‘Bubba Ho-Tep’ and feeling more okay about creating weirdness

Dave Williams21 Comments
Poster for the Bubba Ho-tep movie

Listening to the audiobook Bubba Ho-Tep (written by Joe R. Lansdale, lively narratation by Jude Gerard Prest), in which…

a man believes he’s Elvis Presley, claiming he was sick of taking drugs and having parasitic people around him, so he switched places with an Elvis impersonator. That guy died, while he — the real Elvis — still lives,

and another man believes he’s President John Kennedy, claiming his brain is kept alive in the White House and his skin was dyed brown,

and these two men live in Texas at a retirement home,

where they discover that an Egyptian mummy has come to life and is dressed as a cowboy (earning the nickname Bubba Ho-Tep) and is terrorizing the retirement home by sucking the souls from the inhabitants,

so Elvis and John Kennedy fight the evil mummy to stop this nasty business, and to release the souls that the mummy has eaten.

Uh-huh. That’s wacky.

Listening to the audiobook caused me to marvel at Joe R. Lansdale’s imagination.

And it offers a reminder that it’s okay to create weird stuff. Not everyone is going to enjoy the book, and that’s also okay.

That thought reminded me of Embrace Your Weird: Face Your Fears and Unleash Creativity by Felicia Day. This amazing book combines exercises to free up your creativity and self-help assurances. I very very very much recommend the book if you want to loosen the bindings around you — put there by listening too much to critical people who, when looking at a creative piece, say stuff like, “It’s not supposed to be that way.”

My review of Embrace Your Weird is here. The book is here on Amazon.

The Bubba Ho-Tep novella is here on Amazon (the book also includes the novella, Bubba and the Cosmic Blood-Suckers). In 2002, the story was made into a movie, starring Bruce Campbell as Elvis, and Ossie Davis as President Kennedy. The movie trailer is here on YouTube.

front cover of Embrace Your Weird

At Night on the Deck of a Cruise Ship

Dave Williams25 Comments

As the moon reflects the sun,
the moonlight’s reflections ripple on the ocean’s surface,
and on the eyes of the person standing next to you—
those eyes also hold the reflection of you.

Seeing the I in the eyes of
your relative or friend or lover or new acquaintance,
the I that everything orbits around:
the ship’s railing gripped by your fingers,
the whole ship,
the ocean (including the depths, yes even the dark depths),
the moon,
the sun (hidden to you now, though).

All waiting to hear and see what you’ll say and do next.

Book review: ‘Hullaba Lulu: a Dieselpunk Adventure’

Dave Williams58 Comments
Cover of Hullaba Lulu, with a dancing flapper and two robots standing on either side of her.

Hullaba Lulu: a Dieselpunk Adventure
by Teagan Ríordáin Geneviene

I’ve heard of cyberpunk and steampunk, but dieselpunk was a new term for me. If it’s also new to you, bookriot.com has the helpful article, “What Is Dieselpunk? Why We Love This Sub-genre.” 

However, if you want to save time, here’s the main gist: “Most of dieselpunk is set in, or draws inspiration from the 1920s-40s, specifically between World Wars I and II. Some hallmarks of the sub-genre include advanced machinery, aviation, robotics, and of course, diesel as a source of power.”

Another piece of background: I’ve enjoyed Teagan’s short stories at her blog. She’s creative in blending ingredients from different inspirations, mythologies, and cultures. Not only in her stories, but with visual art. She puts together collages, and her short stories can be described that way as well.

What about this Hullaba Lulu? Teagan says in the book’s blurb that the main character was inspired by “Don’t Bring Lulu,” a song from 1925. You see, Lulu is a flapper from the Roaring Twenties. But we’re not in the regular Roaring Twenties, Toto. 

We start in New York City. In Lulu’s grandfather’s speakeasy, to be specific. We get the sights of the city. We get the taste of giggle water. We get the sounds of the 1920s slang. Bushwa! Horsefeathers! Floorflusher, zozzled, and much more. These are neat for adding flavor of the time period.

The fantastical gets going after Lulu and her friends (Rose and Pearl) meet Valentino (a suave guy reminiscent of swash-buckling movie stars). Valentino owns a magical train that has automaton helpers nicknamed “angel-bots.” Also, the train’s dining car is an automat — a concept that has intrigued me since I heard about it awhile back. 

