The Anti-HUGO

HUGO has become everyone's darling. It's a movie with TITANIC-era gloss and pomp, with a magnificent array of schmaltz.

Schmaltz can be a good thing. I don't respond to it necessarily, in general, but HUGO is undeniably appealing to many movie-goers. Maybe in a depressed economy HUGO's the kind of movie, like STAR WARS in its time, which creates a world of fun and innocence by which people can pack up their cares and woes for a while.

In the 1940s, Hollywood turned into the singing and dancing machine, cranking out one silly shiny romantic and ultimately mass-fulfilling movie after another. In Europe, the same thing happened, except the Euro-version of Ginger Rogers was forced to dance around piles of bombed-out debris. No one wanted to see real misery during World War 2, so Hollywood and the other Allies produced sugary dreams full of leggy angels and darling quips.

HUGO is what I'd call "wisty-eyed." It's the kind of movie born of a complete lack of poignancy, yet so willing to please that you cannot fault it. You cannot dislike or remotely hate HUGO as a movie. Certainly, as I've heard, the book is brilliant and much-beloved.

HUGO in 1973, a Martin Scorcese picture.

The fact that Martin Scorcese, who has spent most of his career gut-shooting pimps and blowing up casino owners, directed this sweet delightful cookie of a movie is hardly my issue. In fact, if I hadn't known, I would have never guessed it, as Scorcese as a director or writer is nowhere to be found.

Not altogether true. Scorcese is found, in the heavy-handed fund-raising character of Rene Tabard, a film historian absolutely resolute in preserving/saving lost movies. A pet Scorcese project, for sure, and an extremely important one. Do not get me wrong on this point. But here's the thing: HUGO comes off as mechanical as the automaton at its plot core.

Two and half hours of HUGO later.

I don't write this to be contrarian, and I did see HUGO in 3-D, which I have no use for as a money-grab tech, since it's purely designed for young people who adore shiny things dancing before their eyes. Like many, I was smitten by the falling snow flakes which seemed to come to rest on my 3-D spectacles. And certainly Scorcese gives you three dimensions, if you wish to have them, with rampaging trains and clacking clock's inner workings and dizzying testicle-shrinking heights.

It's alive, and intends to stay that way.

I want people to enjoy HUGO before they enjoy most of the Hollywood tripe. HUGO is good for the culture. But I'm not sure it's a great movie, even if it is a movie of such pleasant whimsy that only a blackhearted villain could have thought, "This movie is too long. When will it end? How many more times must I gaze into Hugo's beautiful blue tear-rimmed eyes while he plaintively asks for help?"

For everyone who loves HUGO: I'm happy. I'd show this movie to anyone, of any age, fearless in the certainty that they would love it. HUGO is IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, or GUYS AND DOLLS, or SINGING IN THE RAIN. It's a movie that is wonderful, eager and playful as a puppy. And like a puppy, it can chew your shoes and piddle on the carpet. You can only sigh and put it outside to play, play on, into the cultural twilight.

The Fire Snow

A traditional Thanksgiving for me involves driving two hours south of Fredericksburg, into the countryside of Middlesex Co. There I'm greeted by friends and their relatives, of a family of long-standing friends, and the rapid extension of themselves through their small children. Even the once-children are growing and preparing to assimulate their pleasant, attractive qualities with that of similar genes, and expand their light in a darkening world.

To solidify the metaphor, there is a bonfire headed by the family patriarch, a ceremonial of sorts burning of dead branches, piles of damp grass and shorn undergrowth, clutching vines and decaying weeds collected over the summer and fall. This tower of bony witch bodies and moldy scarecrows is set aflame against the just-fallen night. It's like a sacrifice to winter gods for another year of good fortune.

This fire is surrounded by amused family, witnesses to the burning, while the patriarch and several other men such as myself work to transfer more and more of the dead pile onto the flames. The work is mildly hard, and welcome in my mind. Sweat trickles, loam squashes beneath shoes, frosty breath flares in the fire-flecked dark, and each heave of heavy wood into the fire's heart sends waves of spinning embers into the sky and down again as ash on shoulders and hats. Under this fire snow, a college boy kisses his girlfriend once, quick as an arrow.

Fire has ever cleansed the world of evil, and taken the hero on a hellish journey.

These long-time faces are transfixed by the fire, pleased by every spasm of it, vocally encouraging the men's feeding. I can't see the ground, the mound of sticks and resistant moldering logs which are pried up and thrown bodily into the mass of consuming heat. Things break in my hands, viny, mewling, and once alive. I'm inexplicably something else than what I was. The fire is all. It is the fire and a desire to perform for the lovely women and proud men watching. This is a dance with a primal force, the very core of civilization. This fire is a forgiving bestial record of every moment in human history, and our future as well. The fire is a time machine, as every fire is a remembered fire. No one has ever forgotten a fire of any size and strength.

Contemplation of the talking flames, or rising fear of what they are saying?

