Winston and the Black Dog

I was dreaming of a long flight of stairs, and in the dream I knew there was a park at the top of them. I had just decided to ascend when I felt something tugging at my leg. I woke up and saw Winston sitting at the end of my bed. He was staring into the laptop.

"You were snoring," he said.

"I was sleeping."

"Well I wish you wouldn't."

"Sleep?"

"Snore."

I knew he'd been drinking even before I saw the Highball next to the computer. He pointed at the screen and I saw he was on Gumtree again. He was fascinated by it for some reason.

"What's a WAG?" he asked.

"It stands for 'Wives And Girlfriends'."

He half turned to me and I could see in the weak light of the screen how his eyes glistened beneath his furrowed brow. "They are advertising on here a website which young ladies can join in order to become one of these WAGs. Can they not go about it in the normal fashion?"

"Well, a WAG is the girlfriend of a rich, professional footballer. It's kind of a thing now."

"So this website is for women who want to marry a rich football player."

It wasn't a question but I answered anyway. "I guess."

"So they themselves can become rich and, presumably, famous. By association."

"Well there are varying degrees, Winston... But yeah, sounds like it."

"Jesus Christ," I barely heard him say.

He turned away from me and raised the glass of Scotch to his lips. He took three long, deep swallows, but when he put the glass down it contained no less liquor than before.

I pulled the covers off and sat next to him.

"How bad is it?" I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

He made a snorting noise through his nose and then was silent.

We sat like that. The steady flow of traffic outside was mesmerising, and I began to doze. I was jolted back by Winston's elbow digging into my ribs.

"I am dead, you know," he said mildly.

"That's right. You're a ghost."

He laughed, and just then he sounded young, and his eyes began to sparkle with something more than booze and sadness as he recited to me: "'A ghost! One trusts such things? In will, and sight?'"

I had no idea what he was talking about. "Is that... Shakespeare, or something?"

"Ha! Close - Master Winston Churchill, I believe it was." He smiled, and whatever had been dancing in his eyes vanished as suddenly as it had appeared.

He took another drink from his bottomless glass, and I waited. He drank and drank and when he was finished he slammed the glass down. "This," he bellowed at it, "no longer fucking works!"

I nodded my head. "I know man, it doesn't help anyth-"

"I didn't say it doesn't fucking help, I said it doesn't fucking work! When you are dead, alcohol no longer has any effect on you. Whatsoever. Point of fact."

"But I've seen you drunk loads of times. Like... now?"

His shoulders hunched and he held his hands up before me as if they held something. "What you see is a pantomime," he said, his voice wavering almost imperceptibly on the last syllable. "A placebo. Psychosomatic bullshit. I go through it because I know how to, do you see? But it doesn't work, and because it doesn't work it doesn't help. And so it rolls in, as it always did whensoever it would desire... and I'm powerless." He stared into me, his eyes wild, and what I saw within them wasn't fear or anger but a perplexed despair far more dreadful to witness than either. He turned away and bowed his head. I tried to put my hand on his shoulder but it went straight through him.

After a while he looked up, but not at me. "What time is it?"

I did not want to get into this.

"What time is it?" he repeated.

"It's six to midnight," I said eventually. "They haven't moved it since you last asked, Winston. They haven't moved it since January - and that was to put it back."

He wasn't listening. "Six minutes," he muttered under his breath.

"It's not..." But I didn't know what it wasn't. "It's not... so bad," I finished weakly.

He took another drink, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. A faint smile appeared as he patted me firmly on the back. "Stephen, you're an idiot," he said - not unkindly - and then he faded away, taking his Scotch glass with him.

A Somewhat Feeble Defence

procrastinate verb prəʊ ˈkræs.tɪ.neɪt

to keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring

(Cambridge Dictionary)

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes a piece of work that should take me, say, two hours, takes me two hours. These are joyous, momentous occasions. They restore my faith in... all sorts of things. Actually that isn't really true. They only restore my faith in myself. But I suppose under the header "self" lies all sorts of things I could be referring to, like, er, ability for one, I suppose? Competency, definitely competency. So, those two. They - the occasions when I complete a piece of work on time (not before, though, never before) - restore my faith in my ability and competency. Which is rather lovely, when it happens, which, as I mentioned in the opening line, it doesn't very often.

So I'm happy and pleased and maybe a little bit smug until I realise that the only reason I finished it in exactly two hours is because I had exactly two hours in which to finish it. Do you see? I had no choice. I was panicked into forced creativity. It doesn't count and must be stricken from the record. I lose, somehow.

Of course, it's now harder than ever for writers to keep focused when trying to bash something out on their laptops.

Not like that.

Facebook, for instance. Cursed, wretched thing. Why don't I just ignore it completely, or even deactivate my account, and get some work done? The answer is... well I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. The suggestion makes perfect sense to me. But would it really do any good? What about e-mails? Gotta have e-mails. Got to have 'em. So if I had no Facebook, I'd just be checking my non-existent new e-mail messages every ten minutes, which I do anyway. And then there's, you know, the internet. Who's that guy that played that guy in that thing? I might idly wonder while attempting to navigate some tricky opening paragraph. Buggered if I know... but I bet IMDb does! As for Wikipedia, I just don't want to talk about Wikipedia.

