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Bob & Sam Part 1: The History of Rock n’ Roll and the Gift of Awkwardness

The mid-’90s were a weird, but maybe perfect, time for an awkward nerd growing up in rural Nebraska to get into rock n’ roll. By that point, the genre of rock was over forty years old. The ‘90s saw the rise of hip-hop, electronica, rap-rock/nu-metal, third-wave ska, and the swing revival vying for the youngster’s ears and eyeballs. The World Wide Web was in its infancy and MTV still played music videos regularly. 

Once I had my epiphanic experience in the summer between seventh and eighth grade (of which I’ll write about in Part Two of this series), I knew I had some catching up to do if I were to be more than proficient in my domain. Besides subscribing to Guitar World and raiding my father’s vast record collection, the number one way I dove into rock n’ roll history was by buying dozens and dozens and hundreds of compact discs at On Cue, the solitary corporate retailer of multimedia for the entire panhandle of Nebraska. It was one of several chain stores such as Sam Goody, Sun Coast, and Tower Records that have as much cultural presence in 2020 as the works of Ozymandias. How strange it is to think that there were once publicly-traded corporations who bolstered their quarterly earnings reports through the physical sales of expensive shiny, plastic discs in thin, plastic squares. I was such a regular at On Cue in those formative years of adolescence, that the manager--her name was Traci--knew me by name before I hit high school. She could always count on me for a sale. At that time, she seemed quite grown-up and worldly, but in reality, she was probably a world-weary 22-year-old who had not yet found a way to escape the stultifying ruralopolis of western Nebraska. Where is Traci now? She and I both share a certain kind of workplace history. I was once a Blockbuster Customer Service Representative, so she and I are both former employees of defunct business models that seemed fun, hip, and cool at the time. On Cue and Blockbuster were the two primary ways people in our hometown acquired movies and music. Traci must be closer to fifty than forty now. Though I am sure she and I conversed back then about what music she liked, my memory jar containing those conversations is as bare as the “lone and level sands [that] stretch far away.”

Anyhow, one day back in 1996, my mom and I were shopping at On Cue, and I saw a ten-part VHS documentary set called The History of Rock n’ Roll. This blue cinder block of tapes looked just like what I needed to get caught up on forty years of music. I believe the original retail price was something like $120, which adjusted for inflation today would cost $196.09, almost twenty dollars a tape! No wonder those giant companies were raking it in before being slayed by Napster, iTunes, Netflix, and YouTube. I remember my mom haggling with Traci to see about getting a lower price, but there was nothing she could do. (Thank you, Mom, for still purchasing the set and contributing to my development as a musician!) I enthusiastically watched every tape in the series and took feverish notes of every artist and song that I should check out, and perhaps learn to play on the guitar. This was my introduction to singers and groups like Fats Domino, The Kinks, Buddy Holly, Marianne Faithful, Credence Clearwater Revival, the Clash, and the Sex Pistols.   There was one musician though, a famous one, that I wasn’t so sure about. This folkie guy, Bob Dylan, his stuff didn’t rock. His attitude on camera didn’t seem particularly rock star-ish, even though I totally see NOW there is such a breezy cool to his aloofness. And that voice was so strange and off-putting.  But as the tape rolled on, there was a B & W clip of him playing a bluesy tune with some really square rhymes: “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).” And it struck me with a strange kind of logic that only appeals to a young, insecure soul. See, when I started out on my guitar-playing journey, I wanted to be Slash.  I wasn’t anywhere close to being Slash. For one thing, I didn’t have the top hat. I didn’t have the hair. Or the Gibson Les Paul. Or the Marshall JCM Slash Signature 2555SL 2-Channel 100-Watt Guitar Amp. Oh, and I also couldn’t play four chords with the same strumming pattern twice in a row… ...but when I heard this Bob Dylan guy, who was somehow, inexplicably, included on this $120 ten-tape documentary series with all these other musicians who seem to have the talent, presence, and sound of being rock stars, something clicked in my mind. I thought: “Huh. Well, that guy’s voice isn’t that pretty, but he sounds clever and he’s playing solo. Maybe I can play solo and sing until I get a band together.” So, that’s what I did. And at the 1996 Haig Country School Talent Show, I performed as a singer-songwriter for the first time ever. I even gave a shout out to Bob before I proceeded to dazzle the audience with the brilliance of searing slides on my Stratocaster(-copy) guitar and tickle their brains with peculiar lyrical puzzles. See for yourself. Uh, yeah, so....every musical journey has to start somewhere, right? And history was made that day, and I owe it all to Mr. Robert Zimmerman for blazing the trail of rock n’ roll awkwardness.

