Years ago, I read an interview with Flea from the band The Red Hot Chili Peppers. In it, he was asked why he loved living in Southern California so much. He said something that has resonated with me ever since. He said he didn't know for sure exactly what it was that kept him here. He'd traveled the world and tried to live in other places but he always ended up missing Los Angeles. He likened it to a virus that gets in your bloodstream and that no matter how hard you try, you just can't kick it.
That's exactly the way I feel about this place. I grew up in Florida and I've lived in a number of places since then, including a three year period in Iwakuni, Japan. I feel especially close to Athens, Georgia where I went to college and I do seriously miss the mountains and forests in that part of the country. However, there's only one place I want to live and that's in Southern California.
I've tried to put some kind of logic to this feeling and I've been hard pressed to do it. It's just something in the air (and I don't mean the weather). It's a feeling that I get when I'm near the ocean in Laguna Beach or traveling by the old movie studio housing around Burbank or even just crossing the giant bridge over to San Pedro. There's a history here that's not as old as those East Coast cities, but is still fascinating and weirdly vibrant. As you've probably seen if you've looked back at prior posts, this blog is all over the place as far as subject matter goes. Still there are some constants (almost like series installments). Obviously movies, music and writing get posted about a lot. I'm going to add one more: Southern California historical oddities.
To get started, I'll just give you a taste of something light and fun down near San Diego.
Back in 1902, a German engineer named Gustav Shulz hatched a pretty cool plan. He'd moved down to a place near San Diego called La Jolla and he'd become fascinated by the sea caves that honeycomb the cliffs there. Being an enterprising man, he bought some land over one of the sea caves and hired workers to help him tunnel up from the cave to the surface. It took him almost two years to get it done since the best tools they had to work with were pickaxes and shovels, but once they reached the surface, he advertised it as a tourist attraction.
To see a view of the ocean from inside the sea cave, you had to pay $0.50 per person and climb down the tunnel using a rope (yes, a rope). Seems like you're asking a lot from your patrons, right? Well, believe it or not, it was a hit almost immediately. Shulz was soon getting around 200 people per day who visited his shop and paid the money to climb down to the cave. Over the next several years, he added stairs so that the rope was no longer needed and aside from some added electric lighting and a handrail it pretty much looks like it did then.
Over the years, the cave was occasionally used for things other than just tourism. During Prohibition, it was used as a way to smuggle alcohol into San Diego. It was also used to smuggle illegal immigrants (mostly Chinese) into Southern California. Despite those shady endeavors though, it's mostly just known for being an interesting San Diego oddity.
The store and the cave are still open to the public although the price for admission has gone up to $5.00 per person. It's a pretty cool piece of history that's worth doing if you're in the area. Just remember that if you do decide to visit, it's a long climb back up.
For future posts about Southern California, we'll delve into failed desert resorts, ancient Chinese explorers, abandoned movie sets and a bunch of other fun stuff.
Back in the early 2000's, I wrote for a website called DVDinmypants.com. Primarily they were a movie site but after some cajoling, they agreed to allow me a regular column called Five Bands. The post below was originally posted on that site. I've made a few modifications for clarity but that's it.
Five
Bands: My Five Favorite Death Songs - Cary Christopher Death.
That's... pretty final...
In fact, it's
a subject many people don't want to talk about, read about or experience at all
in any way, shape or form. I've always been fascinated by it though. Not in a
"Cary wants to die" way. Trust me, I'm extremely happy being alive.
My fascination has always been with how death is perceived in history, culture
and art. That fascination began as a teen when I delved into the world of rock and roll.
Whether it's
famous rock and roll deaths like Keith Moon, Jimi Hendrix and Mama Cass or the
famous high school rock and roll myths ("When the police arrived at the
scene, the car stereo was playing 'Runnin' With The Devil' man!") death and rock music
seem to flirt with one another constantly.
As subject matter goes though, death has spawned some truly great songs. While not as proliferous as the
"Love Song", the "Death Song" category seems to have more
winners than losers and while there are some famous classic hits like
Bloodstone's "D.O.A." and Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's
Curve", many of my favorite death songs never made it to radio. In my
opinion though, they stand head and shoulders above their more popular
brethren.
Here are my
favorite five:
1. Deep
Red Bells - Neko Case: Lyrically, Case tells the story of a young girl abducted
and killed on the highway. Her body lies in the grassy field near an overpass
and for me, the song brings to mind the highways I used to travel in the Smoky Mountains. There's a mist that clings to the earth in the early mornings there and I can easily imagine a body lying
forgotten amongst the beauty of the forest.
