Carver’s Dog

It has been a difficult week. I’m wrestling with a painfully dull script I must write — I must, I accepted the advance — for an industrial film that shoots in early May in L.A. My ailing mother’s health continues to disintegrate, mostly because she simply does not care; worst of all, she has been skipping and cancelling much-needed doctor appointments because, being a lifelong victim of Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), the 65-year-old invalid, who sleeps 20 hours out of the day and feeds her overstuffed chihuahua in her bed, has convinced herself that she knows better than the physicians, and that every single doctor has misdiagnosed her. She does not, she is convinced, suffer from diabetes, hypertension, bi-polar disorder, cirrhosis of the liver, or hepatic encephalopathy (swelling of the brain as a by-product of the fatty metamorphosis of the liver into tissue paper). If the doctors would just take her off the damn meds, she unreasonably reasons, she would simply spring back to normal.

My own health.

Not so good.

This being Thursday, it’s time for my weekly dose of the potentially-deadly methotrexate (MTX) – a form of oral chemotherapy — a last resort drug I’ve been on since December last to curb my flaring severe psoriasis. Endured my monthly doctor’s visit yesterday and the nurse drew gallons of blood to make up for their oversight in forgetting to draw my blood last month. See, with MTX the overseers of your therapy are supposed to draw blood every month to ensure that the drug is not playing dirty tricks with your liver.

In the meantime, the doctor delivers another blow: I have been diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). My hastily-done research indicates that COPD is a catch-all phrase for You done fucked up your lungs with all that smoking. The funny thing is I was not in the least bit surprised. Only an idiot (or someone with NPD) can suck on cigarettes for 30 years and not expect repercussions. So, I’m compelled to give up smoking and continue my exercise regimen of walking between two and four miles every day. There’s no reversing COPD but ceasing smoking and daily exercising will slow it’s insidious progress.

So, back to the industrial film pit I go today, with apologies for no new fiction here this morning. Other matters abound (but there is a new Trace Remix tale waiting in the hopper).

We’ve been watching a lot of movies with a literary bent lately. A few nights ago Miss L and I watched Lawrence of Arabia, a movie I must see at least once a year …

… T.E. Lawrence. An egoist in the desert who becomes a god and loses all sense of himself. What a horrible affliction, like Narcissus discovering that the river has gone dry and there is no other place to gaze upon his own reflection.

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The Maltese Falcon, another I’ve seen at least a dozen times but this time I paid strict attention to the stark nihilisitc greed of Dashiell Hammett’s fortune seekers, a strange hybrid of pulp fiction and naturalistic writing, like something Frank Norris might produce after meeting Joseph Conrad and Franz Kafka for coffee. At Starbucks.

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Sense and Sensibility. Never viewed the film before and, in fact, I’ve never read Jane Austen. Chick writers of the 19th century. I have some kind of problem with it. I dunno what it is. Anyway, the movie: What a splendid and at times disgusting study of class, of human sensibilities, as the title implies, and what, in the end, is sensible and reasonable by applying contemporary moral and ethical standards. I mean, for God’s sake, as Miss L pointed out, the Colonel had to hang around and wait to be chosen as second best.

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By the way, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was first published on this date in 1925. To this day, almost 30 years after first reading the novel and reconsidering it a few more times over the years, I still ponder if perhaps it isn’t indeed the fabled Great American Novel. Some scholars argue to the contrary, allowing that Nick Carraway is a classic “unreliable narrator” (because he dares to have opinions about those of whom he speaks).

I long ago gave up waiting for a definitive screen version of Fitzgerald’s dark story of love and the Horatio Alger myth. I don’t think it’s ever going to happen.

While installing a new desk in my home office this afternoon, and transferring the contents of the old desk to the new, I came across an eight-year-old notebook. The 7×5 inch plain paper book was crammed full of handwritten notes for a novel I was once sketching out, a distant memory now but the scribblings remain.

The novel was to be titled Creosote and concerned a popular L.A. artist, Max Grimshaw — modeled in part on David Hockney and writer Dennis Potter — who is a miserable, mean-spirited severe psoriatic. He is estranged from his son, also a painter, who lives in the mythical fishing village of Melville, Washington. When Max’s son commits suicide, literally blowing his brains out onto a blank canvas and leaving behind a note that simply reads THIS IS NOT A PRETTY PICTURE, Max travels to the town of Melville in an attempt to understand his troubled son’s flameout.

Why Creosote for a title? Well, it’s a bush that flowers in the desert. According to my notes:

Able to dictate water rights, it is believed that the creosote produces a toxic substance to prevent other plants from growing too close.

Other notes:

CHARACTER NAMES

Max Grimshaw, Romola Martin, Furminger, Hatchett, Gaily Mae, Taplow (sculptor), Armistead Krebbs, J.T. Isham

THE PSYCHIATRIST

Max pays a visit to the shrink who was treating his son for anger managment issues, court-ordered therapy. The shrink is quirky, makes his own Rohrshack blots, used to work in Children’s Social Servces, follows the four-pronged method of therapy. Objective: (1) to develop a trusting relationship w/a therapist as evidenced by open communication of feelings and thought; (2) to discuss loss and how it impacts current behavior; (3) to identify the feelings connected to the loss; (4) increase ability to verbalize and experience the feeling states of loss and grief.

