I should have pointed out in my previous post on the Dunwich Horror and H.P. Lovecraft that there are better adaptations of the author’s work for the screen.
Online, a short-ish (44 minute) silent piece does a particularly notable job with The Call of Cthulhu. Visit the promo site or (thanks, Hulu!) watch the video online right now.
Until the end of April, Netflix will offer subscribers an opportunity to instantly download and watch the 1970 film version of the Dunwich Horror. It’s goofy, and mildly amusing in a campy seventies way, but it has little to do with the original story from which it derives its name. I find that to be unfortunate.
H.P. Lovecraft is a uniquely American author, with a flair for horrifying imaginative fiction. His portrayal of early New England society excited my interest as a kid growing up in Rhode Island. The imaginative power of his cosmology excites my interest and admiration as a grown-up type writer.
You wouldn’t guess from his legacy, but in his lifetime Lovecraft was not a great commercial success.
The Nova/National Geographic documentary ‘Great Incan Rebellion’ challenges the old story of ‘Spanish Conquistadors arrive in New World and use superior technology to crush primitive native peoples.’ Forensic pathologists collaborate with archaeologists and historians to uncover a much more plausible narrative, in which the discontents and ambitions of the native tribes of the Andes feature prominently.
I don’t doubt for a second that steel, gunpowder and horses gave the Conquistadors a significant advantage. But advanced technology alone is no guarantee of success, no matter what the myth makers may want us to believe.
The ‘money pit’ on Oak Island in Nova Scotia has a (multi?) storied history. I’m not going to try to recap the history of the place: the Wikipedia page on the ‘money pit’ is thorough, balanced and sharply written. Cribbed from that is a list of the ‘treasure’ believed to be waiting: pirate doubloons, British or Spanish government money, Marie Antoinette’s jewels, the Ark of the Covenant, proof that Francis Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare’s plays, and (naturally) the Holy Grail.
I’m inclined to view the pit itself as the treasure. It’s better than a reflecting pool, because it reveals the innermost hopes, desires and dreams of all the seekers who come looking to plumb its mysteries.
We have Freemasons in the family. Not my generation. (Um… not that I know.) But the light-blue apron I discovered in a dusty trunk decades ago is tangible proof that, once upon a time, my family was on the inside. We knew people. Also, presumably, stuff. Secret stuff.
Alas. I’ve yet to hear any revelations about the meaning of the eye in the pyramid or the current resting place of the Holy Grail. I haven’t received even a minute of coaching for any time-hallowed rituals. (Not unless that coaching was subtly concealed within episodes of ‘Hee Haw’ and ‘the Lawrence Welk show.’)
None of this stopped me from enjoying the first hundred pages or so of the loopy, shaggy-dog silliness of Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminati books, wherein much is made of a purported connection between the Knights Templar, the Freemasons and the Founders of this country. (I finished the books. I just didn’t enjoy much past the first hundred pages. Ymmv. Also: Fnord.)
In an era when respect for the men and women who founded the United States borders on hagiography, I think it’s important to recognize that Washington, Jefferson, Franklin et al were a quirky and very human bunch. They weren’t saints. They had weird fascinations, flaws and obsessions, to be sure. But I tend to believe that the Freemasonry of the Founders’ era had more to do with giving people an excuse to socialize than anything more devious. People are awful at keeping secrets, and worse at working together amicably. I don’t doubt that conspiracies have been launched every few minutes throughout the whole of human history. I just struggle to believe many survive a single week, never mind many generations.
Oddly, no one in my family seems to know what happened to that trunk I opened, or the Masonic gear I examined. The house where I found the trunk was sold, and I’ve heard conflicting accounts of what happened with the contents. So-and-so thinks there was an auction. Another source reports that anything salvageable was donated to the Salvation Army and the rest thrown away. I’m certain that one of those two explanations is the right one.
Well. Almost certain, anyway.
When my brother asked me what I knew about a location in the Grand Canyon off-limits even to park employees, he caught me by surprise. I’d never heard of any such. Only a little digging, though, unearthed another bit of fantastic Americana to rival the tunnels of the lizard people under Los Angeles. We’ve got tunnels again, but this time there’s also evidence of… ancient Egyptian culture?
“…(T)he archaeologists of the Smithsonian Institute, which is financing the expeditions, have made discoveries which almost conclusively prove that the race which inhabited this mysterious cavern, hewn in solid rock by human hands, was of oriental origin, possibly from Egypt, tracing back to Ramses.”
Hey, if you can’t trust an unsourced article (courtesy the April 5th, 1909 edition of the Arizona Gazette) who can you trust?