I’m still catching up. The next installment of this occasional series of essays concerning the enigmatic and ethereal influence of Bob Dylan on my quarter-century musical journey will focus on the success and popularity of other artists covering his songs. That forthcoming installment is tentatively titled “The Dylan-esque Quality of Elasticity.” Thank you for reading.

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The Most Efficient Way to Do Something

is to Do It

JUST DO IT. It just do. anecdote about throwing a pen in a trashcan from far away, but realizing while it might seem SPECTACULAR and AWESOME and REWARDING to hit that one-in-a-million shot from across the court, the really EFFICIENT and TIME-EFFECTIVE and IMPRESSIVE thing is to walk across the room and deliver the goods w/100% certainty. Come and complete the task. Anyhow, here’s the new routing for 2020′s Zed Mixer: 1 Kick 2 Snare 3 & 4 L Overheads R 5 Rack Tom 6 Floor Tom 7 Bass 8 Me! 9 Other Gu(itarist)y 10 Pa Vox 11 & 12 L Rode NT4 R 13 & 14 R Clavinova L 15 The GOD MIC 16 ? 17 if you know what I mean 18 All & Nutheen

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10

Top 10   Perfect 10 Double digit turning point Pearl Jam’s debut Ten little indians, toes and fingers tithing rate Ten tracks, five per side One and zero All and nothing in a distant embrace still a child a dime a decade a decathalon just short of royalty diez Commandments Roman X marks the spot Count up or countdown 1          10 2          9 3          8 4          7 5          6 6          5 7          4 8          3 9          2 10        1 I think of ten often.           -4/1/2018 

#10

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Twin Peaks Time Capsule

By Sam Segrist

May 21, 2017

Tonight, in less than half a day, I’ll be seeing something I never thought I’d see: a new episode of Twin Peaks. For fifteen years, there’s been an ache in my heart at the lack of resolution to the season two finale, which—for my money—is television’s greatest unresolved cliffhanger. Perhaps this is why I’ve grown fond of making a semi-annual vacation to this strange and beautiful mountain town which reminds me of my own home, Scottsbluff: a place of weird, desperate, flawed, good people. Repeated viewings never fail to allow me to savor the bittersweet quality of this enigmatic narrative puzzle, a 29-episode loop which compels viewers who fall under its spell to return to the scene of the crime, always just outside of the Martells’ estate, by the lake and the big rock, where millions of people can find, over and over again, the plastic-wrapped bouquet of Laura Palmer’s body.

Over the years, if there’s one thing I’ve discovered, it is that everyone who loves Twin Peaks has a story about when, where, why, and how they fell in love with the show. Mine was back in 2002, when I was working overnights as a telephone switchboard operator for the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I was a college student, spinning my wheels academically while finding out that working from midnight until 7 AM, while good for my grades, was not so good for my social life.

This job entailed sitting in front of a computer, with one other operator in the elevated cubicle behind me, waiting for an emergency call to come in or (usually) a false fire alarm. Most nights, nothing happened in the quiet call center of Nebraska Hall. I worked with two other nerdy, but nice enough, guys: a middle-aged David with a mustache who looked like Van Dyke Parks, and a guy named Clay, who resembled a much less creepy Jacque Renault.

There was a television in the upper corner of the call center that was always on. Back then on boring nights, we’d flip through channels to find something, ANYTHING, to watch that was remotely good. We found out Bravo broadcast two back-to-back reruns of Twin Peaks between the hours of three and five A.M. (Before this exposure, I had seen Dune, Blue Velvet, and Lost Highway, and, while they disturbed me, they didn’t hook me with the same fascination as Twin Peaks.) I can’t remember what my first episode was, but I do remember the odd magnetism of the show, how it pulled me out of the sterile cubicle environment and into its dream-world.