Finally, when everything is burning, there are embers, charged red with energy as old as time itself. This has been the best moment of this day and any day for a long time. Everyone leaves the observance, except for the few to insure the fire is controlled. The silent agreement with fire: feed me, and I will not destroy you utterly. That is how we used fire to construct cities and explore space. Fire is the elemental Swiss Army knife, a dedicated servant and a demanding god all in one.

For the lovers in the fire snow, kissing while fiery ash settled onto them like a baptism, they will perhaps never know whether they are favored or condemned by the flames. And such is the mystery of a life.

Burly Movies 2011 Edition

The magic of movies, as it's referred. Honestly, I haven't seen much magic this year. I figured to at least point to all the highlights I've seen. Particularly now, right before we're deluded with the Oscar-bait bullshit over the Holidays.

The notable in-theatre flicks: DRIVE with Ryan Gosling, outstanding character study slash sequel to Walter Hill's THE DRIVER (1978). Best head-kicking-in scene ever. Top notch in every way.



Malick's TREE OF LIFE, probably one of the most amazing movies I've ever seen. Brad Pitt is consummate. Anyone who isn't devastated after this movie is a f*cking brain-sucking mutant who should be hunted with pitchforks and shotguns.

HORRIBLE BOSSES: funny, but a bit unreal even by comedy standards. You can go with it, and enjoy for the most part.

That's it for the best at-the-movies. Saw CAPTAIN AMERICA and HANGOVER 2, but wouldn't say they were worth a ticket. As with a lot of Hollywood product, serviceable and mostly forgettable.

On DVD this year:

BLACK SWAN, which didn't shatter my world but still impacted enough to leave a moon crater.
THE LAST EXORCISM was way better than I thought it'd be.
THE AMERICAN with my man crush George Clooney, way worse.
THE TOWN was solid, solidly forcing my further adoration of Jeremy Renner, of 28 WEEKS LATER and THE HURT LOCKER, mainly because he's a Jimmy Cagney lookalike pug tough with a soul.
I SAW THE DEVIL, a Korean human monster movie with OLDBOY's Min-Sik Choi, doing what he does best, which is violate your right not to be mangled by his hands.



SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE WORLD is the real high concept, the future of comic book movies if they had any creative guts.
CATFISH, touching and creepy and slanderous simultaneously. The internet can hurt you.
SOURCE CODE, loved the concept, eh on the execution, but still way deserving a look.

Of movies on DVD, in general:

Finally saw LAST TANGO IN PARIS (1972.) The movie that verifies most women are evil, especially French women.
Saw three Criterion movies from director Hiroshi Teshigahara, WOMAN IN THE DUNES, PITFALL and THE FACE OF ANOTHER. Surrealist powerhouse flicks from the mid-1960s. Guaranteed you've never seen anything like them.



Lumet's PRINCE OF THE CITY (1981,) pure vicious cigarette burning thrust into eye movie, brilliant in every way.
Gaspar Noe's ENTER THE VOID (2009) doesn't unleash horrid psychological underneaths like his IRREVERSIBLE (2002) did, but attempts to reveal the circle of life. TREE OF LIFE, by way of heroin addiction.
Rhona Mitra's DOOMSDAY, pure fun. Don't even ask for reasons why, because it's obvious.
Freidkin's TO LIVE AND DIE IN L.A.(1985) was a movie I sort of avoided, considering the soundtrack is by Wang Chung. That's enough to keep me away for thirty years. Then I saw it, utterly blown away, just a great movie, top-five car chase, top-five 1980's naked women. Everything you want or need in a movie.
Also saw Danny Boyle's SUNSHINE (2007) , released what seems a lifetime ago. Solid science fiction, for what that's worth, definitely quality, definitely unnerving. I may not have loved it, but I've thought about it ever since.

On a side DVD tour, watched all first three seasons of "Fringe." Started off hating everyone on the show except for asylum resident Walter Bishop. But once the show's mythology took off, found an interesting set of scenarios to enjoy. Despite some television-level acting, and pure stupidity on the writing side of things, the show still engaged.

Anna Torv, "Fringe"'s Captain Kirk, didn't really affect me at first. But she has a great voice and smiling eyes, and that's usually a combination that wins me over. Amazing woman.



And that's a wrap on Burly Movies so far this year. Unless something changes soon, this will stand as the best of the year's viewings.

The Ego Monster

I got into a bit of an argument, about the pride of death.

The idea that dying is, in all ways, as human a function, as primarily human a function, as breathing and making love. That it occurs to everyone, every living thing, no matter how good or evil they are, is a comfort to many people. This awareness provides them with a way to gracefully depart this world, saying goodbye to those who loved them most, to hold firm in the face of the greatest Unknown any of us will ever experience.

Being who I am, and essentially unfulfilled, I vehemently argued that an untimely death, or death I personally found reprehensible, as from cancer, or death from a random falling object, or death from eating a rancid piece of fish--these are deaths not worth dying. The long, drawn-out death knell we all fear, or at least that I personally fear, involves hospital rooms and tubes and withered blotchy faces pleading for surcease.