My natural skepticism prevents me from finding any of this very compelling. It’s Occam’s Razor again. Is it simpler to believe in a hundred-year old cover up of ancient Egyptian ruins in the Grand Canyon or that an unnamed reporter chose to spin a tale that would be difficult to verify, based upon a man the Smithsonian believes to be fictional?
Isis Temple rock formation. Image courtesy Twinsday at en.wikipedia.
The images from the Grand Canyon are plenty provocative for me, even if the Wikipedia article on Isis Temple isn’t sufficiently intrigued to mention anything other than a rational, science-based explanation for the formations. I’m not sure that’s entirely just. Any vision that survives so many decades must be touching people at some deep level.
It’s the kind of vision I’m happy to see enshrined in the deserts of Northern Arcadia.
I’ve followed REM since the Chronic Town EP (though, alas, not faithfully in recent decades.) After a weekend filled with personal sorrow, this track’s melancholy vocals, haunting guitar fills and stubbornly determined drum track suit my mood while also embodying the ‘alternative America’ feel I hope to pull off through the entire Northern Arcadia series.
Idly flipping channels on a Saturday afternoon, I came across an awful sixties beach party movie. The camera lingered on the male lead, a young man whose profile seemed oddly familiar. The story wasn’t exactly new. The young man was pretending to be someone he was not, in order to win the heart of a lovely young lady. I didn’t know the name ‘Tommy Kirk’ until I did some quick reconaissance online. I knew his face. As a child actor, he’d featured in films like Old Yeller, the Shaggy Dog, Swiss Family Robinson. As a kid, I’d felt a connection to the boy I saw on-screen. I didn’t want to be him, I wanted to be his friend. His, ah, close friend. I wanted to inhabit his world, too, where everything was black and white, the Dads were all Fred MacMurray and adventures, even scary ones, invariably ended well.
Disney’s version of America was recommended to the grade school me and my classmates without caveat. Davy Crockett was the unquestioned king of the wild frontier, and Daniel Boone’s marksmanship, frontier savvy and natural genius deserved to be presented in no less than Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color.
Of course, even when very young, I understood there was an element of make-believe to Disney’s vision. I knew the world and other kids could be nasty; I had siblings. But Disney’s vision of a world living in harmony was one to which we all could aspire, right?
Cut to 1996. I’d graduated college and the world wide web was just being built out. It would take another five years before the debut of Google search. I had time to do some soul-searching. I admitted (first to myself, then others) that I felt more attracted to guys than girls. I thought about the ways I’d deceived myself through the years, and I remembered ‘that kid from the black and white Disney films, what was his name?’ I remembered wanting to be his friend. His close friend. I’d had a crush on the guy, I realized. I briefly felt mortified by my moony-eyed sixth-grade self but I moved on and I forget all about… what was his name?
A few years ago, I came across a ‘where are they now?’ photo spread, featuring Disney stars past and present. I learned that Tommy Kirk hadn’t quit movie-making to become a Fred MacMurray-style father. He’d been fired by Walt himself when the studio discovered Tommy Kirk was gay.
Look, Walt Disney’s accomplishments are staggering. Every man and woman of every era has flaws, and the sins of most eras are obvious only in hindsight. I don’t hate Disney for his bias against Tommy Kirk (and, by extension, me.)
But in Northern Arcadia, there will be room for “fresh faced, slightly goofy” young men who just happen to be attracted to other young men. There will be room for heroes who are women, and there will be room for people with skin in all shades of black, brown and tan.
That’s my idea of a truly ‘wonderful world of color.’
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I did a good stretch of my teen years in Massachussetts and Rhode Island. When we read Moby Dick in high school, the notion of whaling wasn’t something exotic or distant. My school organized yearly trips to Provincetown. At the … Continue reading
Back in the days when there were such things as physical bookstores, people had full time jobs doing nothing but ordering books. You met with publishing representatives, dined at the rep’s expense, and when you got back to the office you flipped through catalogs of upcoming releases and decided what titles you’d carry, and how many copies. You filled out order forms in long hand, and you became intimate with inventory management software of the same vintage as Lotus 1-2-3. You also got free books. More books that you could read.
One book I did find time to read (after the bookstore closed) was Charles Nicholl’s The Creature on the Map. Reconstructing Walter Raleigh’s historical journey to find El Dorado is Nicholl’s overt purpose, but his prose does not shy away from lyricism. He describes the inability of Raleigh (or anyone) to find El Dorado:
“The last, synaptic gap is never bridged. No one ever gets there. There is only the journey, the approach towards something that you cannot reach, something… that you dare not reach.”
That resonates with me, even now that the city in the Amazon which no one believed existed (outside men like Raleigh) has been revealed as a reality, albeit without the streets of gold.