Going to work often meant leaving house parties-in-progress or Halo marathons with my roommates, but I looked forward to this mid-shift excursion when I hoped no calls or flashing lights would break the dream reality of the show. (“Through the darkness of future’s past/One magician longs to see/One chants out between two worlds/Fire alarm don’t interrupt me…”) The one-two punch of weirdness which I viewed every shift was compounded by the fact that I missed several episodes on my nights off. Over the course of several months, I saw every episode, but never in consecutive order. A few nights ago I was relating this to my friends Chelsea and Dylan (pronounced Dye-lan), and the realization struck me that I saw Episode 29 several times before realizing the finale, with Dale and the toothpaste and the cracked mirror, was the end of the show! I remember being somewhat mystified when I would show up for work on the next night only to be right smack back at the beginning with the pilot episode. My lack of context regarding the show’s history only added to the mystery and the yearning for resolution.

So, every two weeks, the show would start over, and I would tune in. Both David and Clay seemed to enjoy revisiting the show. I distinctly remember Clay exclaiming “Coop! I love that guy!” when Kyle MacLachlan first showed up on screen.

I eventually lost that overnight switchboard job because I realized I was missing out on too much college life while living at the Blue House. (I had called in sick so I could go on a date with a beautiful girl named Sarah. ((I remember us grilling shish kabobs at my drummer’s house.)) Someone at work somehow knew about this, squealed on me, and my boss figured they’d give me the benefit of the doubt, give me the chance to explain myself, but I was a no-call no-show the next night. D’oh! I guess I was so lovestruck I didn’t care about the consequences. No worries, though, it all worked out: my next job at Blockbuster was to be a much more significant place of employment, but that’s a subject for another entry…)

One thing which initially appealed to me about Sarah was her love of similar things dark and quirky, things like David Lynch. It was at one of the infamous Blue House parties where our conversation led us down this path. I figured any girl who was into Twin Peaks was all right in my book. I later found out her mother was a big fan from back in the day and had programmed her VCR to record the episodes. That’s dedication to truly can’t-miss-television back in the day! As the years go by, Sarah reminds me more and more of Norma, which I suppose makes me more and more like Big Ed. C’est la vie for sweethearts of the past…  

It was sometime after that in the middle-aughts that a couple named Nick and Sara Arling invited me to their apartment for a biweekly Twin Peaks viewing. It’s funny, but I don’t remember meeting these two wonderful people at all; all I remember is how fun it was to go to their house in the Near South of Lincoln every other Sunday evening to watch three episodes with a group of people. This was how I also met a great young couple named Justin and Noel (pronounced No-elle). Years later, they would invite me to a Halloween party at their house where I met a stunning brunette named Stacy. I was dressed as a chocolate shake. She was dressed as Audrey Hepburn’s character from Breakfast at and was impressed when I complimented her on her Holly Golightly costume. (Any other schmoe could have just said “Nice Audrey Hepburn outfit.”) It was only later on, I realized how striking of a resemblance she had to Sherilynn Fenn BKA Audrey Horne. Funny how the love of a show can lead to love in real life.

One final thing about this Sunday Night Twin Peaks Club is that it was the first time I saw the entire series in chronological order with the Log Lady intros. The entire series was not yet available on DVD, so seeing the show in its grainy VHS was probably the closest I’d ever get to seeing the show the way it was originally seen.

To augment my love of the story, I hunted down the out-of-print books The Autobiography of FBI Special Agent: Dale Cooper: My Life, My Tapes and The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer. Besides being good reads, they were inspirations for how to write an epistolary story for my master’s thesis and first book.

