June 11, 2024

Well, I did it. I bought my first Windows computer, an inexpensive HP laptop. I've used the Windows OS before; after all, I used library computers for the first fifteen years I was on the internet (from 1998 to 2013), and they all had Windows. I don't think Chrome was even around back then, but the thing with the library computers, whether at LAPL or The Oviatt at CSUN - everything was automatic. The browser took you straight to the web; you didn't have to do anything or learn anything, just sit down and go straight to your various websites. When I finally got home internet (because CSUN discontinued public use in 2013) I bought a Chromebook laptop because you couldn't beat the price ($125) and I liked it mainly for it's ease of use. It was also very fast, unlike the library computers. I bought a second Chromebook to use at Pearl's, and I was set for the next 11 years, until now. Chrome stops updating after a while (anywhere from five to ten years), forcing you to buy a new one (unless you're just checking your email and Facebook), and even though I was able to get the "free trial" version of Microsoft Office on my outdated Chromebook, it didn't load all the formatting features I need to be able to upload my book to Lulu. After some Googling to search for a possible free solution (on Adobe, etc.) I struck out, and decided to just buy the HP, which is now installed, set up and ready to finish the job. I checked, and it has all the features I need. The missing component was margin setting, for reasons I may have explained in a previous blog. If there's one thing you learn when you sign up to self-publish on Lulu, it's the physical aspect of book creation - setting margins, page size, font, line spacing, paragraph indentation. You learn how the book paper is trimmed at the printing site (think of an industrial-strength paper cutter). I imagine a lot of self-publishers have images in their books, whether photographs, illustrations, graphics, anything other than text, and for them, the formatting process is a lot more complicated. Thank goodness all I have is text and a few fonts. I am also glad I did a crash course in self-publishing at Lulu University, as they call it on Youtube. Lulu has a series of videos available that are extremely helpful, but each one has a ton of information, and the very articulate young lady talks so fast (to get it all in) that - for me - it was better to just absorb it "by osmosis" as my Mom would say, then watch it again and absorb some more. This was my crash course, and on Saturday, after I got my new HP laptop up and running (with all the necessary remaining margin-setting features) I realized that I did absorb the ton of information related to self-publishing, most of which has to do with the physical aspects of a book as it is transferred into existence from a computer file.

At first, it's intimidating, but for me, "crash coursing by osmosis" worked. Now, if I can just learn how to upload my book cover!

Right now, it's looking like the length will be between 420 and 450 pages, using 11 point EB Garamond font. The hardcover will cost 25 bucks plus shipping (oy!), but unfortunately there's no way around that because the Lulu print cost is 24 and change. Your cost is basically my cost (I'll make 35 to Fitty Cent per book), so if you want it, it won't be cheap (sorry). Just think of it as two fast food dinners. Skip those, (just two) and you'll have covered the cost, and while you still don't know what the book is, because I haven't given you a title or subject matter, I can tell you that it is entertaining, and you will get your money's worth with the abstract and decidedly heart-on-sleeve passages within. And though it doesn't have a standard plot, and does go off the rails in places (with weird streams-of-consciousness), it does have a cogent storyline, just like life itself.

Having participated in the writing (I was the guy operating the typewriter, so to speak), I feel the book was channeled, if not in full, then to some extent. I am happy with the end result, and I hope you will agree. Now, if 25 bucks plus shipping is outside your budget, I will be offering a paperback version, but not for a while (six months to a year). The paperback will likely be ten bucks cheaper ($15 plus shipping), but will have an alternate cover, making the two versions aesthetically different, and thus collectible.

Soon, you will know the book's title, and what it's about. I can tell you right now, it's not about 1989 (though there might be the merest smidge of same suggested in a couple places). The bottom line is this: it's a good story, unconventionally told in certain chapters. A professional editor would've canned several sections, which is why - even if I had the money - I would not have hired an editor, because it's coming from a different place in the human psyche. 

And now for some music...

For the past few days, I've been listening intently to the band FM, the Canadian prog rockers I mentioned in the last blog who made the album "Black Noise" in 1977. That LP was all I knew by them, but I've now listened to their other albums, and the more I listened, the more I wanted to hear. I realised they never made a bad record, and all were very good to great. A fantastic band. I knew I'd seen them open for Rush on a tour in the 1980s, and after Googling, I learned it was the Moving Pictures tour, and last night I discovered, on Setlist.com, that they played with Rush on June 15, 1981 at the Aladdin Theater in Las Vegas, and it hit me that FM was the first band Lillian and I ever saw together, since they were the openers that night. I doubt Lilly would remember FM, but they have such a good vibe, and their music is awesome and I kind of feel like they came to me of their own volition or by some other intuitive channel ("by osmosis" as my Mom would say), because everything old is new again, and ahh, what a night that was, almost 43 years ago but only a heartbeat away.... 