I hadn't anticipated such an argument would, in many ways, insult anyone else. That someone else might not wish to think of themselves seen in a light of humiliation, as if death was a really terrible dance that they had unleashed at a party, complete with YouTube video evidence.

Dying is made bearable only when we are loved.

That I'm not a "happy" man is not a gigantic surprise. I'm not creatively fulfilled, a rather massive choking knot of displeasure in my throat, is one cause. Another is the natural process of a mental state derived from being raised by a mother with social phobia and violent screams of anguish which not only tormented her but destroyed her son's sense of confidence.

Death, then, is like the worst school cafeteria meal you can possibly imagine. Death is beets and that slab of shitty "pizza" with a burn-victim skin on top. While I waste time battling inner demonics and the slothful pain of writer's block--which real writers proclaim does not exist, and they are undoubtedly correct--I imagine death as the final insult in a life full of similar bullies.

I was told, in very real terms, that any person I loved who was terminal and not-long for this world would never have me around them. Knowing what they know, they'd know I was observing them with disdain, not understanding their process of dying as anything more than a grotesque mistake on their part.

That isn't how I think, but little good it does to say so now. I romanticize death; I believe if I was terminal, I'd best get to a quick, adventurous and ultimately dire quest for a "proud" death. To be slain by a tiger, to fly a spacecraft into the sun, to run across a mined field, these seem much preferable to sitting in a hospital bed surrounded by loved ones and old friends, all of whom are thankful to have this peaceful time, this letting go, a prelude to the gentle embrace of the Void.

One of the few real questions left in Chad Carter's life is: Will I allow myself to be loved, even in death? Or will I shun the goodbyes and the pain, and vanish into a chaos finally released from my raging brow; the monsters long hidden, given delicious substance at last?

The Monster, brutal and defiant to the end.

For what it means, I hope my loved ones will be assured that I will protect them in death as I have in life. Whatever else I am, I am not a monster. Or at least, I am not a monster without a heart.

The Rager in His Natural Environment

I don't mind conflict in life, but I'm not much into "drama" as it's called. The idea that people would display emotional turmoil for attention, whether from within or without, is repellent to me.

Yet I've indulged frequently in Woody Allen rants about this or that, the kind of "schtick" of intellectual worth, one believes. Structured comedy, more or less. Ranting is healthy, it's a way of saying things while not-doing. You can rant about the bad drivers in the world, instead of killing them.

The only ones hurt in ranting is the listener, especially if they're not committed to the subject of the rant as endemic of a larger problem. Often the listener is stuck trying to "solve" the problem, instead of just being there.

I try not indulge the ranting too much. Too much is a strain on others. Too much ranting in and of itself leads to rage, a physical exertion of rage. I've scars to show for it.

Society is such a festering wound in this day and age, no one voice is heard among the flailing rants of the many. Even the rants are buried under mountainous ruins of broken people's dreams, the dream of living day to day, an ordinary life with children and pets and the occasional night out and the rest work and television. There's nothing wrong with that dream, and it's specifically American. Many people fear the dream is being taken away from them before their very eyes. Worse, they're being told it never existed in the first place. You're either impovershed or gluttonous, and no one economic identity seems to fit any more.

If the world, culture and society crumbles, I know I will perish fairly immediately. No one is more vulnerable than the ranting rager devoid of hope, badgered by guilt, and honeycombed with bad memories.

The U.S.S. Broken Down

Chad Carter's Knowledge of Pain

This is my self-portrait of pain. I forgot to include the half-numb, half-painful place on my upper thigh, which I assume is some kind of nerve damage. I threw in prostate because I'm paranoid of the Most Embarrassing Deaths one can have, which I feel like anything to do with the a-hole is. I'm guessing most doctors figure it's your fault if you have a sore behind and urge incontinence. Going back to my assertion that no hero in movies or literature can be "real," I never see a scene where the hero is about ready to go in with his double .45s blazing, but has to stop for a quick sh*t first.

Both elbows are actually jacked up, above: one from doing forward elbow strikes which caused some kind of inflammation and fluid build-up, the other what I've been told is "golfer's elbow," where you get pain when you make a fist. The one wrist was injured while doing some strikes, because I love boxing and boxing exercise is good for you. Only you can do it wrong and hurt yourself, who knew.

The ankle and heel are from a couple of fractures. Now there's scarring all up in there which causes discomfort most all the time. I limp a bit from time to time, depending on what kind of stress I've had on the old hooves in a day's time.

And it makes me wonder, about the unpleasantness of the future, of getting really old, of needing a cane or walker, or a baggie with a tube in my side to catch my wastes, of chronic joint issues. How much do we fear death as we age, that we'll prefer a creeping sunken wreck of the human form to the sweet, sweet darkness, if we but let go?

I mean, once the world is Pain, how much enjoyment can there be? Just a minute here or there, near the broken glass of rustling night, the mewling whisper of the void?

The Woman From the Cave of Ice

The women who have forever held the most allure for me are mysterious, in some unfathomable way.

Many men can claim to not understanding women, and I certainly qualify, but only in that I don't really want to understand them.

If they are a different species, and they are, then they are as alien to me as I to a fire ant.