So, cunningly, I disconnect the internet. But my laptop has Solitaire. Now I hate Solitaire, and after my ninth or tenth game I remember this, so I close that down too. Now it's just me and the blank page... and maybe just one more quick game of Solitaire. Or Minesweep, do computers still come with Minesweep? No, this one doesn't, I'll just reconnect the internet and download a version... And so on. So it's the fault of computers, then? So when writers were using word processors and typewriters they didn't have any of these problems, right? Wrong. Ever heard of pens? Ever heard of paper? Ever heard of doodling?

So let's say for argument's sake that you could successfully ignore all these distractions like a professional, whatever one of those is. What happens then? Why, then the questions start, of course: Have you brushed your teeth? Are you seriously happy with the layout of your room? A snack, do you fancy a snack? I bet there's some Wotsits left. Somewhere. In the world. Go find them.

You might be reading this and thinking to yourself, "Gee, this guy is lame." And the truth is, I couldn't agree more. My only comfort is the knowledge that this is not an uncommon affliction. Down the ages, writers of all levels of experience and stature have done virtually anything to get out of writing. Not all of them, but enough to keep me from losing my happy thoughts completely. It can be incredibly satisfying, writing, but it can also be like volunteering daily to have your head put in a particularly belligerent vice. So if my constant meandering stops me from putting my own noggin through the computer screen, so bloody be it.

The Great Curb-Seinfeld Controversy...

... that continues to rage (inside my head) is explored on Butnu:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/seincurb.html

Stephen King: Under The Dome

They say an artist produces their finest work in the first ten to fifteen years of their career. Something to do with that hoary old chestnut, "the hunger of youth". Or, as Simon David Williamson so memorably put it: "Well, at one time you've got it, and then you've lost it... and it's gone forever." I really don't know about that in general (take Clint Eastwood - you really gonna tell me Firefox is a better film than Mystic River?), but in the case of Stephen King the theory seemed to hold some water. The author's canon is front-loaded with classics and I had, without really knowing it, resigned myself to the reality that he would never write anything else that could sit truly comfortably upon the shelf next to Salem's Lot, The Shining, It, and of course, The Stand. Those four have always been the benchmark for me, populating the highest of grounds with the likes of The Dead Zone, Pet Sematary and Carrie scattered about a few feet below them.

Under The Dome, published last year, probably is not destined to join the former group; after one read I'm not going to commit either way. But what is certain is that it is his most absorbing, muscular novel since It, not to mention the most ambitious. (I'd like to make it clear at this point that I am not including the Dark Tower books here, mainly because I've not read the last three having found the fourth, Wizard and Glass, rather dull. Yikes!)

The premise is simple: what would happen if a small town suddenly became encased - exactly along its borders as they would appear on a map - in an invisible, impenetrable bubble? As you may have noticed, and much to King's surprise, this is the exact same plot device used in The Simpsons Movie, and so the publisher has been at great pains to promote the fact that he first attempted the novel in 1976 and, according to the author himself, subsequently "crept away from it with my tail between my legs". The Dome, you see, is big.

The inside back-cover trumpets that it took over 25 years to write (erroneously, if he first attempted it in 1976, but anyway), as if King had been working on it all that time. God knows what sort of gargantuan manuscript we'd have on our hands if that really were the case because as it is the thing clocks in at a very weighty 877 pages - more than the original, edited version of The Stand, in fact, and it is that previous epic concerning the good and evil within mankind that Under The Dome most resembles.

To call it a companion piece is, I think, correct: both books deal with the idea of a complete breakdown of recognised structure and what might occur thereafter, though the scales of each differ completely - one takes place in a single small town, the other an entire continent. Both, though, feature the rise of evil in the aftermath - although unlike Randall Flagg in The Stand, Big Jim Rennie, the town of Chester's Mill's Second Selectman, is all too human. He plays the situation for his own political gain and - like Flagg - wants absolute power. Rennie is "Born Again", and the theme of fundamentalism that runs throughout may invite some to imagine King is in allegorical mode here: Chester's Mill is the U.S.; Rennie is Dick Cheney to First Selectman Andy Sanders's George W. - Sanders is a puppet, an incompetent who Rennie controls in order to get what he wants from the town, without ever having to stick his own neck on the line. Sound familiar? If that doesn't convince you that King was thinking of a certain presidential administration of recent vintage, he has an airliner crash into the Dome just to ram the point home. No-one ever said subtlety was the author's strong point.