On the train, Lulu, her friends, grandfather, Valentino, and the angel-bots go on a wild ride of an adventure. They visit an alternate version of Atlantic City. Then, in returning to NYC, they head into an alternate version of the jazzy joint of the Cotton Club. So Lulu is not fully in an Oz-ish fantasy world, but she encounters extraordinary elements. Including a tilt-a-whirl and a painted mural that can transport people to other places.

Lulu is a fun-loving gal who can be a bit clumsy, but mostly she has to be flexible to deal with the incredible changes that happen to her and the group. And she rises to the occasion when help is needed to save Valentino.

Did you enjoy Dorothy and Alice’s journeys into the wondrous? If so, check out Lulu’s journey. It’s unpredictable, and a peach of a story. I mean, c’mon, cheeseburgers are currency in this Atlantic City! A theremin is used for therapeutic purpose. And Nikola Tesla joins the fun. A fantastical ride, indeed.

I don’t know what didactic means

Dave Williams28 Comments

I read the word somewhere,
somewhere in a crowd of words
    on a page
like students crowding in a hallway
    between classes,
some wearing backpacks like semicolons.

But what does it mean?

Is it a type of penguin
    waiting in line for its turn
        to slide down the glacier and
            dive into the water and
                swim for fish?
Is it a kind of rock
    that you’d find next to a stream
        and put in your pocket to bring home
        because its color is really neat?
Is it a time in ancient history when
    dinosaurs roamed the earth
        and roared instead of speaking in sentences?
Is it a type of cloud
    that’s puffy and thick,
        which I see on bright summer days
            and aren’t full of lightning and rain?

On this beautiful day, free of dinosaurs and penguins,
    I sit on a rock and listen to
        the stream mumble by,
            mumbling all the possibilities of the word
didactic.

Harlan Ellison’s ‘Eidolons’

Dave Williams13 Comments

A few days ago, I sang the praises of several Harlan Ellison’s stories. To give you a taste of his writing, here are two paragraphs from his short story “Eidolons” (meaning phantoms).

The first paragraph has to do with despair and helping each other through it. I’m not including it to emphasize the despair, but to emphasize the comfort we are capable of giving others.

*Please note* the first passage includes language of a person having suicidal thoughts. Please consider skipping the passage if this is a trigger for you.

The second paragraph suggests we shouldn’t closely investigate the sense of wonder. Instead, we delight in it. I’m a huge fan of the sense of wonder, which I feel from nature, books, art, music, architecture, and so forth.

Illustration of overlapping dark shapes, with a small yellow shape peeking through.

“Did you have one of those days today, like a nail in the foot? Did the pterodactyl corpse dropped by the ghost of your mother from the spectral Hindenburg forever circling the Earth come smashing through the lid of your glass coffin? Did the New York strip steak you attacked at dinner suddenly show a mouth filled with needle-sharp teeth, and did it snap off the end of your fork, the last solid-gold fork from the set Anastasia pressed into your hands as they took her away to be shot? Is the slab under your apartment building moaning that it cannot stand the weight on its back a moment longer, and is the building stretching and creaking? Did a good friend betray you today, or did that good friend merely keep silent and fail to come to your aid? Are you holding the razor at your throat this very instant? Take heart, comfort is at hand. This is the hour that stretches. Djam karet.[*] We are the cavalry. We’re here. Put away the pills. We’ll get you through this bloody night. Next time, it’ll be your turn to help us.”

* Djam karet = “elastic time” from Indonesian (from Wikipedia entry on the musical band Djam Karet)