And I don't really have a reason to want to change that. I had some trouble with women early on, in which I wanted, needed, to perceive the world through their eyes. Now, it should be said that I'm a man, and sexual desire is at least 70% of interest in any woman, but I don't say that to demean them. It's more a condemnation of myself and men. If we were less physically swayed, we'd treat women like we treat everyone. Women become ordinary, average examples of people by definition, in that regard. But also a woman's beauty and sensuality should not force a man to create fictional histories for these women. I was one of those men; if I could not salvage meaning from a woman's gaze, I had to capture their attitudes in fictional fantasy.

With age, I've learned how much women mean to me, how astonishing I find them, and without any wish to push a pin through their beauteous torso and adhere them to a bug-collecting grid. I enjoy women as I enjoy photographs of tigers. The mystery of a primitive world is found in every inch of a woman's naked flesh, in the fall of her hair, and the sway of her hips. They have walked from caves of frozen ice with the hardened gaze of a creature which has lost its husband and protector, held its dying children, buried memories back in the blue subzero depths using their bare hands moist with tears.

Nothing has halted these unimaginable beings, as they are invincible catalysts of life itself. That they taste of blood and that they willingly mix their blood with mine, is but one small gesture they make to affirm I have purpose in this world.

The Lesser Hunter

I was reading some writing lessons posted on Facebook by a member of the endangered species of great writer, Joe Lansdale, and as usual I came away excited by his expertise where it concerns being a writer.

Lansdale is pretty much the writer's equivalent of El Santo, a champion of hand-to-hand combat and with a firm grasp on a preternatural world, often at odds with killers, zombies, and beautiful Mexican vampires.

I'm near 41 years old, which is unbelievable to write down, and I've never had a lick of writing earn me a single cent. Lansdale had published his first novel by around age 31, and was one of the most prominent horror and genre writers to be found in nearly every anthology concerning anything to do with Horror in the 1980s. And there was a pig-choking lot of them.

I don't like to make excuses about my lousy publishing history. I could blame a lot of things, external issues, but for the most part I've had plenty of time to finish good work. I've written "novels" if by novel you mean a stack of pages with letters in sentences on them. Publishing has changed, in such a way as to make it impossible for me to understand. The original paperback novel is practically extinct, and that was always my dream you know: I wanted to see a line of paperbacks on a shelf with my name on the spine. Preferably with covers displaying a Lucha Libre fighting a robot.

I've said for quite a while, I'm not interested in writing for myself. I write to sell books, but I'm not a slavering hypist. I want to write for other writers, essentially. I want the adulation of men like Lansdale, who will be inspired by what I just put down just as he inspired me when I was a teenager.

I don't think there's anything more I want, than to impress Ray Bradbury, Harlan Ellison, Lansdale, Norman Partridge, the unfortunately-passed Don Westlake, and maybe even a "literati" like Paul Auster, David Mamet and James Ellroy. Funny thing: writers who write about nightmares and spies and professional crooks are happy writers. Ellroy writes vicious novels about real vicious people, and he's a tormented soul. But writers are loners, and we're not looking to be pals who share a six-pack or each other's wife during a literary key party. I just want the respect of my writers, the men who collectively educated me about the world and how a man acts and how a hero should act and how a writer should compose themselves.

I've been paralyzed for well over a year, maybe longer, unable to conceive a story, inert as if poisoned by a giant blue spider's venom in a forgotten jungle. In most senses, I feel like I've landed on a world where language is useless to me. I should be more adept at the spear and the hunt. In Lansdale's view, if you are not inherently instinctual in survival as it pertains to writing, then you must surrender to the law of the jungle.

I understand his meaning, and real writers are constant hunters, driven by blood and the vibration of skull-shattering impact as the tomahawk strikes. I have lost a keen instinct, but I am a writer. Whether I am devoid of kills should not disqualify me from the hunt. At least, that is my hope.

A Thing for a Special Lady

Mock cover, which I did for a Special Lady's birthday. I don't have much computer skillz, so this is just concocted in word, but kind of fun nonetheless.

Burly Veteran's Day

It's Veteran's Day, but I had to admit I didn't really realize every soldier is a veteran.

To me, a veteran means combat veteran. I'm not trying to kill the mood, but I find it hard to "thank" a veteran who served on some Alaskan base for a few years. It's serving, yes, but I can't refer to such as a veteran.

Here's a soldier you definitely want to hear stories from.

Also, getting to this thing about randomly walking up to a "vet" and thanking them: I'm sure those guys appreciate being appreciated, but it's also kind of disconcerting to have some half-drunk meathead slapping a soldier on the shoulder and demanding to buy him a beer. For, no doubt, being "awesome." I don't know, to me respect is respect, and it doesn't come from a bottle. Obviously I think most combat vets probably have little interest in being thanked for stabbing some other kid to death in a muddy ditch. War is war. I feel like Veteran's Day is the day when vets get some free drinks and cigars and meet other vets and talk about how it feels to still be alive, so long after they thought they wouldn't be.

