Month: March 2013

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Dolores Greyson in “Taking Action”

The following flash fiction is the latest in the series “MacDougal Drive” featured on this site and The Roost

The previous entries

Bill

Jimmy

Dolores

Harley

Bill Vol. 2

Jimmy, too

The weeds had grown high and their roots clung to the deep parts of the earth. Dolores dug a perimeter around, gripped tightly and pulled the stubborn roots out. She was careful to not leave anything behind as the weed would soon be back to full height if she missed any part. The sun was high and bright but not painfully hot. This was the kind of day that normally would have brought her peace, but nothing was normal anymore. Not since Walter, not since the attacks on those kids. Everything was wrong.

Bill came out of his house, a half-smoked cigarette dangled from his mouth, and headed down the driveway. He nodded in her general direction but offered no greeting. His eyes were bloodshot and yellow sweat stains spotted his undershirt. She could practically smell the stale booze even from this distance. She watched him disgustedly as he rummaged through the mail and flicked his butt into the dry gutter, and then scratched himself without any shame.

“How’s your mother, Bill?” She called out to him on his way back up the driveway.

He slowed only slightly, replied without looking at her. “Stronger every day.”

“You give me that answer every day.”

Bill stopped and finally looked at Dolores. “Mrs. Greyson, she might just outlive us all.”

“The way you’ve been carrying on, that doesn’t surprise me.”

He lit another cigarette. “What’s that mean?”

“Don’t think I don’t hear you coming home late from whatever sin infested hole you’ve been, stumbling drunk and laughing like a maniac.”

A smile crept across his face. “Why, Dolores, have you been spying on me?”

She shook her head in disgust. “You’re a grown man, Bill. Start acting like it.”

The smile disappeared. “I don’t mean any disrespect.”

“You’ve got responsibilities.”

“I’m honoring them.”

They stared at each other for a long, drawn out moment. Bill then turned and went back to the house.

“You shouldn’t smoke in the house, there’s a sick woman in there.”

No reply. Bill closed the door behind him. Dolores felt herself grow hot with rage. This whole world made no sense to her anymore. She went back down on her knees and started pulling at the weeds again.

She could feel the slight extra weight of the glock tucked into the waistline in the back of her pants. That weight brought her comfort. She tried for a moment to remember just when she had started carrying the weapon around with her as she gardened, but couldn’t quite put her finger on it, probably a couple months. A growing distrust of this neighborhood, the same on she had lived in for over forty years, constantly threatened to overwhelm her. This street, this town, this world really, needed cleaning. Disease was spreading all around, tainting everything she held dear. Walter wouldn’t have stood idly by, he’d have taken action. That was just the kind of man he was. Dolores felt her eyes grow wet so she shoved everything from her mind and refocused her concentration to the task at hand. With the right tools and some determination, these weeds posed very little problem. A slight breeze picked up and for the briefest of moments, it washed away the smell of decay that had recently saturated MacDougal Drive.

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Ex-Heroes

Ex-Heroes

Written by Peter Clines

Grade: C+

The nerds have won, people. Gone are the days when the acne-riddled, asthma-infused, coke-bottle-glasses-wearing, obese kid in a Land of the Giants T-shirt was regulated to the collective corner of our society. Mainstream audiences are now well versed in subjects such as Batman, Star Wars, Star Trek and all kinds of other estrogen-repulsing things. This isn’t a bad thing. We now get high-budget stories from quality writers and directors and actors and a guy that writes a blog nobody really reads is allowed to have a relationship with a real-live girl. Of course there is a problem, otherwise I wouldn’t have written the last few sentences. That problem is oversaturation. We’ve finally gotten to a point where we can simply reference pop-culture and that is enough to appease the crowds. To be fair, Peter Clines Ex-Heroes isn’t completely guilty of this, he just falls a little short of something better.