Case pulls off this imagery
perfectly with lines like "speckled fawns graze round your bones"
and describes the bloody handprint on the car as looking "a lot like
engine oil". Top that off with Neko
Case having possibly the most amazing voice in rock music and this is a hell of a great song. In fact, this is probably my favorite
"death song" ever; although number two on this list could take it over on the right day.
2. Not
Even Stevie Nicks - Calexico: This song cuts right to the chase. The
opening lines are:
With a head like a vulture and a heart full of hornets he drives off the cliff into the blue
Seriously, how great is
that opening verse? Blend those fantastic lyrics with Calexico's penchant for combining elements
of traditional rock and southwestern influences and you've got a winner. It's not my
favorite Calexico song (that would be very hard for me to define) but it's a
truly great death song.
3. A
Good Idea - Sugar:
This song is a personal favorite because the first few times I heard it I
didn't pay attention to the lyrics at all. I just liked the music. I got to see
Sugar when they were playing warm up gigs in clubs prior to this album being released. I was walking away from those shows singing "That's a
good idea, she said, she said" for days. They were the only lyrics
I knew and I figured it was a love song.
Imagine my surprise when I finally got my hands on the album and found out this rollicking song is about a murder! It's a sometimes-confusing
story of a drowning. Confusing because half the lyrics seem to be sung by the
murderer and the other half seem to be sung by a witness who watched from his
boat on the ocean. The two perspectives paint a very interesting picture, with
the victim seeming to be a willing participant. Ultimately, the witness says he
expects to see her ghost when he's on the water, which instantly reminds me of the movie Creepshow.
4. Tomorrow
Wendy - Concrete Blonde: "Hey hey, Goodbye. Tomorrow Wendy's going to
die." This one is a given. Of course, it's also every 90's Goth teen's favorite
song, but there's a reason for that. Tomorrow Wendy lets you wander
through the mind of a woman who is on the verge of death. What she's dying from isn't important (AIDS, cancer, etc. have been batted around). What does matter is that
Wendy's recollections are painted through what seems to be a haze of
painkillers that make her veer from nostalgic bliss to anger at God himself. In doing so, she takes the listener on a ride through a range of
emotions that I've never heard explored as well in any other song. It's truly powerful
and made even more so by Johnette Napolitano's awesome voice.
5. No
One Lives Forever - Oingo Boingo: This is the song I want played at my wake! If there's any death song that will instantly
get a party going, this would be the one. Danny Elfman and company wave their
asses in the face of the Reaper himself and dance merrily away while reminding
you that there's a price to pay. The imagery in the lyrics goes perfectly
with the band's Dia De Los Muertos image.
Let's have a party There's a
full moon in the sky It's the hour of the wolf And I don't want to die.
Not exactly the chess-playing knight from a Bergman film is it? But if you're going to go out, you
might as well go out dancing.
First of all, I want to thank all of you who have purchased a copy of The Wash as an eBook. It's been great hearing from people who are reading it or have read it. That's the best part of sharing it with others is seeing what pieces resonate and which don't.
I have exciting news. The Wash is now available as a physical book! You can order your copy through Amazon right now and very soon it will be available at other online retailers including Barnes & Noble. If you've been waiting until you could actually hold it in your hands, now's your chance to get it.
Now, whether you've read the book or not, I have a present for you. Consider it a "Bonus Scene" of The Wash, if you will. Fenton is a name you'll come across occasionally as you read the book. He's a character who apparently has some minor influence over proceedings in The Wash, however his tie to Jim's Bar and the events in Ogden Wash are so slight that he was actually cut from the main manuscript. However, the one chapter where he appeared was a chapter that I particularly loved. There's a phrase author's toss around: "Killing your darlings". Fenton's chapter was one of my darlings and I axed it. The reason was simple. It didn't add significantly to the narrative and I needed to cut the length of the book down. That said, it told a complete story about who "Big Al" Fenton was and what exactly happened to him and rest assured what happened wasn't pretty. So to celebrate the physical release of The Wash, I've rewritten Fenton's chapter as a short story. It's called Fenton Takes a Swim and you can pick it up as a free ebook here:
Finally, I want to thank those of you who have left reviews on Amazon, Smashwords, etc. for both The Wash and A Debt to the Dead.
Reviews are one of the most important things an author can receive in
today's publishing world. It helps me be eligible for marketing
campaigns and other incentives that will get The Wash in front of even more readers, so again I thank you! See you again in a few days.