I've been asked why I didn't join the Military when I was a young man. When I was hitting 20-21, the first Gulf War was ramping up. I remember hearing the reports on the radio of the first fly-overs and the anti-aircraft guns booming, and I remember being sure there'd be a draft. I was still a virgin, and not very keen on the idea of dying as one. So I can't say I had much enthusiasm for becoming a soldier at that time. Not to mention the "Don't touch me," thing, and an overall bad attitude. I wouldn't have cut it as a soldier.

In case you boys weren't sure what you're fightin' for.

Then when 9/11 happened, I was 31 and everybody was ready to join up and kill some "towel-heads." In that case, I can definitively say the Iraq Invasion was complete bullsh*t. It was a lie wrapped in a conspiracy and topped off with another layer of jingoistic bullsh*t. I had zero interest in invading a country because the U.S.of A got reminded of the reality of the world and had to find a scapegoat.

Again, being drafted isn't something I would have dodged. I think you give me a modern-day Hitler and I'd become a soldier and give my life to kill it. Give me a moral war and you've got a soldier. But don't give me lies to cover up sleezy American interests in oil-rich countries.

For all the soldiers who gave their lives serving this Nation, go with God, and I hope you are reunited with all of your loved ones, to once again smell the hint of jasmine in your girl's hair, and see the little child she named after you, and hear your father tell you how proud he was of you. I hope that for you all.

The Shut-In Laughs Last

It struck me this evening, how much time I spend avoiding other people.

I'm generally not a buddy-buddy kind of guy, rarely have an interest in other men. Which is funny, because I grew up idolizing men. My car mechanic grandfather raised me, and I was referred to as his "shadow." Everywhere he went, I went. We ate together, slept together, even urinated at the same time together. After Rufus Lee Carter died, I really sought a father figure, needed one, but there wasn't a man half as good or decent or respected as my grandfather. So that search came up snake eyes. I idolized heroes, Indiana Jones and R.J. MacReady and the Incredible Hulk, who reeked of fierce individual manliness. But fictional heroes couldn't give me advice on how to deal with bullies and talk to girls. So eventually even they turned away from a needful teenager.

Every kid needs a dad and a hero. If they get both in the same dude, they should forever be grateful.

At some point, post high school, I realized the extreme and crippling shyness I had suffered most of my life was becoming full-blown pathology. I had shut down the kind of receptors to social behavior I'd once been taught, while yearning painfully not to be alone any longer. Obviously girls were out of the question.

In later life, I overcame a lot of the severity of the social phobia, finally becoming a man who could display intellect and sexuality and physicality even. This effort was mostly due to the administrations of close, singular friends, and the love of beautiful women who, like casting agents, recognized my potential. And also I needed a little blue pill to calm whatever evil lurked in the treetops of my brain. But I like to believe it was at least somewhat force of will, to rid myself of childhood devils.

Today, I spend prodigious amounts of time alone, in a room, trying to be a writer. I'm there now. It isn't easy, and no one pats me on the back for making the effort. Unlike pathology, there's no quantifiable means to assess creative endeavor. Cavemen probably had no idea scratching at a wall was meant to do anything but be a warning to others not to get caught in the open with a Sabretooth tiger.

The reason I idolize the Hulk: he's angry a lot, he's lonely a lot, and all he ever wanted was to be left alone. Particularly by stupid puny humans. 

But what I know for sure is how repelled I am by most people. Not those familar and adored few, so important to me, but the mass of human beings. Their insidious presences are not welcome. The bar trolls in their heels and the street people with their plastic bags, the college students in their fluffy boots and the lawyers waiting for the jury with vodka tonic in hand, the black teens in ass-bag pants and the Chinese delivery drivers. They are diverse only in that they smell different, one to the other, like spices, and as a whole they are a cloying brimstone of unease. Their subliminal message is an invitation, a dramatic overture of possibility, one could even say "adventure awaits." I've lived long enough to know how arresting other people are, how destructive, how submissive and mesmerizing. But only for very short periods of time, and only in the awkward moments before tedium sets in.

I fear people, generally, not for what they might do to me, but for what they expect me to do. You, me, all of us. To perform, to amuse, to satiate, to hurt. We all consist of magnetic fields and electric charges, and universes die when we make contact. I do not wish to be a "shut-in" as it's now called, but nothing in the vapid whirlpool of drama people represent calls to me. They are, in short, strangers. Not because I do not know them, but because I am stranger than they will ever be. And I enjoy it.

The Real Difference Between Good and Evil

Stephen King taught me to masturbate.

His cock stood out stiffly from a mass of reddish-gold pubic hair. It didn't take long; he was too excited. Two or three quick jerks through his closed fist and orgasm came, immediate and savage. He spat semen onto the bedspread in a convulsion.

That's from King's CUJO, which I read when I was about thirteen or fourteen. The junk in question belongs to Steve Kemp, an adulterer and all-around scary d-bag who has just trashed an innocent family's home while they're gone, mostly in revenge for the wife he's been sleeping with breaking off their affair. For a little extra oomph (and evidently because Kemp has never heard of DNA testing) he tosses off on the couple's bed.