In the spring of 2005 (or 2006?), I drove to Fairfield, Iowa to attend a weekend conference on Transcendental Meditation at the Maharishi University of Management to hear David Lynch speak. It was like getting to spend a weekend with an eccentric and groovy uncle, but perhaps the best thing that came out of it was I was able to ask him two questions during a Q & A which I then put on YouTube. You can check it at this URL (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1E5SJaXc30&t=87s) or by searching for “David Lynch Q & A on Season 3 of Twin Peaks “ to see what he has to say about my idea finishing Twin Peaks. Keep in mind, I never thought they’d ever actually make another season though!

One sticky point of contention, I’ve only ever seen Fire Walk With Me once. I was one of many fans who was disappointed that Lynch didn’t use the movie as an opportunity to finish the story. The cinematography is gorgeous, but it veers too far in tone from the delightful mix of the television show. I also find it way too disturbing, obscene, and unnecessary to actually see the rape scenes. Now that the new show is almost upon us, I worry the R-rated freedom Lynch will have will mean these new episodes will also be more darkness than light. Say what you will about censorship, but I think Lynch thrived under the limitations of broadcast television because there was a line he could press up against, but not cross. When there is no line, some creators don’t know when to stop…

Fast-forward to 2007-2008 and I was a first-year teacher in Omaha. I was so excited that the Gold Box, the complete edition of Twin Peaks was coming out on DVD that I spent more money than I should have at the Borders at 72nd & Dodge (R.I.P.) and watched them all with my girlfriend Rachel in my little one-bedroom apartment in the Old Market. That was a really hard year for both of us. I was woefully unprepared to teach children of poverty and she was trying to figure out what she wanted to do with her life after graduating from St. Andrews College in Scotland. Though there was much tension and drama, I do believe we helped each other get through that year. One of the many things I love about this show is sharing it with people who’ve never seen it before, to see their reactions.

The last girlfriend I would ever watch it with was Abby in the fall/winter of 2008. Things were not going well with our whirlwind of a romance, and I remember sensing things were darkening and souring between us. As we neared the end of the show, there was a sense of an ending brewing. She didn’t know about the cliffhanger finale, and I remember her wondering aloud how the show could possibly wrap up all its threads in the last episode, but as soon as Episode 29 ended, it was like she felt like it was okay to end the relationship because we had concluded the business of our mutual vacation in Twin Peaks. It wasn’t meant to be, and that’s okay.  

Fast-forward to Christmas 2014. My brother and I have an annual tradition which we picked up from our grandmother Betty where we send each other a list of potential gifts we’d like to get, not knowing which one will actually be chosen. This way we always get something we’re sure to enjoy, but there’s still an element of surprise. That Christmas was one of the best ever because my dear brother Mark got me the Complete Mystery box-set on Blu-Ray. (Hint, if you ever want to feel creepy, just run your finger over the front of the set and you’ll be able to feel the contour of Laura’s eyeballs through the blue eyelids. Who thought of that? Who greenlit that icky detail? I want to know.)

 And then it was 2015 and the internet found out the rumors were true and the show was coming back. I suspected at the time (and still think) the whole “David Lynch is walking away from the revival because they’re not going to give him enough money to do it right” was a publicity stunt to drum up a fervor online, to measure just how many people care about the show coming back. I remember thinking, Oh, the dispute was about money? And now they’ve doubled the number of episodes from 9 to 18? I wouldn’t rule it out in this day and age of innovative and unorthodox market research, but I digress…

Once I heard they were bringing back the show, I thought it’d be fun for my wife Maddie and I to watch the show together, but she can’t get past the quirky cheesiness or kitsch of it all. She just thinks it’s a bad show and rolls her eyes. I hope she gives it another shot in the future, otherwise our trip together to Snolqualmie, WA to see the locations of the show will not be as much fun! Haha!