This premise of this novel is simple: Superheroes vs. zombies. It’s an awesome enough set-up, and well-written too, though some of the dialogue is a little forced. It’s set in a Los Angeles where super powered beings have risen up and started doing super hero like things, protecting the populace and forming alliances and rivalries that are amazingly destructive. There’s St. George, or The Mighty Dragon, Stealth, Gorgon, Cairax, Cerberus, Zzzapp, and a few others that are of varying degrees of importance. Then the zombie apocalypse comes and the heroes, at least the ones that survive the onslaught, are forced to carve out a slice of the city and protect their new civilization, naturally in the safety of a movie studio lot, they call The Mount. Things go about as well as you can hope, the citizens are mostly safe other than a few minor incidents, until a gang builds up power in another end of the city. They want the resources of The Mount, and they might have a few tricks up their sleeves, including some super-powered beings of their own.

Clines offers up some new additions to the two respective mythologies. The origin of the zombies intertwines with the rise of the superheroes and is a pretty compelling angle. The survivors of the apocalypse, since they’re in Los Angeles, have a running game of who can kill the most famous celebrity zombie. These feel fresh and bring something new to well-worn concepts. This is where the novel shines, but unfortunately it just doesn’t do enough of this kind of thing. For one thing, anybody who knows a decent amount of superhero lore, will be able to spot variations on both DC and Marvel characters in these original heroes. With a few tweaks St. George is Superman, Stealth is Batman, and their relationship is nearly identical to the classic heroes though admittedly with a nice twist of sexual tension. Among others, The Hulk and Iron Man are both essentially there and Captain America is even teased at in the preview for the second book in the series. There’s nothing wrong with this necessarily, except for the fact that I don’t think I would’ve picked up on these similarities if I wasn’t such a nerdlinger myself, which feels a little dishonest to me.

Zombies have had a rough go in pop-culture of late. They’ve never enjoyed more popularity than they do now, but they’ve lost something in the process. Gone are the mindless, soulless nightmares that are terrifying metaphors of ourselves and what we could all become, and in their place are mindless monsters who want to eat humans. They’re more gory, but less scary. Superheroes fighting zombies has the potential to be an amazing allegory for this contemporary world. Gods have come down to protect us from the monsters threatening to turn us completely into a mindless consumer society. Our very souls are at stake. What is too often missed is that it’s not our lives that are on the line in a zombie apocalypse, but our humanity. And to be fair, Clines does address this, and at times he does it well, but it feels like an afterthought for the most part, and just an excuse to lend a story some weight that’s really just fixated on how hard a super strong guy can punch a zombie.

Overall this is an enjoyable, if kind forgettable, read. It’s apparently the first book in a series, and I liked it enough where I will probably read the next book when it comes out.


Buy this book!

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Take This Waltz

Take This Waltz

Directed by Sarah Polley
Starring: Michelle Williams, Luke Kirby, Seth Rogen

Grade: B+

Let’s face it, character studies do not make good popcorn movies. They don’t tend to be terribly exciting and they’re not particularly funny either. Long stretches of quiet drag out followed by moments where you have to rush for the control to turn the volume down because you’re suddenly completely started by the noise, thus spilling greasy popcorn all over your new ironically phrased T-shirt you just scored from the Salvation Army. What these kind of movies do though, at least the good ones, is find a tense note and push it all the way to the brink until you can’t stand it any longer. Take This Waltz, directed by Sarah Polley, uses sexual tension to this effect, and does it well. The meat of the film revolves around an emotional extramarital affair in which the two characters use every ounce of restraint they possess to not physically touch each other, though it’s clear that symbolically the deed is already done. The tension these two feel is so palpable it becomes too much for the audience to stand, much less the two characters on screen.

The film centers around Margot (Michelle Williams) who has a good marriage in seemingly every facet except for a lack of sex. I wouldn’t even say there is a lack of intimacy, because Margot and her husband Lou (Seth Rogen in a rare dramatic turn) are very affectionate in a quirky, demented way. But the lack of action between the sheets is all too apparent and every attempt at rectifying that ends in failure and resentment on both parts. Enter dreamy Daniel (Luke Kirby). He’s everything Lou is not: cynical, mysterious and far better looking. Margot meets Daniel on a trip to Toronto, shares a plane with him and they are both surprised to learn he lives virtually right across the street from her. Convenient, yes, but the film is good enough to overlook this impracticality. The two begin having secret rendezvous where they flirt and even talk bluntly about all the sex they would have if she wasn’t married, but they never act on it. Lou meets Daniel and likes him. He invites him over to their house for a party. He pieces together what’s been happening eventually but is far too nice of a guy to have the explosion moment we’re used to getting in these kinds of movies, instead he backs off. Lou is not willing to fight for her, and Daniel is. Maybe that’s the message here, but it’s a lot more complicated than that.

