Overcast

THE SUN ALSO RISES by Ernest Hemingway. I've read some strange attacks on this book. “Nothing happens,” “its boring,” “they just sit around and drink.” My favorite, in its various incarnations, distills to, “stupid rich brats living it up while I slave away.” Now, I like For Whom the Bell Tolls, I like Old Man and the Sea, I really like A Farewell to Arms, but I love The Sun Also Rises. My copy is old and weathered, a 1954 Scribner's paperback of my dad's that has a pretty watercolor painting on the cover. When it finally falls apart I’ll be genuinely upset. There are the bullfights, the cafes, the fishing, the descriptions of the Spanish countryside, the meals, the fights, the drinks. Somehow Hemingway made it all both subtly and blaringly anti-war, or at least anti-Great War. I find it haunting and elegiac, of course, but also truly horrifying and depressing. Some of these people will never pick up the pieces; they are emotionally ruined just as sure as Jake has been sexually destroyed. Can you imagine that fascism was still looming over the horizon? What a world we live in. By all means have another absinthe. Just thinking about it makes me need one.

Famous Monsters

CREATURE FEATURES: THE SCIENCE FICTION, FANTASY, AND HORROR MOVIE GUIDE by John Stanley. This is easily the best-blurbed book I've ever seen. “A must,” declares Leonard Maltin on the top of the front cover. “The Leonard Maltin of horror,” raves Fangoria at the bottom. Then to the back: “Never has so much worthless information been gathered together in one place,” observes Joe Bob Briggs, who knows of what he speaks. “I'm in awe of the man.” Frankly, I'm in awe, too. Stanley has seen everything, from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Night of the Living Dead to C.H.U.D. and Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter, and his short, razor-sharp, often hilarious reviews don't mince words. Excellent taste, too. The Bride of Frankenstein and The Creature from the Black Lagoon, two of my all-time favorites, five stars. Abraxus, Guardian of the Universe, starring former Minnesota governor Jesse “The Mind” Ventura, one star. I can open this masterpiece to any page and enjoy myself. How many books can you say that about?

THE MISFITS: LEGACY OF BRUTALITY (Plan 9 records). Like any self-respecting headbanger (age twelve), my first exposure to the Misfits came via Metallica's Garage Days Revisited EP, where they covered “Last Caress” and “Green Hell.” I bought Legacy of Brutality first, but Evilive, Earth A.D., and Walk Among Us, the cassettes of which I still possess, quickly followed. Four New Jersey punks dressed like skeletal zombie greasers and obsessed with B-movie monsters, Marilyn Monroe, the JFK assassination, and Elvis, the Misfits recorded some of the finest punk rock of that or any age. Towards the end, meaning '82-'83, they incorporated more hardcore elements into their sound, influencing the rise of thrash and speed metal, but the fifties-inspired stuff here, with its doo-wop harmonies and rockabilly stomp, including “She,” “Where Eagles Dare,” and “American Nightmare,” packs just as much of a wallop. “Night of the Living Dead” (best couplet: “this ain't no love-in/this ain't no happenin'”) and “Horror Hotel” both deserve special mention as classics (though you won’t find them here), while the dirge-like grooves of “London Dungeon” (also available elsewhere) anticipated the sort of goth-rock now perpetrated by Type O Negative. Save yourself the grief and pick up their coffin-shaped boxed set, why don’t cha, which contains all these and more. If you want to take it slow, however, say the twelve bucks lane, Legacy of Brutality will do the trick. Either way, a life without the Misfits is hardly a life at all.

Test

Test, test, test.