 I've been stopping by the CSUN turtle pond (formerly the duck pond but the turtles now outnumber the ducks) on my early evening walk. I do two walks every day, one at about 6 pm, the other at 9:45, and on the early walk I've been going to the pond to check out the turtles, who never fail to impress me with their Chill Factor. Their whole lives are one big chill-out, basking in the sun on rocks, or swimming around, or asking for food. I saw a bunch of them scrambling for an orange slice, and went and picked some oranges myself in the grove, which surrounds the pond. I didn't know turtles ate oranges, but boy, there was a hubbub after I peeled one and placed the wedges on the stone ramp that allows the turtles to climb out of the pond. They were hungry and loved the oranges (I Googled it and it said that fruit is 25 % of their diet) and while they were eating you could see their little pink mouths, not so different from our own, and very un-turtlelike, considering their crusty, stone-age image. I see all kinds of critters at CSUN, including bunnies, possums and in Winter, raccoons. Of course, squirrels run the joint; I see them chowing down on nuts every evening. 

I have a new friend on campus, a guy with grey fur named Einstein, one of about a dozen feral cats who live at CSUN. I've seen him around for several years, but it wasn't until recently that he approached me on one of my night walks. Having tamed a feral cat (the legendary Black Kittie who lived at Pearl's house), I thought this guy might be pettable, so I stopped, knelt and held my hand out, and after a couple mintues he did the "cat rub" thing where they brush past you on your side. Then he stopped and let me pet him. I just learned his name yesterday from a student who knows Einstein personally, and now I do too. He lives by Maple Hall, a beautifully designed new building on campus, west side, just above the softball lawn. Einstein's nickname, according to the student, is "His Royal Highness" because that's how he acts, like he's The King of Maple Hall and the food court due north, which abuts Sierra Hall West. That's Einstein's turf, and now that I know it, I'll make a point to walk by. He knows me by now, first from the occasional sighting in years past, and regularly for the last three days. The student says he's between 10 and 14 years old, and he's been living on campus for most or all of that time. I hung with him for ten minutes, petting him and doing a tummy rub. Then he got up and I said, "see you tomorrow, Einstein".

More music:  I have a concert video you absolutely have to see. I don't know if you are a fan of Black Metal. Generally speaking, I am not, but that pertains to the genre as a whole, which I find mostly non-musical and harsh. However, there have been a few bands I like. Going back to the beginning, I've been a fan of Venom (who more or less invented the style) since 1986, when I was introduced to them by Sean. Venom made their first album all the way back in 1982, and kind of "held the fort" for Black Metal until the so-called "second wave" arrived in the early 90s, led mostly by Scandanavian bands such as Mayhem, who were primitive, and their opposite number Emperor, from Norway, who could not only play their instruments but at a high level. Bandleader Ihsahn also composed riffs and Norse melodies that, if orchestrated, would be Wagnerian. In 2011, I began exploring the second wave of Black Metal and happened upon Emperor and was impressed enough to buy two of their albums: "Songs to the Welkin at Dusk" and "In the Nightside Eclipse", both of which are considered classics by fans, but I never knew they had a live DVD out until last night, when it popped up as a Youtube recommendation. It's called "Emperial Live Ceremony". It was recorded in London in 1999, so it's almost a quarter-century old now. It's only 47 minutes long, and the thing is, because it's so extreme, I don't know if the band or the audience could have withstood a longer performance, especially Emperor's drummer, who has to be seen and heard to be believed.

What I want you to do, after you finish reading this blog, is to go to Youtube and watch this concert. Now, I am of course guessing that if you are not an Emperor fan (or a fan of Black Metal) you are not going to like it. It's extreme enough to make Slayer sound like Bread. But I want you to watch it for the "how the hell" factor, as in "how the hell are they playing this music this fast and (especially) this clean."