Michelle Williams is fast becoming one of the best young actresses working right now. People who only remember her as the girl from Dawson’s Creek are doing themselves a disservice. She turns in an amazing performance in this movie as a character so full of angst, toward just about everything in this world, that she has to work up courage in order to seduce her own husband. Seth Rogen, meanwhile, definitely has limits. He’s an incredibly funny man and plays a great everyman. Most of this movie requires him to simply a sweeter version of the same character he usually plays, but when the script calls for him to do some heavy lifting, Williams is acting circles around him. Luke Kirby is good in his thankless role. It’s thankless because it’s virtually impossible not to dislike this guy. He’s a decent enough guy going through his own moral quandaries, but the fact that he’s leading Margot away from Lou, who’s just so fucking nice, makes us resent him.

A standout performance comes from Sarah Silverman. She only shows up in a few scenes, probably a good thing. A recovering alcoholic, she dreads the inevitable relapse that always seems to come to the afflicted, and provides virtually all the insight in the film. She sort of serves as the voice of the audience in some ways as she spells out the subtleties that we might not have picked up on. “New things get old,” she tells Margo at one point. It’s fairly early in the movie, but by the end we realize this is probably the most important piece of dialogue. It might seem heavy handed but the rest of the film plays it so close to the vest that it’s nice to have something concrete to latch onto.

Overall this is not a story interested in satisfying conclusions. It’s also not a love story, not really. It’s about unsatisfied lives and trying to find happiness wherever you can.

Buy this movie!
http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=8587887&style=movie&frm=lk_Somedamnfool

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First Date

Julia and Michael are sitting on opposite ends of a couch, each with a glass of wine in their hands.

Michael
And then I said (in a bad Borat voice) Very nice!

Julia
Oh my god. That is so funny.

Michael
(Laughing) Thanks.

Julia
Really, that’s really funny..

Michael
(Still laughing) Thanks. Sometimes crazy thing just happen to me, you know?

Michael scoots a couple inches closer to Julia.

Julia
How ‘bout some more wine there, Chief?

Julia doesn’t wait for him to respond before pouring more wine into his glass. She also takes this time to refill her glass.

Michael
Oh, thanks. Listen, I’m really happy you came over to me at the bar because I was staring at you all night. I don’t mean staring. What I mean is, it wasn’t in a creepy way or anything, I just noticed you a lot. (Takes deep breath.) I just think you’re really hot.

Julia
What, you don’t get approached by girls? I find that hard to believe.

Michael
No, it’s not that. I mean, I do pretty well with the ladies. (Michael scoots a little closer again.) It’s just that girls don’t usually approach guys in my experience.

Julia
Well, then I’m glad I approached you too.

They both drink from their respective glasses. Michael puts his arm around Julia but he’s still a little too far away to pull it off perfectly and he has to fully extend his arm just to get his hand on the back of her neck.

Julia
You don’t do this very much, do you?

Michael
(Fidgeting.) No, it’s not like I never have though. Like I said, I do alright with the ladies, but I guess I’m not Wilt Chamberlain or anything like that.

Julie leans in and they kiss.

Charlie
(offstage) Somebody help me!

Michael
Who the hell’s that?

Charlie enters. He is walking quickly and seems to have blood all over his shirt.

Charlie
You guys, you gotta help me. I was attacked.

Julia
What happened?

Michael
Wait, who is this guy?

Charlie
I’m really sorry to intrude on you guys, but I got a terrible situation here and I could really use some pointers.

Julia
It’s okay, Michael. Charlie’s my neighbor. (To Charlie.) Okay, what happened?

Charlie
Like I said, I was attacked, right? But I fought back.

Julia
And are you okay?

Michael
Is that…blood?

Charlie
So I’m walking home from the bar, and this guy comes at me with a knife. He probably wanted my money, but the joke was on him because, what money? I was ready for him though. When he lunged at me with that knife of his I just grabbed his wrist from behind and turned it around on him. (Charlie acts this out.)

Julia
How were you ready for him?