Well, we were very ambitious in our viewing list this year, especially considering all the extracurricular activities we had going on in October. We made it through them all though and with a little time to spare.
As mentioned in previous posts, we had a couple of films that stood out due to either my reactions or my family's (Train to Busan and Black Swan). We had a lot of movies that we'd either seen before or that were good but not good enough to provoke strong reactions either way. One that we all unanimously thought was brilliant was Get Out. If you haven't seen that, please seek it out. I'm not going to go into it here because I don't want to spoil anything but it's up there with the best movies we watched.
After the whole Train to Busan debacle, getting the girls to sit down with me to watch a horror movie was a little more problematic. I was being questioned on anything they'd never seen before. God forbid it was something I hadn't seen before either. If that was the case, my daughter would usually just head upstairs to her room until the credits rolled and my wife would go back to half-watching/half-crafting in the dining room. The exception to this was any movie in black and white that was filmed prior to 1960. All I had to do was say, "It's a 1950's movie about..." and they were both in.
On our list there were plenty of those films, but there was one in particular I knew they hadn't seen and knew would get them riled up again. I'm talking about the sci-fi classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers from 1956. Anyone who tells you that old black and white films just aren't scary has either never seen or has forgotten the first time they watched this movie.
Filmed at the height of the Cold War and playing on the fears that there were communists living undercover everywhere in America, Invasion of the Body Snatchers substitutes actual alien invaders for the Reds. The trick is that they don't look like aliens. They look like your friends and neighbors and they only barely act differently.
At the time it was released it was extremely effective. Even now, it wound up my wife and daughter enough that they couldn't sit still to watch it. My wife declared that it was "just about at the max of my movie tension level".
I've seen the film easily a dozen times and I still get anxious watching as our hero encounters more and more of his fellow Santa Mira citizens who don't seem to be themselves. If you're looking for just one more movie to send off Halloween with before you start watching endless holiday themed comedies, make it Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
The other films we watched in that last run up to Oct. 31 were:
First of all, this is a true story. I have a witness in my dive partner Donna Sievers. For a few years, Donna and I would meet up at some point around Laguna Beach, CA every other Friday (conditions permitting). We were diehards. We'd walk to a place where we could check the waves, make our decision whether to go out and then suit up and get in. If we actually made it to the location by 7:00, we were usually in the water by 7:30.
I've made almost 100 dives in my life. Over 80 of them were with Donna. She was the best dive partner I've ever had and I'm only speaking in the past tense because she abandoned me and moved to Hawaii. There she posts dive pictures and photos of spectacular sunsets on Facebook in an attempt to make me jealous.
It works, but I digress.
When I say we met every other Friday, I mean it. It didn't have to be a sunny day or even a warm day. We did as many winter dives as we did summer ones, maybe even more. The Pacific is cold anyway so there were actually days when getting in the water felt better than being out of it.
The day we found the dead man, it was overcast as in the picture above. There was a fog that wouldn't burn off until later that day and our official photographer, Debbie Sullivan, wished us a fun dive while she hung back on the shore drinking coffee and patiently waiting for us to get back. We were at Crescent Bay and conditions were just about perfect to make a dive on my favorite location in Laguna, Deadman's Reef.
The picture above is a 3D rendering of the reef that lies below the surface. Deadman's Reef is a large patch of rock that juts up from the bottom and comes about ten feet or so from breaking the surface. On the side closest to shore, the depth is around 30 - 40 feet depending on the tide. As you head around the back side you'll find yourself in 40 - 50 feet of water and there's a good chance you'll see big animals like seals and sea lions as well as colorful small ones like the Spanish Shawl Nudibranchs who loved one particular section of rock.
As you can see though, it's a bit of a haul to get out to Deadman's. When we first started diving there I asked about where the name came from and I was told it was because boat traffic in the area had caused a death or two from divers who'd surfaced in the wrong place at the wrong time. In my experience there, I never saw a lot of boat traffic, but when I dove there and had to surface for some reason, it was something that stuck in my head.
Donna and I had swimming out to Deadman's Reef down to a science though. We would hug the protected reef area as we swam on the surface. Then we'd align ourselves with a certain house on one of the cliffs and kick straight out until we were about 150 yards or more from the shore. Then we'd drop down and be within easy reach of Deadman's without using a lot of air. That method also kept us out of any potential boat path for the most part.
Usually, I would bring my underwater camera with me on almost every dive. There came a point though when I decided not to any longer. I found I was spending more time fooling with my camera than enjoying the dive and on this particular day, I left it at home. So of course, this would be the day that we saw something I'll never forget.