Now, I wasn't a fan of any of this activity, not in the least. Kemp is a scumbag, in a generally unlikeable novel full of unlikeable people (except for the great, rabid titular Saint Bernard), and no hero in any novel or movie would be caught dead in such a realistic pose, a spiteful spermicidal event.

But the thing is, when you're a teenager, even villains have lessons to impart. In fact, if you think about it, the villain is often the most realistic character in any novel or movie.

The villain has desires or thoughts which are cruel, petty, manic, or deviant. The villain wants power, money, prestige, sex and influence. Heroes never want for such things; if anything, a hero finds any positives in his/her life by pure chance or pure effort, a kind of reward for living fictionally as a "good person."

But the villain doesn't expect to be rewarded. Whatever good comes to him/her, the villain must take it.

And this is realism. This is what all "good" human beings in the real world, for time and time again, have denied themselves. They may seek to be good, solid citizens, but they also live to eat, sex, sleep and defecate. Not "evil" desires, merely banal ones.

Cujo wanted nothing more than to be a GOOD DOG. So did I.

A hero has a purpose, a mission, for good, or at least some kind of return to a peaceful status quo. And then what? What did Atticus Finch do after TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD? What did Scarlet O'Hara deign once she'd been told by her husband that he "didn't give a damn"? Even the Grinch had to continue to survive, eating, crapping, and having sex. The villain is the purest form of humanity, a survialist without moral boundaries generally.

Where the hero might refer to his penis as "himself," a kind of code for his sexuality as a whole, made abstract, the villain revels in sweaty release.

A hero, swelled to explosive dimensions by his love for this woman he has shared adventures with, dodged bullets with, supped godly nectars from, will find "himself," usually in a moment of climactic love deep inside this co-star, with a pulse racing like an electric current in their loins. When the hero makes love, he does so abstractly, so as not to alienate the reader/watcher.

The villain's world is much different. His penis is a weapon, "cock" being what you do when you draw back your arm to strike. The villain's pubes will be realistically described, "reddish-gold." The villain "spats" semen, an act of aggression, unlike the hero, who will utter a manly groan, his ejaculation unseen within a tender woman's embrace. The hero is fulfilled in this. The villain loves to make a mess.

Dee Wallace in CUJO, the movie: I spat for her too, but felt bad about it later because I loved her so and heroes didn't do things like that to women they love. Did they?

I didn't have any idea about a hero's world when I was a boy, no inkling how a hero masturbates, since heroes in stories do not masturbate. Yes, unless the writer of the hero wishes to alienate a general admission audience. Or unless John Updike is writing them, meaning the hero is "literary" and closer to the pimples of reality. But who reads for reality unless reality is something strange and unlike anything they know? Like, to a teenager, the new reality of masturbation.

Only villains jerk off, which is what Steve Kemp in CUJO did. And being jerk-curious, I tried it out soonafter while taking a bath and, in a blinding revelation that would change my life as it has so many boys' before me, I "spat" hot semen and was never the same again. In an instant, I had become cursed with a selfish, shameful activity. A villain would surely laugh.

A moment of villainy, courtesy of Stephen King--reality within fiction that serves a purpose. Not many in the real world are all good or all evil, and masturbation did not provide a gateway to monstrous acts of devilry, nor did it straddle some ethical line, barring Christian attitudes. No matter how pedestrian the act, which a hero would never scrape toward, I had to accept I was not a hero, like my heroes Indiana Jones or Flash Gordon. But also, in my enlightenment, I perceived neither Indiana or Flash could be a hero all the time. Not with those sexy girlfriends they had. No wonder the villains hated the heroes--the heroes were too fictional to be taken seriously.

Sooner or later, even the heroes demand sexual satisfaction, else they are not human--not even fictionally human. And I was definitely human, verified for the first time, no longer even possibly someone else's character. I was my own.

She Walks in Time

The older I become, the surer I am of hearing a ticking clock. It began not long ago, but somewhere in my brain I grew uneasy. The sound had become apparent where once it was subliminal.

Digging on Elvis kissing a teenager, of being kissed by a teenager, and the sensuality of the moment. The girl's age is probably meaningless. It's a bet she isn't legal. But Elvis is just a kid here too, a legal man by definition of the ticking clock. In fact, the configuration of the girls and Elvis resembles a clock face.

I've been smitten by the image, the adoration of even time itself to Elvis' power. He had no idea of a ticking clock, an ending to end even the might of his sexual force. That kissing girl, what became of her? What did time do to her? Is she alive now?

I can hear the trod of time, light as heels worn by a very precise and very small woman walking through an airport terminal in 1965. Time stood still for her, enraptured by her movements and sway. Time is self-reflection, after all. Why would it not be fascinated with itself, with its own casual sensuality, its carnal glance in every reflective surface?

The Happenstance of Misery

There is such a thing as the "happenstance of misery" where it applies to how people are developed, who they become, and why they are not the people we think they should be.