To say King's prose has gotten tighter as his career has progressed is not exactly news; it would be a bigger surprise if it hadn't. But I've always felt that the charm of his earlier novels - besides demonstrably being the work of an author who has yet to become "Stephen King: Cash Cow" - lay in the somewhat loose approach to narrative. His attitude seemed to be, why write a scene in three pages when you can easily do it in ten? This was of course a stick his lazier critics often used to beat him with, but I've missed it myself as his work has become pacier and more direct. Having said that, Under The Dome fairly rockets along and is all the better for it. Particularly when it comes to the book's big set-pieces, of which there are many - one in particular rivals the blistering opening chapter of Cell for adrenalin-fuelled savagery on an apocalyptic scale, and another involving a simultaneous prison break and the mother of all town meetings would have Michael Mann twitching uncontrollably in appreciation.

King has stated that he expects to continue writing until he is physically incapable (and even then he'll probably start using a Dictaphone), but he may only continue to publish for another ten years. I don't know if Under The Dome will in time be regarded as one of his absolute classics - we'll decide on that in a couple of years, shall we? But if this is the start of an Indian summer in the man's career, I hope that prediction is conservative. There's no-one to fill the void, you see... not on this kind of form.

Test cricket and pants

See below:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/sittinginpants.html

Bad Lieutenant (2009)

The following is an industry standard-style review for the purpose of demonstrating my professionalism. Please note I don't suddenly think I'm better than you.

BAD LIEUTENANT

Synopsis:

In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans Detective Terence McDonagh investigates the murder of six illegal immigrants. Prescribed Vicodin for a chronic back injury, he detours regularly from the case to procure illegal narcotics for himself and his prostitute girlfriend Frankie. As he gets deeper into debt with his bookie, and his drug-take increases, he becomes personally involved with those under investigation. Soon, his fate and theirs are intertwined.

Review:

As one phoned-in blockbuster performance followed another, we started to fear for Nicolas Cage. Like a once-incendiary comedian now happy to headline a never-ending succession of Disney family films, he appeared increasingly content to grab the cash and slip smoothly and without fuss into the role of Hollywood elder statesman. He had even started voicing cartoons. Would we never again see on-screen the hungry wild man David Lynch once turned to when he needed an actor capable of anchoring his crackpot fairytale Wild At Heart? And speaking of peckish, was the commitment that compelled him to eat a live cockroach in Vampire’s Kiss gone forever? Well, not quite. Judging by his enjoyably feverish portrayal of Det. Terence McDonagh in this update of Abel Ferrara’s 1992 cult original, there’s life in the crazy old dog yet. Not that he didn’t have help. In Werner Herzog the actor has the perfect accomplice: turns out the cheerfully crazed stalwart director is the perfect conduit for channelling Cage’s hyperkinetic tendencies. Who’d have thought?

Set in the months after Hurricane Katrina wreaked such devastation in New Orleans, the story follows McDonagh as he trawls through the city’s underworld in search of those responsible for a multiple homicide, but in truth Herzog doesn’t allow the plot to get in the way of the action. In fact, the police procedural genre is merely a hanger on which the director gleefully drapes such oddities as a stakeout seen from the point of view of an (apparently tripping) iguana, and - in a scene which in the hands of a lesser (saner?) director would have been laughable for all the wrong reasons - the sight of a recently dead man’s soul exiting his body and proceeding to break dance. Indeed, more than anything it’s a faintly black comedy, and often a pretty broad one at that - the ridiculously large .44 Magnum that Cage habitually wears tucked down the front of his trousers makes him look as if he’s wandered in from a lost Laurel and Hardy sketch.

And much of the fun does come from watching Cage turn in his most convincingly loopy performance in years. Sometimes when the actor goes off the deep end you just wish someone would throw a net over him - here, Herzog instead gives him a rope and dares him to hang himself, and the results are often hilarious. The intensity and regularity of his manic outbursts increase throughout the film as Herzog lessens the slack, but there is some nuance to be admired here, too. At one point a fellow cop accuses him of being high, to which he deadpans, “Whatever I took is prescription… except for the heroin.” And a scene in which he recollects a childhood fantasy to his prostitute girlfriend - played with a noble sensitivity by Eva Mendes - is surprisingly touching amidst the surrounding tomfoolery. The character’s actual physicality is important to Cage, too - McDonagh’s chronic back condition is in fact the catalyst for much of this bad behaviour (the Vicodin he is prescribed for the pain soon leads to the cocaine and heroin he swipes from the police evidence room) and Cage wants us to know it. His posture deteriorates throughout until by the conclusion he is practically bent double. It looks painful, and shows a dedication that perhaps has been lacking in recent times.

A welcome return to form for Cage then, in collaboration with a director who has the good sense and instinct to point him the right way and “let the whore loose“, as Herzog calls it. The pairing seems so obvious you wonder why they never thought of it before. Who knows… perhaps the director has found his new Klaus Kinski?

Verdict:

Bad is best for Cage as his Lieutenant cuts a swath through one of the most entertaining films of the year.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon - Sam Bicke is not the the man in the Cadillac

This right here is a link to an article I wrote about a little known gem, up on www.butnu.co.uk - a veritable smorgasbord of things that are not boring:

http://www.butnu.co.uk/assassinationrichardnixonreview.html