Charlie
What? Oh I don’t really know I guess. Anyway, he screams out “I’ve been stabbed!” And so I gotta shut him up, you know? So I grabbed a rock and just smashed his skull. (Beat.) He’s dead now.

Michael
Oh god.

Julia
Dead? And you’re sure?

Charlie
Oh yeah, he’s definitely dead. I mean, I haven’t seen that many dead things, mostly squirrels and small animals like that, but this guy was dead.

Julia
Okay, let’s everybody calm down and figure this out.

Michael
What are we figuring out?

Charlie
The weird thing is, I think I kind of enjoyed it. I mean, I’m pretty amped over here.

Michael
Oh shit.

Julia
Okay, why don’t you sit down, Charlie, and try to calm down.

Charlie sits down on the couch next to Michael.

Julia
Did anybody see you?

Charlie
I don’t think so.

Michael
Are you guys insane? Julia, we need to call the cops.

Charlie
(Standing back up) Cops? Are you crazy? I just killed a man, in a fairly brutal fashion I might add. How could I possibly explain this to the fuzz?

Michael
Jesus, this isn’t happening.

Julia
Okay, no cops. Charlie, you can stay here until things die down a little. You can sleep on the couch.

Michael
Stay here? That can’t happen. Look at this guy, he’s clearly unstable.

Julia
I can’t abandon my friend. What kind of person would I be?

Charlie
You won’t even know I’m here, I swear.

Michael
Listen, I’m not staying here with a killer.

Charlie
Dude, you’re starting to really agitate me. (Puts his arm around Michael) Julia’s got plenty of rocks in her backyard.

Michael
Oh shit. I gotta go, Julia.

Michael gets up and runs off stage without looking back. Charlie starts laughing quietly.

Julia
That’s a shame. I really did kind of like him, it’s too bad he got away.

Charlie
Huh? Oh man, Julia it was like we were dancing. (Sits back down on the couch.)

Julia
Well at least now it’s out in the open.

Charlie
Yeah, that’s a good thing, I think. I’m sorry I just barged in on you guys like that. He seemed like a decent dude and all.

Julia
Yeah, he was okay.

Charlie
It’s just that I got tired of seeing you bring all these guys home all the time.

Julia
Well…

Charlie
That’s not to say that you bring a lot of guys home or anything. I’m not saying that at all, please believe me. I mean it’s not like promiscuity is a sin or anything right? I’ve gotten around myself a bit too, so I’m no nun myself.

Julia
I’m starting to think we’re not talking about the same thing here.

Charlie
I guess what I’m trying to tell you is that I just wish those guys were me sometimes.

Julia
Oh god. What about tonight?

Charlie
Look, let’s just start from square one. I don’t want to freak you out or anything but I’ve been in love with you for like two years now. I don’t mean that in a weird way, I just watch your house sometimes.

Julia
Okay, let’s just relax here. We have to get you out of here before the cops come.

Charlie
Why would the cops come? Unless that little prick calls them or something, but I’m pretty sure he’s too scared at this point.

Julia
Well, the body’s going to raise some suspicions, right?

Charlie
Body? There’s no body.

Julia
You didn’t kill anybody.

Charlie
No, of course not. I understand I’m a little unstable but I’m not a psychopath or anything.

Julia
Oh god. What about the blood on your shirt.

Charlie
This? It’s just that fake stuff you get from the Halloween store. I just wanted to scare that guy away so I could finally tell you how I feel.

Julia
Now you’ve got me really pissed off.

Charlie
I’m sorry I lied to you, but I couldn’t figure out any other way.

Julia
The problem is that he got away and now what am I gonna do? I worked hard to get him over here and set everything up. Now I really am back to square one. It’s too bad, I thought you and I could’ve really connected.

Charlie
Now I’m a little confused. What are we talking about?

Julia
I can’t let you leave.

Charlie
I thought I was sleeping on the couch. I mean, I’m perfectly okay with taking things slow.

Julia
God, you’re dumber than the last one, but you’ll have to do. Why don’t I pour you a glass of wine?

Julia sits back down on the couch and pours wine into Michael’s abandoned glass.

Charlie
Yeah, okay. I could use another drink. (Takes a drink and begins to visibly relax.)

Julia
Tell me a joke.