If everyone shared the same misery, or no misery at all, then we'd all pretty much be the same kind of human being. Evil or good wouldn't factor, nor would the "shades of gray" so many want to extoll, as if that designation justifies any poor decision they make in life.

From a black/white perspective, there cannot be such a thing as the "happenstance of misery," the misery formed when poverty and violence and sexuality and painful revelation all correspond to create the human being at their most malleable. Usually as a child. As it so happens, a child sees the world in black/white terms, by default, and are most likely to experience misery without knowledge of what it is.

Abuse and hardship detail the happenstance, evolve it, and eventually crystallize as pure miserable experience. The experience is heart-rending, sometimes heart-removing. Misery, as attractive to the damned and the mentally-ill as any gorgeous woman or chemical stimulant, grows throbbing roots throughout human history. Bulging with pain, misery finds a throne from which to rule, designed by the cumulative human needs and desires which give it force. This black hole of doubt and remorse has no equal in all the cosmos, for it is essentially organic, essentially human, a mirror of godly proportions for Mankind.

I don't think the fundamentals of "choice" deter misery, since most misery is established so early in life. What other reason can there be for how people mash their way through life, obliterating every odd moment of clarity, demolishing any hope for an occurance of strange beauty to be found in the light glinting off the hide of a beetle?

If there is beauty in the world, it is often masked in misery, a kind of scarecrow in the psychology of Man, placed there by the unknown, with a purpose of chasing away the very question of meaning. If every bullet fired from a weapon is a marvel of scientific engineering, how quick the meaning?

Turtle Power

I envy anyone who has had a defining moment.

A defining moment, a brush with death, an ensnarement in mortality's web of thorns. I mean the kind of defining moment you do not return from. As "defined," you are exactly what you are from that moment on. Even the worst moments, the horror of war, the most effective detriment to the human psyche. An alienation by violent rapture. The soldiers in Iraq, many of them will return with defining moment intact, and evident upon them in the form of sociopathic inertia and missing parts of their bodies.

I envy their definition. To honorably engage with mortality is something to hang on to, even if lives never advance beyond it. Their purpose has been served, they have etched some kind of impact on the physical world.

A woman who survives breast cancer or an autistic child lost in a forest as deep and dark as its incomprehension, they are defined despite themselves. Whereas animals are defined from birth, from mere seconds of life where survival is a coin flip minute to minute, hour to hour, human beings must seek meaning and purpose in this world, or become as stiff and lifeless as a faded leaf in a stream.

Often, definition is thrust upon us, but sometimes it is not. I believe, in my case, definition missed me, like a speeding truck straddling a turtle in the road. The tires did not crush my shell, nor damage the fragile tissue within. If definition had run me down, I'd have known it. Whatever scars of life I received have been inconsequential, scrapes on the shell caused by the dragging of it all around me.

I prefer the shell, but in many ways remain undefined. To be defined by the shell, to be seen as a part of it or, rather, as the shell itself, an unliving mass, stoic brute matter, is the tragedy.

A turtle never lived who did not crave escape from its shell. I'm sure of it.

Jonny Quest and the Fantastic Four: Together For the First Time

Okay, so the FF comic books today are garbage. Complete garbage. And maybe they've been complete garbage for quite a while. At least since the late 1980s.

But today is the 50th Anniversary of the comic book that changed all comic books for all time. No hyperbole. Stan Lee and Jack Kirby redefined superheroes forever, in one clumsy and primitive (to our modern eyes) effort. Within a year of their inception, the FF comic was sporting "The World's Greatest Comic Magazine" on the cover, and it wasn't a bait and switch. By the third year, the book was the best cultural example of superhero comics ever put to bristol board.

Jack Kirby, the artist, essentially unleashed a for-reals universe of the most amazing images ever captured in comic books. Stan Lee put the words in the mouths of characters, most notably the tragic Ben Grimm aka The Thing, who would gruffly inform a generation or two about how to deal with being a monster on the outside, a determined and loyal man on the inside.

It's funny, if you think about it, and only I probably do, the Fantastic Four is kind of the continuation of "Jonny Quest", the sizzling ultra-cool 1960s animated show. Even though it came out two years after the FF, I just now made a connection: "Jonny Quest" followed Professor Benton Quest, his plucky son Jonny, Jonny's kid buddy West Indian Hadji, and Race Bannon, the two-fisted protector of all of them. They get into odd adventures with all kinds of weird menaces and unusual phenomenon.

The Fantastic Four is made up of Professor Reed Richards, his plucky step-brother Johnny Storm, eye-candy Susan Storm Richards, and two-fisted protector of them all, Ben Grimm. Johnny even has an American Indian buddy, Wyatt Wingfoot.

I'm postulating here that THE FANTASTIC FOUR is the continuation of the story of Jonny Quest. In this universe, Prof Quest and Race Bannon, years after the events of the original cartoon, were determined to strike out into space. Preferably before the Russians. Manned missions. Prof is married (again, one assumes) by this time, and Jonny Quest is a teenager of about sixteen. Prof's wife Susan insists on joining her husband in his space mission. She is even the catalyst to bring Race Bannon fully onto the project, as Bannon has some serious objections to the flight.