ON MAX GRIMSHAW’S PAINTINGS

Christ crucified, a gathering of crows hovering at his nailed feet, precariously holding golden goblets in their beaks to catch the dripping blood.

MAX (to his business manager, Romola): The series will be a parody of religious art — Bosch, Michaelangelo, what have you. Look carefully at the face of Christ in this one … it’s Jeffrey Hunter.

MAX AND ROMOLA

ROMOLA: I didn’t even know you have a son.

MAX: Had. Past tense. There’s a lot of frayed fabric in the overcoat of my personal history that you are unaware of.

RANDOM PROSE

– regards her with near-religious gravitas

– glacial reserve, a faint English affectation

– debris-strewn acreage

– flatbacking, straight-sex prostitution

– they shift on their feet like a couple of shy dancers

– the dramaturgy of his life

– thunderheads piling against the mountain

– signs of strain and deep-seated fatigue in his dark, shadowed eyes

– fishing trawlers, moored, big, sleek aluminum beasts with aluminum hulls and radar antennas

STRAY DIALOGUE

MAX: Find my ex-wife.

ROMOLA: Which one?

MAX: Lily. The boy’s mother.

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SOMEONE: Have you ever been told that you’re an arrogant bastard?

MAX: With alarming frequency.

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MAX: I believe in myself, ergo I believe in God.

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WRITER: — well, to that point I would counter that B. Franklin was a self-published writer.

(Max makes a snide comment about Franklin helping to introduce commercial painting)

MAX: What I’m talking about is a concept called the democratization of the arts. It began with the music synthesizer in the 70s, and has reached an apex with the Internet.

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ROMOLA: I busted my ass — and my father before me — to get you where you are today. Do you know how difficult it is to make people interested in something they don’t care about? There hasn’t been a true arts rennaisance in this country since the Seventies.

 They were savage and bitter, especially the middle-aged and the old, and had been made so by boredom and disappointment. All their lives they had slaved at some kind of dull, heavy labor, behind desks and counters, in the fields and at tedious machines of all sorts, saving their pennies and dreaming of the leisure that would be theirs … Where else should they go but California, the land of sunshine and oranges?

– The Day of the Locust, Nathanael West

Pick up a rock in Hollywood, toss it in the air, and chances are pretty good that you’ll hit a Hollywood hopeful in the head. Some of these star-gazing dreamers and schemers have already had their brush with fame but they just haven’t realized yet that their moment has come and gone. Case in point: Ben Chapman. From the Internet Movie Database mini-biography:

Ben Chapman was born in Oakland, California, while his Tahitian parents were on a trip to the United States. He was raised in Tahiti, relocated to the U.S. in 1940 and went to school in the Bay Area of San Francisco. Working as a Tahitian dancer in nightclubs led to his first movie job, a bit in MGM’s “Pagan Love Song” (1950); other small film roles followed before Korean War duty temporarily sidetracked his modest screen career. Talent scouts from Universal-International “discovered” Chapman upon his return, and for a year he became a U-I stock player–and, at six-foot-five, an ideal choice for the finny title role in “Creature from the Black Lagoon.” (Chapman is the Creature in scenes where the camera is out of water; Ricou Browning is the Creature in scenes where the camera is underwater.) In his later years, Chapman frequently commuted to autograph shows in the mainland United States.

Chapman earned $300.00 a week in 1954 for his appearance as the gilled monster. He also appeared in “Ma and Pa Kettle At Waikiki” (1955) and “Jungle Moon Men” (1955). And that was about it for Mr. Chapman’s brush with fame.

Chapman, who passed away at his Oahu home on February 21, was also a decorated war hero. Or so he claimed. From the For The Record section of the L.A. Times (03/20/08):

The obituary of Ben Chapman, who played the title character in the 1954 film “The Creature From The Black Lagoon”, in the Feb. 24 California section said that as a Marine in the Korean War he received a Silver Star, a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts. Chapman did not receive the awards he claimed to have earned, according to Marine Corps officials and a copy of Chapman’s military Report on Separation, the Marine Corps Times reported this week.

All you can do sometimes is sadly shake your head.

Arthur C. Clarke and Paul Scofield have left us. Filmmaker Anthony Minghella, who brought us big-screen adaptations of Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient and Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley,  has also passed away at the tender age of 54.

China is making more arrests as Tibetan protests widen. Not much the Dalai Lama can do about it.

The economic index suggests what everyone already knows: the U.S. is slipping into a recession.

Jobless claims jumped by 22,000 last month.

Torrential rains across the midsection of the U.S. have left at least 13 dead. We’re talkin’ a foot of rain in the Midwest.

Bin Laden is accusing the Pope of leading a “new Crusade” against Islam. He’s also pissed at the Danes for political cartoons that defame The Prophet. Bad day to be a Danish editorial cartoonist.

Rudyard Kipling’s Gunga Din is on Turner Classic Movies tonight.

Chico: Do you like Kipling?

Groucho: I don’t know. I’ve never kippled.

And David N. Scott has a song stuck in his head.

UPDATE: And what the hell is this? Someone arrived at Carver’s Dog this morning from the following search string: How to dry clean a business suit with embalming fluid.