Illustration of bright overlapping shapes

“Hear the music. Listen with all your might, and you needn’t clap to keep Tinker Bell from going into a coma. The music will restore her rosy cheeks. Then seek out the source of the melody. Look long and look deep, and somewhere in the murmuring world you will find the storyteller, there under the cabbage leaves, singing to herself. Or is that a she? Perhaps it’s a he. But whichever, or whatever, the poor thing is crippled. Can you see that now? The twisting, the bending, the awkward shape, the milky eye, the humped back, do you now make it out? But if you try to join in, to work a duet with wonder, the song ceases. When you startle the cricket its symphony ceases. Art is not by committee, nor is it by wish-fulfillment. It is that which is produced in the hour that stretches, the timeless time wherein all songs are sung. In a place devoid of electrical outlets. And if you try to grasp either the singer or the song, all you will hold is sparkling dust as fine as the butter the moth leaves on glass. How the bee flies, how the lights go on, though the enigma enriches and the explanation chills…how the music is made…are not things we were given to know. And only the fools who cannot hear the song ask that the rules be posted. Hear the music. And enjoy. But do not cry. Not everyone was intended to reach A above high C.”

***

“Eidolons,” is in Harlan Ellison’s short-story collection Angry Candy, originally published in 1988 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Later published in 2016 by Dover Publications, Inc.

Harlan Ellison’s Stories

Dave Williams12 Comments
cover for the book Greatest Hits. The cover has the illustration of a man's head and neck, with fingers peeling away the face to reveal the title.

Hearing about the collection of Harlan Ellison’s short stories being published this spring—Greatest Hits—I thought over his stories that have stuck with me.

Harlan wrote a blend of science fiction/fantasy/horror. In many of his stories, he seemed to have stretched a serif in the first letter and plugged it into a wall socket, so that electricity buzzed through the words.

Let’s hop through a short selection of Ellison’s stories…

“I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream” with a nightmare of only five people left in the world, and they’re at the mercy of a powerful computer that changes the format of the landscape and the people themselves. A dark and unsettling story, but with a character sacrificing himself for another person to show there’s still a bit of light…

“‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman’” that shrinks George Orwell’s 1984 into a flash-bang of a story about everyone’s schedule being regulated, with touches of humor, including a plane-load of jelly beans dropped on the populace…

“The Man Who Rowed Christopher Columbus Ashore” of a guy bouncing around time periods and situations and choices. Showing that all of us have the capacity to act with goodness or nastiness. This story introduced me to Shirley Jackson’s short story “One Ordinary Day, With Peanuts” and the staggering quote by Robert Smithson (a landscape artist): “Establish enigmas not explanations”…

“A Boy and His Dog” with the two main characters (the dog is telepathic!) trying to survive in an apocalyptic landscape, where nobody’s a saint. That very much includes the boy. This story was among the first in the genre of Character Journeys Through Wasteland. Which possibly/probably/likely inspired other entries: Mad Max, The Book of Eli, The Road, The Last of Us, etc. Recently, while watching Fallout, I was delighted to see the poster for a fictional movie: A Man and His Dog…

“Eidolons” in which the narrator meets Mr. Brown, who has a large collection of miniature metal soldiers with disturbingly realistic faces. It’s not a spoiler to say that Mr. Brown dies (it’s mentioned in the second paragraph). As he dies, Mr. Brown tells the narrator of a hidden scroll containing wisdom, and asks the narrator to share the wisdom with others. The scroll’s entries are where the story shines, as the language dazzles. I’ll share a couple entries later this week.

***

This list forms a mere small sampling of Ellison’s output of stories. If the descriptions tickle your curiosity fancy, I hope you seek out his contributions to the fantastical.

I probably won’t buy the new book, Greatest Hits, since I own a copy of The Essential Ellison: A 50 Year Retrospective and several of his smaller story collections. These provide me with the Ellison drug when I need a fix.

Book review: ‘Posed In Death’

Dave Williams10 Comments
front cover of book with a woman lying on a table and looking at the viewer

Posed In Death: Nick and Laurel Mystery (Thriller 1)
by Judi Lynn

Since this book is in the mystery genre, let’s start with an investigation… What does Posed in Death mean? A serial killer has been active for a while, nicknamed the Midlife Murderer. He/she has killed women in their forties with long hair. He/she has posed them in their beds, also applying bright red lipstick to them.

Now let’s investigate the book’s subtitle… A Laurel & Nick Mystery: Laurel is in her mid-fifties and is a retired nurse. Nick is in his early fifties and is a freelance reporter. Both of their spouses died a few years before the action in the book begins.