In the end, the brilliant Prof Quest is wrong: the rocket into space did not have enough shielding. And the cosmic rays bombarded the craft, and changed the crew forever.

Once crash-landed back on Earth, Susan Storm fades away before the mens' horrified stares, seemingly to melt into nothingness. Then she returns, whole and shaken to the core, from a moment of "invisibility."

Race Bannon and Prof begin to argue, once again, over the danger and the unknown results. Race transforms into a monster with orange dinosaur hide for skin and enough mass to rip a tree out of the ground and attack his longtime friend. Prof finds himself able to elongate his limbs, lassoing the shocked mutate.

Finally, Jonny Quest tears at his space suit, burning from within, until flames burst forth and he lifts weightlessly into the air. To fly, burning, disbelieving and yet, somehow, strangely elated. The plucky teen, of all of them, senses the new life, the new adventure, beginning for all of them. That Race, his mentor and father figure, had been scarred forever as a misshapen Thing, a reminder to all of them of the sacrifice heroes sometimes made for a better world, probably did not occur to Jonny Quest.

No, it was the beginning of something unimaginable. Which Jonny had been waiting for, no, born for. He could not help but infect the others, even Race in his tragic state, with a sense of wonderment.

Fifty years later? An eyeblink in the cosmic tale of the Fantastic Four.


Jonny Quest Opening Titles from Roger D. Evans on Vimeo.

Hammer, or Anvil?

Weariness. Bone-tiredness. It's strange how it affects even the most lazy, mindless of us. I expend torrents of anger during a day and am left a locust husk at the end of the day.

We should all wish to be as tired as the most tired. The hardest working people, the people who battle cancer, the mentally-tormented, none of them have a respite, none of them get a break from the Hammer.

As "The Prisoner" television show confirmed, you are either Anvil, or you are Hammer. You are either the force which drives the world, or you are the scarred visage of those who do not. It could be a comment on our times. And certainly, a comment on how crippling the zombie walk of time really is.

Bond, Everyman Bond

Let me put it to you this way: women love confidence in men. And when is a man most confident?

When he's firmly loved/in-love with a woman.

James Bond is desired by every beautiful woman he meets. He's supremely confident, but his confidence has little to do with how a specific woman loves him. Instead, he perceives how he's viewed in every woman's eyes. Bond is a man of the world, so naturally he'd be a man for every woman in the world.

He's also fictional, and most men aren't, who exist in the real world.

So a man in the real world, confident in his desire, emboldened by her desire, will nonetheless reflect a demeanor of confidence. And that is attractive to women. All women.

A man then becomes desirable to most women, at the least. Barring certain details about his physical make-up, or psychological faults, he can draw many women toward him. Because of one woman's love, let's call it, a man becomes a Man. Because one woman trusts him to love her, other women are automatically and intrinsically hardwired to want to trust him too. Trusting, then, becomes sexuality.

I've noticed in recent times, I'm far more able to attract attractive women. While I'm not married, I am bonded to a woman and our mutual high regard. The difference, in the eyes of other women, is that I'm not "safe," like a married man. I have a strong respect for married men; sometimes I long for the stability that comes from a working marriage. The point is, women instinctually long for "trust." Some will fool themselves that trust exists where it doesn't. That isn't the argument.

The secret of women is other women. What one woman trusts, another woman will trust. And another after that. And another. And strangely concurrent. The lonely man is a pariah, untrustworthy. The trusted man, bound by his selection into a single woman's most intimate desires, becomes What Every Woman is Seeking.

There's something to all this. I'm sure I'm not original in the thinking, or even the understanding, of such phenomenon. It is, I daresay, a mystery. Volcanically-oiled, and adrift.

Woman, Volcanically-Oiled

The utterly incomprehensible post-Halloween oppression is about to begin. This will mean a ramping up of all the Holidays crap we've all come to know and love.

The good thing is, Thanksgiving is the best social holiday I know, these days. I get to drive two hours, which is a great odyssey of countryside, toward the end of the Rappahannock River, where I will join with a family not-my-own. This family considers me a friend, perhaps more, and in long-standing.

It's a fortune in good will boiled down to one day. I know Thanksgiving is just an artifice, but the traditions were designed around the idea that human beings who actually loved each other would enjoy spending a day doing what human beings do, which is eat.

In most cases and most families, the tension is a crawling eyeball of judgement and slithering death to the individual. And trust me, I've had my share. But in recent times, I've been lucky to have wonderful people desire my presence. Unlike in any other facet of life, I'm an integral part of something far larger than myself.

I use this post as a preface, an apology of sorts, for all the cruel things I'll say about the Holidays, and people, and traffic, and everything else about this time of year. There is one thing I love about the Holidays. The rest of it, well, the rest of it could be buried deep in the earth, near the nudie magazine I hid when I was fourteen, with the full-bodied woman volcanically-oiled and writhing beside a pool on a day with sun bleaching the stones beneath her. I wonder where she is, today, and if anyone loves her as much as growing boys did in the 1970s.