[When I think of the Giant’s warning that “It is happening again” I just think that’s such a cryptic and terrifying statement. What is “it”? When did it last happen? What happened? What was the result? Wait a second, the verb “happen” is in the present progressive tense! It’s occurring right now! When will it stop?!? J I’ll likely write about this at greater length later on, but I believe there is a Holocaust subtext to Twin Peaks, and something about the dark return of this show somehow anticipates and foreshadows the rise of Trump. That’s all I’m going to write about that today…]

As the big date of the return has drawn nigh, I’ve enjoyed listening to the vinyl reissues of the soundtracks and reading the 33 & 3rd book about Angelo Badalamenti’s score. It’s also been a treat finding out that cool students of mine like Caitlyn are interested in the series. I’m an (old) millennial fan, which means I only got into the show AFTER Twin Peaks mania. It’s a strange feeling to become so fanatical about something that was once SOOO popular which then became a weird cult show. I wonder what it will be like to revisit Twin Peaks: The Return in 25 years.

My most recent reviewing of the show happened this spring. I had the joy of watching it all with my sister Katie. She got hooked on the show like crazy. I’m glad we were able to watch the show together because in about a month she is moving to Alabama, and we may not ever live in the same town again, but we’ll have had this brother-sister bonding experience.  

Anyhow, I’m cutting this real close, but the show will be live in about forty minutes! So I thought I’d wrap this up briefly outlining what some of my fears and desires and questions about the new show will be. I wonder how the show will maintain the atemporal vibe. Will there be cell phones and texting in Twin Peaks? How will they advance the story and resolve leftover mysteries from Season 2? I know Showtime probably wants the show in widescreen, but I feel like the 1.33 aspect ratio is practically a character or a force of nature in the show, forcing the director, cinematographer, and actors to compose every shot a certain way. I suppose what would be the best of both worlds would be if they stream/broadcast it in widescreen and then make a Blu-Ray collection where there is a full-frame option. I doubt that will occur, but you never know.

I know, I know it will never and can never be the same, but I am cautiously optimistic that Frost and Lynch will find a way to capture the magic again and transport millions of viewers to that sublime place we call Twin Peaks. In this age of Netflix-pioneered season dumps, I find it exciting that the Summer of 2017 will be ineffably tied to a weekly installment of this show, so that we’ll get the opportunity to watch each episode as they come out and then run to the Great Online Watercooler to converse with all the other fans. If the show is bad, I know I will not be able to unsee it, and I’ve been down this pop-cultural road before where long-awaited and unexpected returns/revivals/installments become bitter disappointments, which are sometimes so bad that they retroactively taint the way one thinks of the earlier work. (I’m looking at you, George Lucas.) It is for that reason I wanted to make this memory time capsule, documenting just how much this show has meant to me throughout these last fifteen years.

There’s less than half an hour until the new show starts. I was almost done when I got a call from my best buddy Zach. He recently watched all 29 episodes and didn’t know that the new season was about to start tonight. We’ve made plans to talk as soon as the premiere is over. I told him he’d be a part of this document. I like to think he and I have the kind of love for each other that FBI Special Agent Dale Cooper and Sheriff Harry Truman have for each other, and hey, we do!

So, now it’s getting dark and the trees are not stirring on this windless May night in Lincoln, Nebraska. All these words are now written down for posterity. They may not be wrapped in plastic, but they’re still beautiful. I know I will write about this show more in the future, but for now, I’ll just have to trust that I’ll see you in the trees.

#TwinPeaks

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Our littlest fan gotta meet the band tonight. 

#DudeWontDie

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Forthcoming

I have three literary projects which I intend to complete and release this year: 1) Higher than God, my long-gestating novel-through-stories 2) I (Will Always) Want to Believe, my hybrid journal/guide to The X-Files 3) The Complete Regurgitated Spork, a retrospective collection of all twelve issues of the ‘zine I published in high school and college.  Brian Eno said it best when he said: “The more time you spend on an old idea, the more energy you invest in it, the more solid it becomes, and the more it will exclude new ideas.”  With this new year, I want to realize these projects so that I will have room for new ideas. It shall be!

#goals #make it happen

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Don’t Stop Believing

Like so many millennial children of the (rural) Midwest, I grew up on an ample diet of classic rock staples such as Journey’s huge and inspirational hit, although it didn’t really mean much to me as a youngster. Yeah, the song’s cheesier than a test-market Pizza Hut crust, but it strangely takes on more resonance as time goes by. If people are still listening to it in one hundred years—which I suspect they will be—it will be similar to people listening to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D” today.