Donna and I began our dive by circling the base of the reef. The visibility wasn't the best. Like I said, I don't have any photos from under the surface that day, but here's one from a different dive that shows how murky the water can be here on what we call a "good day". As I remember it, the day we saw the dead man was about like this.
If you're lucky you get about thirty feet of visibility. It takes some getting used to for those that are more familiar with diving in the Caribbean or somewhere the water is pristine. You spend a lot of time looking around wondering just what may be out beyond your sight line.
We had spent about forty minutes on the reef and had gone around the base once when Donna suddenly pointed to our right. At first my brain couldn't process what I was seeing. It wasn't a nudibranch but it was colored a weird black and aqua. Slowly my eyes adjusted and I realized it was a hand. A gloved hand was sitting immobile and raised just a foot or so off the bottom of the ocean floor. The hair on my arms stood up under my neoprene wetsuit and a crawling fear climbed into my stomach.
What had we just stumbled on? Did someone do a solo dive out here and get in a jam?
Donna and I swam closer and then I made out an air tank and feet with fins attached.
It was definitely a body and there were no air bubbles rising to the surface. Whoever this guy was, he was dead. Or was he? I started thinking back to my rescue training and wondered if we could get him to the surface and administer rescue breaths. Maybe he'd only just now succumbed to whatever it was.
That's when I saw the coffin. That's right. A coffin. What the hell was this? A weird mafia hit? Did someone get rid of an enemy here at my favorite dive spot?
Wait a minute. That coffin looked a little thin to be holding a body. And the air tank was actually fused into the lid.
It was at that point that I realized what I was looking at was a piece of underwater art. As soon as I got home, I sketched what I'd seen. Here's what I drew. Apologies for not being much of an artist.
I can't express the relief that flooded through my body. As we examined it closer, we found the fins were strapped on with metal stirrups and the gloves were simply fastened to the sides of the concrete coffin. I immediately began mentally kicking myself for leaving my camera behind.
After that dive we had a string of weekends where the conditions weren't good enough to dive at Deadman's. The next time we went out, I brought my camera but the coffin had already been overtaken by kelp and anemones. You could barely even make out the shape. The ocean claims things very quickly around here.
Still, I'm glad that I got to see the dead man in pristine condition. Sure it scared me enough that I almost soiled my wetsuit, but it's something I'll never forget.
This wasn't supposed to be the post for today. I'd actually written up something completely different. Then we went to the neighborhood pool at night and I met The Kid.
You know the one. You've seen him or her in grocery stores, the kitchen section of Target, or in line at the bank (although admittedly, nobody goes to the bank anymore). It's that one kid who's bored out of his/her skull and is looking for someone, anyone to interact with. They're usually cute and precocious and their parents have completely had enough of them.
That was the case tonight. My wife, daughter and I are all hanging out in the jacuzzi, when in the gate comes a mother, a grandmother, a three year old girl and The Kid. The Kid is in first grade. He's blonde. His mother calls him "imaginative" and he comes right over to us and introduces himself without anyone asking him to. The world is a wonder to him and it's full of nothing but friends.
I used to be that kid. Maybe that's why, when all the adults started talking about school and homework and vacations, I started paying attention to what The Kid was saying because let's be clear. He started talking from the moment he came in the gate until the moment he left. It was a running dialogue that was meant for everyone and no one in particular.
The first thing that caught my attention was the word "monster". I mean, it's not a word used in common conversation by most people over the age of 10, so it grabbed me by the ear.
"And when you see him, you have to run over and tell your neighbors because he's really spooky."
That's what I heard after the word "monster". Now, everyone in this hot tub was ignoring The Kid. Hell, I'd been ignoring The Kid. However, about a thousand hours of horror movie watching have taught me a thing or two over the years. One of those things is to listen to the person no one else is listening to.
"What monster is that?" I asked.
The kid's expression didn't change. He didn't brighten up or become more engaged. He just looked my way and continued.
"He's really spooky and he rises up out of the water like this and then he does this."
The Kid howled.
This got his mother's attention. She looked over and apologized to me. Then she literally asked him "Is that your best behavior?"
He looked down and replied, "No."
Then she went back to talking to my wife and The Kid's eyes drifted back to me. He continued.
"You have to watch out for him. He likes to stay in the hot tub because it's warm but he comes out when everyone is asleep and then he comes in your house and makes that sound."
"The howling sound?" I asked.
"Yeah, just like I did."
"Is there anything else I should know?"
"Yeah, he has a red blanket."