Usually, with Black Metal bands, there is the "noise ball" factor (as one Youtube commentor put it), meaning that the "music" is played so fast but without articulation (without dynamics), and so it starts to turn into a wash of white-noise riffing and punk-rock style, "monkey cymbal" drumming. Not so Emperor. While watching, I was thinking of the reports that various types of heavy metal were used in the Gulf War to scare the ememy. Well, they should've used Emperor. Watch the concert, then tell me, is this the literal Band From Hell, or what? You'd almost have to be from Norway to even think of this music. It's not only "not for everyone", but you'd have to have it in your blood from way back. Watch as much as you can stand (maybe the whole thing), but watch with an analytical mind. If you do, and if you don't dismiss it immediately, you may find yourself impressed, even if you don't like the music. I do happen to like it, though for sure it's not everyday listening for me. I found myself needing to buy the dvd, just as an artifact of what music is capable of. I've seen and heard it all (or so I thought), but I've never seen a concert like this. To be able to pull this off, this well (and that's the key here, pulling it off at such a high level) takes some real ability.

Finally, I have another Montgomery Clift movie for you: "The Young Lions"(1958), which also happens to be one of the greatest war movies ever made. If you watched that TV interview I mentioned several blogs ago, you saw Monty list it as one of his favorite roles. He plays "Noah Ackerman", a young Jewish man newly intermarried to his non-Jewish sweetheart Hope Lange. Monty gets drafted for WW2 right after the wedding, and his story is one of several that will converge in the way these epic plots do. "The Young Lions" is 167 minutes long but never drags. Marlon Brando stars in what may be his greatest performance as "Christian Diestl" a German who, as the movie opens, is working as a ski instructor in the Winter of 1938. He's really a poor shoemaker; the ski gig is for extra money. It's New Year's Eve and he's teaching an American gal played by Barbara Rush. He's in love with her and wants her to stay for the New Year, but at a party, she sees his equivocal support for Hitler, and leaves. The next we see her, she's in NYC and hitched to Dean Martin, a popular nightclub singer. Despite his celebrity status, he too is drafted, but tries to pull strings to get out of it. Though he doesn't want to admit it, he fears dying in the war, but since everyone else is putting their life on the line, he does too, mainly to please Barbara Rush, who selfishly wants a hero for a husband. 

As for Monty, fistfights must be in his contract. He has the all-time punchout with Ernest Borgnine in "From Here to Eternity" (which is disgustingly violent), and in this flick he takes on four soldiers, one at a time, who pick on him and rip him off, it's implied, because he's Jewish. Fighting and romance take up much of the first half of the film, but there's also Brando and Maximillian Schell, who again shows himself to be one of the greatest actors of all time. The various scenes with the two together are indelible, especially one toward the end in a military hospital. I'll leave it for you to see, but it's spooky and poignant. The battle scenes are short but horrific. Monty ends up rescuing the guys who beat him up, and Dean Martin finds his courage. In between, the German officers - like the camera-toting one played by Parley Baer - fall in love with French girls. The war is a lark to the Germans stationed in Paris, but then it gets all too real at the end, when the concentration camps are discovered. Sergeant Schultz shows up as a local Mayor, claiming he "knows no-thing!" about the horror. American officer Arthur Franz threatens to break his neck. At the end, Monty and Dean are on patrol and converge with Marlon Brando, and therein the plot is bookended, as Martin's wife was once Brando's ski client, though only the audience knows this.

"Lions" is a great film, woven together in vignettes by the legendary Edward Dymytrk, known mostly for Noir. Brando should've gotten a Best Actor Oscar for his performance, and Monty a Best Supporting. There are a dozen memorable smaller roles, including Lee Van Cleef as a mean-spirited drill sergeant. A young LQ Jones is on board. This is a 10/10 motion picture, filmed in Cinemascope. I own it on dvd and watch it about every five years. It's not a combat war film, per se, but an ideological one, though the combat shown is from actual stock footage and brutal. Movies don't get better than this, or more real. It's about the interrelationships within a war that nobody wants but everyone signs up for: the Germans to "rescue the Fatherland" by taking over the world and everyone else to stop them. The German officers rationalise their participation any way they feel they can morally do so, and of course it's all a cop-out on the most diabolical level. Even the top Nazis wanted to avoid being called "monsters"; why else would they have destroyed paperwork, and tried (but failed) to clear out the death camps? If their cause was so righteous, why didn't they stand proudly with what they had done? Brando's penultimate scene with an officious camp commandant (complaining about deserters and higher-ups), is one of the greatest on film. I think too many people rate Marlon Brando by (and prefer him in) his later roles, when he was kind of parodying himself, but when you see him in a role like this, in his prime, you realize what made him so great. 

And that is all I have for today. By the next blog, I may be ready to upload my book to Lulu. Stay tuned.