The first time I remember “Don’t Stop Believing” actually resonating with me was during the Blue House days. It was one of those countless marathon sessions with the guys at our favorite wing joint, The Watering Hole. As I recall, it was around 9:30 PM, and I had loaded up the jukebox with impulsive selections. This song was just one of several over-the-top choices, but when it came on, the entire bar booed my selection, not because they didn’t like the song, but because I had committed a grave faux pas: playing this song before last call. I have no idea how widespread this unwritten cultural rule is, but in downtown Lincoln, it seemed to be a very serious violation of the social contract.

Later on, this value was reinforced when David Chase chose to close down The Sopranos with the same track, thus cementing the song in a Scorsese-esque pop-cultural firmament.

In an attempt to score the soundtrack of my own life, I made sure it was the last song playing on the Spotify playlist at my wedding reception.

I know it sounds cheesy, but every time I’ve felt like hanging up my six-string and retiring my rock n’ roller ways, this tune reminds me of the restless yearning I’ve felt since I first wanted to play guitar. I suppose it’s up for each person to figure out which specific thrill they want, but mine still lives on with my literary and musical aspirations. That’s a big part of why I named my band Dude Won’t Die, because that addictive feeling, that ecstatic connection of musical and human attraction, refuses to perish.

Sometime last summer, Maddie and I streamed Journey’s documentary about their surprising career extension with the discovery of Arnel Pineda, who would become their rejuvenating savior of a lead singer. It was inspirational to see how much the struggle to keep making and performing music was for the remaining band members, so when they came to Pinnacle Bank Arena, Maddie and I just had to see them. (The show was extra poignant to me as it began just as my fifth season as a debate coach drew to a close.) Because so much of classic rock is rather silly, people can knock it all they want, but there is a pure engine of earnest emotion underneath all the spectacle and bombast. As for me and my house, I’ll refrain from the cessation of continuous faith in rock n’ roll…

Well, I’ve been listening to this track on repeat via YouTube and checked out some other versions, a few string quartet covers, a solo piano rendition, and even a 25%-slowed down track that was practically gothic, but it’s a school night, and I believe I’ve said (almost) everything about this great song I need to.

The track is now building up to that one majestic and anthemic chorus. Those seemingly throwaway nouns of “streetlights” and “people” seem to capture the rush of being ejected from a place of comfort, what Hemingway would call a clean, well-lighted place, into a chaotic blur of a world where all the other late-night believers are figuring out their post-closing time plans under the glow of endless streetlights.

“Well, the movie never ends, it goes on and on and on and on and on…”

#Autobiography #Classic Rock #Essay

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On William Thackeray’s Barry Lyndon and Stanley Kubrick’s choice to adapt an obscure and trying novel

“Barry Lyndon is a boring movie. It is wonderfully shot. It is beautifully costumed. But it is a film made by a guy who is bored.” –Jay Weidner from Room 237

Near the end of my extended stay in Hotel Graduate School, one particular blowhard of a professor boasted he was quite sure he had never experienced the emotional quality of boredom before. No one in the class believed him. Was it possible for someone, anyone, to go through the decades-long crucible of schooling without succumbing to at least one soul-crushing, mind-numbing brawl with boredom? Surely one teacher’s droning delivery style or an underwhelming book selection would stun even the sharpest and most curious intellect into mental paralysis. But what if a slow-paced and seemingly boring film was secretly a smokescreen for an exploration into the horrific psyche of a historical man?

I remember back when I worked at Blockbuster, I came home from work to find my manager/roommate halfway through a free-employee rental of Barry Lyndon. My buddy told me Barry Lyndon took so long to make because it was only filmed with natural light. Other than knowing it had amazing cinematography, I knew it was a period piece aristocratic war film, but that was about it. In the summer of 2013, I saw Rodney Ascher’s documentary Room 237, and it tickled my brain in all kinds of ways. One of the most marvelous features of the documentary is how it seamlessly stitches together footage from Kubrick’s entire filmography to make the case that there is a remarkable continuity of themes, composition, and symbols embedded across his films, however Barry Lyndon didn’t get much admiration in the documentary. According to one of the obsessive critics in Room 237, it is a boring film made by a bored genius, so I backburnered getting around to see it. (Perhaps there was an unconscious urge to keep at least one Kubrick film in the yet-to-see category?)