Speaking of the beginning… Laurel drives to her friend Maxine’s house to pick her up and drive them to the botanic gardens where they volunteer. However, Maxine doesn’t answer to Laurel’s knocks on the door. The door is unlocked, and Laurel enters the house. Tragically finding Maxine dead–and posed in bed.

Laurel calls the police. When the detective sees Maxine, he says the arrangement doesn’t exactly follow the Midlife Murderer’s pattern.

Did the serial killer try something different after killing Maxine? Or did a copycat do the grisly deed? If so, what was the motive?

Laurel decides to start her own investigation. Along the way, she meets Nick, who is researching the city for a book. He interviewed Maxine, and then he also interviews Laurel. They find common ground in wanting to find out what happened to Maxine, so they work together to dig into the case.

We learn that the investigation takes work and patience. Since you don’t know where clues will be found, you seek several possible angles. You knock on doors and interview people. Other friends of Maxine. Husbands of the women who were killed. As Nick says, “Everyone thinks investigating a murder is a glamorous job, but it’s not. It’s repetitive, tiring, and disheartening at times.”

Laurel holds her own in the investigation. She’s not a sidekick for Nick, who has a reporter’s prowess for questioning people. Laurel is an equal to Nick.

Also, this book isn’t all murder, all the time. Laurel sleuths her feelings for Nick, about opening a new, romantic chapter in her life with him. (Insert bashful-faced emoji due to me feeling slight guilty by including a bookish pun.)

If you’d like to follow Judi Lynn’s writerly journey, her blog is here.

Ripples in ‘Tom Lake’ 

Dave Williams14 Comments
front cover of Tom Lake with many daisy blooms on it.

I was listening to the audio version
of Ann Pachett’s
Tom Lake, 
narrated by Meryl Streep,
who did a lovely job
with the story

but when Ms. Streep
said “fuck,”
ripples from 
the word
sent a 
mild shock to my brain

but that’s foolish of me

because Ms. Streep
could curse a blue streak
out of frustration
or 
just for the fun of it 
when
no microphones and cameras
are staring at her

after all,
she’s human,
just like everyone else.

Phony Foam Phone

Dave Williams23 Comments
Drawing of a girl holding a large, fake phone

Get that phony foam phone
away from me,
since I gotta call
Frank in Philadelphia,
on a real phone.
We’re supposed to go
fishing on Phil’s farm.
Where’s my cell phone?
I put it here a minute ago.
You didn’t sell it, did you?
Frankly, I don’t know what the heck
you’re doing with that goofy
phony foam phone anyway.

Celebrating nature with ‘Braiding Sweetgrass’

Dave Williams25 Comments

Happy Earth Day! If you don’t want to hug a tree today, maybe just whisper “thanks” to one.

This post is inspired by the post “Earth Day Inspired Books” over at The Reader’s Room.

I recently listened to the audiobook of Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. The audiobook was narrated by the author, who has a patient and calm voice. 

I loved the book for its thoughtfulness and encouragement of honoring nature. The book lives up to its subtitle of blending science and the wisdom of people who have been living in balance with the land. 

Dr. Kimmerer herself is that blend: she’s a Distinguished Teaching Professor of Environmental Biology (at SUNY), Director of the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment, and a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. 

In the book, Dr. Kimmerer describes how we can work with nature and learn about nature and act with gratitude. 

Sweetgrass is celebrated, yes, but she also celebrates maple trees (thank you for the sap that’s made into syrup!), strawberries, asters, goldenrod, the Three Sisters (beans, squash, corn), black ash trees, and more.

Personal history is woven through the book, too. I was taken with the part of Dr. Kimmerer moving with her two daughters to upstate New York, to a property with a pond. She tries various ways to clear algae from the pond to make it appealing to her daughters for swimming. The passage is moving about how she wanted to shape an enjoyable and nourishing place for her kids.

That emotionally resonated with me. To want our children to live in a nourishing environment.

I’ll end with two quotes from the book:

“I wonder if much that ails our society stems from the fact that we have allowed ourselves to be cut off from that love of, and from, the land. It is medicine for broken land and empty hearts.”

“People often ask me what one thing I would recommend to restore relationship between land and people. My answer is almost always, ‘Plant a garden.’ It’s good for the health of the earth and it’s good for the health of people.”

Source: Goodreads.