CIA field operative. Which apparently isn't something one reveals on a first date.
Most of the film is them bickering and a lot of fight sequences. I was bored. And the bickering got on my nerves. Whomever work the dialogue - is not very good at it. The actors seemed to struggle with it at times.
At any rate, I spent most of it doing other things, and it never really grabbed my attention.
So far the spy trope on television is a mixed bag. I liked Company You Keep, but True Lies bores me. I liked the first episode of the Citadel but Ghosted bored me. Company and Citadel are more equal pairings, both characters are smart and super capable. True Lies and Ghosted have unequal pairings, and kind of incompetent folks who suddenly without warning are competent.
Schmigadoon S1 is kind of boring - I've playing it as background music, sometimes entertaining but mostly boring. I may check out Schmichicago which is a send up of the 70s and 80s musicals.
Ted Lasso S2 isn't bad, but slow going. I liked S1 better.
3. Making my way through the non-fiction audiobook : Killing John Wayne - the Making of the Conqueror
It's literal - John Wayne actually was killed by that film. So was several other people, including Susan Hayward and Agnes Morehead (Bewitched). (I got curious - because my mother told me this - but couldn't remember what the movie was. Probably because she never saw it and it was never released.) They were doing nuclear testing in the Nevada desert in the 1950s. The testing was done several miles south of the film location. They were told it was perfectly safe by our idiotic government. They did look into it. It's not like they didn't know. Dick Powell who was directing the picture, actually halted production when he discovered it and checked it out - only to be told, no worries.
However, the book goes into detail regarding the testing and what now know about it. It was not safe. The winds shifted during it - and blew the radiation hundreds of thousand miles north and south of the site. The radiation contaminated the rivers, the groundwater, and the soil. People over a hundred thousand miles away were falling ill. They had troops train on that site (without being told what was involved) just to see the effects of radiation on them. They were unwilling guinea pigs. Yes folks, tax payer dollars paid for that. The book details how the dirt and sand got into everyone's drinks and how they all inhaled it. So, think about that for a minute, people were inhaling and drinking radioactive dust from nuclear testing just a few miles away.
It's harrowing. Hard to feel too sorry for Wayne though - he campaigned for a part, he was completely wrong for, and worshipped Genghis Khan, saw him as amazing. It was a macho, male centric romance made by white men. It was also a dangerous shoot. There was no sunscreen - that didn't exist back then. It was filmed in the 1950s. They had little cover or shelter. The crew had no shade. They brought a live panther on the set to place next to Susan Hayward as a prop - until it allegedly attacked her twice, and had to be removed and replaced with a statue.
If you've never heard of this film? Most haven't. It's become a bit of an urbane legend. It is not available. Mainly because ...well, outside of being really bad (and not in a good or fun way), it's racist. Also misogynistic and sexist, if unintentionally so. (I mean, hello, 1950s Hollywood). They cast John Wayne as Genghis Khan. Also Susan Hayward, a redhead, whose hair was still read in the film, as the love interest and motivator for Khan. The Native Americans living nearby were hustled into being extras - because they looked like they could pass for Asian without makeup. Yellow makeup was used. See, racist.
Powell did hesitate, but not that much. It was the 1950s, Marlon Brando and Mickey Rooney were portraying Asians in films. Actually Dick Powell was more interested in the television series he was producing and starring in with David Niven entitled Four Star Playhouse. He felt television was the future. (Again 1950s). Also, he didn't have a lot of control between powerhouses Wayne and Hughes. Howard Hughes produced, but was largely hands off after casting and location. He was more interested in producing/testing airplanes and doing a passenger Jets.
This story makes the filming of RUST and well everything Whedon did on the set of Buffy or Kubrick's stuff sound rather tame by comparison. Honestly, Hollywood is a tough business.
4. One of my favorite singers from my childhood and beyond, died this week.
Harry Belafonte died at the age of 96.
He will be missed.
A lovely man. A humanitarian, singer, song-writer, and activist.
Among my favorites?
The Banana Boat Song aka Day-O
"Daylight Come, and we want to go home..." - which he said before he died. Just like my dad actually, who told my mother it was time for him to go home. He wanted to go home. Harry said the same thing, it's time, I want to go home.
I grew up listening to Harry Belafonte - my mother loved his music. They had his albums when I was a kid. He also did Free You and Me with Marlo Thomas in the 1970s, and was close friends with Martin Luther King and Sydney Poiter.
Here's Harry Belafonte singing Turn the World Around on the Muppet Show.
And the The Kennedy Center Honors for Harry Belafonte in 1989
A quote attributed to Harry Belafonte, is "the artist can be caged but not the song."