"My wife has a red blanket," I said.
"He has a red blanket and he's really spooky."
"I should be careful then. Maybe it's her."
I nodded toward my wife. He looked at her and then back to me.
"Yeah, you probably should," he said solemnly.
So yeah. It's 9:00 p.m. and I'm headed to bed here shortly. I'll probably read a little before I fall asleep but I'll also be wearing my crucifix and maybe sprinkling some holy water down the middle of the king sized mattress because let's face it, not too many people have red blankets.
When I think back on the three years I wrote for DVDinmypants.com, one assignment stands far above all the rest. I was privileged to be paired with a writer named Shawn McLoughlin and we were asked to review about twenty Universal Monster films that had just come out in box sets. Almost every film featuring the classic characters The Wolfman, Dracula, Frankenstein's Monster, The Mummy, The Invisible Man and The Creature From The Black Lagoon was included. It was a daunting task but there may be no series of films I love more than those original black and white Universal monster movies. Having to pore through those titles to review them rekindled my love for those monsters and renewed my obsession with my hands down favorite, The Gill Man.
Personally, I believe The Creature From The Black Lagoon is the perfect monster movie. Even though it's over 60 years old, it can still provoke scares out of people who have never seen it before. Scenes have been quoted (sometimes verbally and sometimes cinematically) in blockbuster films that came years later.
The most famous is the 'underwater ballet' scene between the Gill Man and Julie Adams that directly influenced Spielberg's opening attack sequence in JAWS. It's got a great script, fantastic acting and effects that were ahead of its time.
So in order to honor my favorite monster movie, here's a list of five little known facts you can pull out to impress people. However I should warn you that you will come off looking like a super nerd if you actually attempt to break these out at parties.
1. The film is based off a real myth.
It's true. The movie was inspired by a tale from South America about a village that was tormented by a half-man/half-fish monster. The creature demanded a woman as tribute every so often. No one really knows what he did with them, but apparently they didn't last long.
You know, the saying goes that there is some truth to every myth. Perhaps an expedition is in order?
2. Orson Welles was involved in the film's genesis.
How he was involved with the Gill-Man is almost a six degrees of separation game, only there's just three degrees. Welles was at a Hollywood party and he happened to be talking to Mexican cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. Figueroa recounted the fish-man story I mentioned above and the conversation was overheard by William Alland. Alland eventually thought back to that conversation and used the myth as the basis for the original script. Many, many drafts later it made it to the big screen with no further help from Welles. Still, if he hadn't had that party I wouldn't have my favorite movie of all time, so I give credit where credit is due.
3. The head of the creature was designed after a seventeenth century woodcut of a creature called The Sea Bishop.
That picture says it all, right? Well, not quite. As the story goes the creature was first discovered in the Baltic Sea in 1433. It was presented to the King of Poland who was so fascinated by it that he decided to keep it instead of releasing it back into the water. It was described as having a fin that looked like a clergyman's cloak and a head that was humanoid and shaped like a bishop's mitre. A group of actual bishops were granted an audience with the strange creature who apparently made gestures to them that it wanted to go back to the sea. The bishops convinced the king to let it go and when it was put back in the water, it made the sign of the cross and then swam down into the depths.
Of course, then it made its way to the Amazon River, terrorized Julie Adams and company and spawned two sequels. Somewhere along the way, it must have lost its faith but who could blame him? It was Julie Adams, for crying out loud!
4. There was no air tank in the Gill Man costume.
For the original film, Ricou Browning (who played the Gill Man in all of the underwater scenes) had to hold his breath, sometimes for up to four minutes. The director wanted the creature to look real and since the monster had gills, he thought that having bubbles escape the costume would ruin the effect. Lucky for him, Browning was a professional swimmer and diver. In fact, Browning had never aspired to be an actor. He was a behind the scenes guy and went on to do some fantastic directing work including all of the underwater battle scenes in the James Bond classic Thunderball.
5. There really is a Creature From The Black Lagoon!
The picture above isn't it though supposedly it looks similar. Actually, it's an amphibious fossil that was discovered by Jennifer Clack at the East Kirkton Quarry near Edinburgh. Clack named it eucritta melanolimnetes which literally translates into "creature from the black lagoon". It existed during the Visean epoch of the Carboniferous period of Scotland. Clack noted that the fossil was discovered in what was once a 'fetid swamp', so the name fit perfectly.
And there you have it. Five fun facts about The Creature From The Black Lagoon that will get you absolutely nowhere in life. However it did distract you from doing work, so at least that's something, right? Thanks for reading!