A few years went by and I got around to reading Stephen King’s The Shining, but I realized there was no way for me to appreciate the novel on its own terms because Kubrick’s version was so indelibly stamped in my consciousness. This gave me an idea: because I had seen all of Kubrick’s Warner Brothers output, except Barry Lyndon, I decided I’d read the book first, to get some idea of why he chose to dedicate four years of his life adapting it.

I had heard two anecdotes about Kubrick’s process for choosing books to adapt. The first one is that he would walk through a bookstore or library and pick up a novel at random and begin reading. If it didn’t grab him and activate his imagination after a few pages, he set it back on the shelf and would continue his search.

The other anecdote is specifically related to how he chose King’s novel: Kubrick had decided his follow-up to Barry Lyndon would be a horror film, so he had his assistant bring a box full of horror novels to his office. The books were stacked on the desk, and Kubrick would go through them one by one. As soon as he realized a novel was not worth adapting, he would throw it across the room, where it would hit the wall and then fall back into the cardboard box on the floor. While this process occurred, the assistant residing in the adjoining office became accustomed to the semi-regular thwap of hearing paperbacks hit the wall, until one afternoon the assistant noticed a significant amount of time had elapsed without hearing that familiar thwap. That is how the assistant knew Kubrick had found his next project.

This amusing anecdote aside, what I sought to determine from reading William Thackeray’s novel was:          

1) Why Kubrick chose this book,

2) What activating imagery, plot points, or themes would come across as common Kubrickian elements, and

3) Which scenes could I predict would make it into the film adaptation?

So after I checked with my local bookstores and found out none of them had the mid-19th-century novel, I ordered a copy from Amazon. Unfortunately, the copy I got was published by some non-profit community arts group that set their edition from a crappy public domain copy n’ paste job. This made an exceedingly old-style of prose harder to read because the pagination meant there were no paragraph indentations. Here’s a photo of what an average page looked like:

Barry Lyndon, by any modern measurement, is not an easy read. Many of the storytelling conventions of prose fiction from its time period don’t work for modern audiences, even ones accustomed and trained to read difficult prose styles (such as English majors and grad students.) Despite some savagely witty putdowns and clever lines scattered throughout the novel, the prose relies far too much on summary, telling the reader the story rather than showing it through dramatic action. Most of the inconsequential plot events involve a vast cast of underdeveloped characters. Barry Lyndon is one of many novels in a genre called the picaresque (which you can read all about at this helpful Wikipedia article: (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Picaresque_novel) Suffice to say, this book lacks most of what makes other novels like The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Don Quixote, and Candide enjoyable and memorable reads. If Kubrick had not adapted Barry Lyndon, I doubt it would even be remembered today.

That being said, here are a few similarities between Barry Lyndon the novel and Kubrick’s The Shining:

* Both Barry Lyndon and Jack Torrance are writers, although the former is only doing so near the end of his life when he writes his memoirs

* The Lyndon Castle is similar to The Overlook Hotel in its impressive grandeur

* Both protagonists demonstrate a violent contempt for their wives

* Both struggle with alcoholism

*There is significant animosity in a battle with a willful little boy (although in Lyndon’s case, it is with his stepson Bullingdon)

* The protagonists are both vain and have an unreliable sense of their own talents, reality, and self-worth

* An old hag character repulses the protagonist in both (The beautiful blonde who transforms into a zombie crone in the bathroom of Room 237 and Madame de Liliengarten who is described as a “hideous fat Dutchwoman”)

* Both feature a certain fascination with an elite, fashionable society (“I never had a taste for anything but genteel company, and hate all descriptions of low life” and “all the best people”)

* Gold & red are frequent, reoccurring colors in both

*In the end, both main characters end up “stuck”/frozen in an isolating imprisonment

One other thing to consider when comparing these two works is their reputation, specifically their cultural footprint. I’m sure a cursory Google search might yield some results, but what I have in mind is salient, recallable instances of these artworks, things the average pop-cultural obsessive would recognize, even if they hadn’t read or seen the works. (Think about all the people who know “Heeeeeeere’s Johnny!” or recognize when a family goes in costume as the Torrance family for Halloween.) To the best of my recollection, when it comes to either the novel or the film, I can think of no allusions, no quotable lines of dialogue, no memes, and very little in the way of critical appreciation. (Knowledgeable readers of this Tumblr are encouraged to send me proof to the contrary.) 

This raises a question for me: is there a good reason for this lack of conspicuous cultural relevance? Is Barry Lyndon (the novel) just a minor work compared to Thackeray’s Vanity Fair? Is Barry Lyndon (the film) merely a minor work by a genius, a stepping stone between two masterpieces?

The only way to answer this question is to watch the film and report back in a follow-up post. (The link will be forthcoming following the viewing.) At 184 minutes in length, it is this humble writer’s hope the film will be more than a “film made by a guy who is bored.” UPDATE (10/3/2018) Well, I saw the film, and the original plan was to make a follow-up post about its merits, but I decided this brief addendum would suffice. Here’s the skinny: the cinematography IS gorgeous and yes, the pace of the film can seem slow at times, but it was a much more entertaining story filtered through Kubrick’s skillful sensibilities. At times, the cinematic image is like seeing a classical painting come to life. What is particularly interesting is how the narrative action replicates the pace of what modern audiences might imagine life moved “back in the day”, but that doesn’t make it boring, just decompressed. There is much rich symbolism woven throughout, which Juli Kearns has analyzed and documented in far greater detail than I ever could at her amazingly thorough website: http://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/bl_toc.htm.  So, in conclusion, when it comes to the eternal battle between novels and films, Barry Lyndon (the film) is the winner, and it is most definitely worth seeing if you love Kubrick’s other films. 

#stanley kubrick #william thackeray #adaptation studies #film studies #literature #room 237

[samsegrist]

Inventing My Own Law, or The Hubris of Original Thought

I only get twenty-five minutes for lunch. This means I’m often microwaving leftovers from The Oven or a Lean Cuisine in the department office. While these frozen dishes are actually pretty tasty, some require the diner to stop the microwave process after a few minutes, peel the plastic wrap, stir the contents, and resume cooking for a few more minutes. Now, I am not a lazy person, but one day, while I was waiting for the microwave to count down, my mind began to wonder if there were people who specifically choose their microwaveable meals by whether they have to interrupt the cooking process to stir their industrially-produced meal.  Immediately, several words came to mind: “Of course there are; there must be...” I could picture some lazy shopper holding two equally-priced frozen dinners in their hands, and purchasing one over the other based not on flavor, but on there being one less step to what is already a simple and convenient process.  Over the years, I’ve had multiple moments like these, where I wonder if someone has ever done something extreme, outrageous, or ridiculous, and then determined that if I could imagine it happening, it is more than likely the case that it HAS happened. With seven billion people on the planet right now, the odds are that it’s already happened.   I decided to give this occasional moment a name: Segrist’s Law. Essentially, the law is this: If you find yourself wondering if a person has ever done something in a peculiar way or for bizarre reasons, then it has already happened somewhere in this strange world.    For example, right now I’m wondering if an artist has painted a series of a transvestite Han Solo portraits where that lovable smuggler is wearing Princess Leia’s clothing. I haven’t consulted my Google, but something makes me think the answer is yes.  A shorter, adage-sized version might be: If you wonder whether someone has ever done it, someone has done it.  In a somewhat meta-fear vein, I was initially reluctant to post this idea online, because I have a sneaky suspicion that someone else has already come up with this idea, and I’ll be made aware of it in the comments section. If that comes to pass, this one post will--laughably and ironically--be an exemplification of Segrist’s Law, or whatever name The People of the Internet call it. But if I’m wrong about that situation, and I really am the first person to come up with this idea, what kind of paradox have I painted myself into?

#Segrist'sLaw #leancuisine #ItHasAlreadyHappened