The Look of Love - Mark Morris Dance Group

 (...in which Hank gives his pedestrian views on The Look of Love - Mark Morris Dance Group performance in Dallas last month at The Winspear as a respite from Yet Another Burrito Missive as a sort of palate cleanser,  because why not):

For many of us late Boomer/Early Gen X’ers, our first exposure to Burt Bacharach, other than hearing his music as the soundtrack in dentist offices and bank lobbies and Dionne Warwick belting out a few numbers from your father’s Dodge Dart’s AM radio while on the way to baseball practice, was a commercial that was everywhere on TV in the early 70s: A sultry Angie Dickinson extolling the virtues of Martin & Rossi at some Malibu club, while sauntering over to a piano where we find Burt, toying at the keyboard. They were married at the time, and let’s just say there was a palpable energy between the two that even this ten-year-old boy couldn’t miss. 

“What do you say to Martini & Rossi?” Angie asks him.

“Yes,” Burt replies, and then starts to sing a melody that is pure Bacharach, “Yes… to Martin & Rossi on the rocks… say ye eh essssss.”

End scene.

The music of Burt Bacharach (and lyrics by Hal David) evidently made a big impact on many of this generation. Choreographer Mark Morris, born in 1956, founded the Mark Morris Dance Group in 1980 and has produced numerous works throughout the years as its artistic director. His most recent production is “The Look of Love,” an homage to the powerful melodies and arrangements of Bacharach, with his choreography, along with arrangements by Ethan Iverson and costume and production designs by Isaac Mizrahi. It recently stopped at the Winspear at the AT&T Performing Arts Center thanks to TITAS/Dallas Unbound and executive and artistic director Charles Santos.  

One of the special things about this production is that it features live music rather than something prerecorded, and it makes a difference, bringing a sense of energy and excitement that one just doesn’t get listening to files playing off a hard drive. The mood was set at the lights still hadn’t fully dimmed when a few soft bars of “Alfie” could be heard coming from the piano of Chris McCarthy. It was soft and melancholy, but picked up a bit more energy as the lights fully dimmed and we transitioned to “What the World Needs Now,” sung with passion by lead vocalist Marcy Harriell and backup singers Clinton Curtis and Blaire Reinhard.

The dancers started entering the stage at that point, which was unadorned and simply lit. The dancers totaled about 10 in number, and would weave in and out, Mizrahi’s costumes in different muted pastel tones of light green, burnt orange, yellow magenta and lavender which somehow managed to capture the feeling of the mod 1960s while still remaining modern. 

That song yielded to “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” and the choreography here at times was literal, with sneezes incorporated into the movements. The lyrics here are typical of Hal David’s somewhat bittersweet yet unsentimental lyrics, and the dancers embraced this in physical form.

After “A Message to Michael,” the lighting became a bit more ominous, and a unique arrangement of “Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head” began, and then we segued into “Do You Know the Way to San Jose” and “Anyone Who Had a Heart.”

Next up was “Walk On By,” which really showed off Jonathan Finlayson’s trumpet as well served as an interesting choreography choice by Morris. With syncopated rhythm and pace, all the dancers again embodied a literal interpretation of the lyrics by walking on by each other, weaving in and out, making quick sharp turns before traveling across the rest of the stage. It was reminiscent of a college marching band, always in movement, marching along to the music and obviously took a lot of skill and timing.

One of our guilty movie pleasures is the 1958 version of “The Blob” starring a young Steve McQueen, and featuring one of the best 50s-era opening credit songs, which it turns out was written by Bacharach, but this time with lyrics by Hal’s brother, Mack. It’s upbeat campy fun, and when we saw it listed on the program we were excited.

However, when the lights turned dark red and the dancers stood posed only in an ominous silhouette, we knew that Iverson had decided to change this up a bit. Instead of upbeat and perky, it was slow and dark, more in keeping with the theme of the Sci Fi movie, sure, but a bit of a disappointment none the less, even though it was expertly presented.

We all needed an emotional pick me up after that, and the production finished strongly with “Always Something There to Remind Me” and “The Look of Love,” before concluding with “I Say a Little Prayer.”

Sure, there’s a whole generation that thinks of “Always Something” as that Naked Eyes song that was in heavy rotation back when MTV played music videos, but it fits in perfectly with the Bacharach/David oeuvre. “I Say a Little Prayer” was a perfect ending as well letting Vinnie Sperrazza’s drums and Simon Willson’s bass shine as well as allowing Morris’ choreography to sparkle through the interpretation of his dance troop. 

We were excited to see a composer’s work being set to innovative dance. Illinoise, featuring the music of Sufjan Stevens and choreography of Justin Peck, was a revelation, but it’s great to see the straight-up pop sensibilities of Bacharach also being embraced by the Mark Morris Dance Group.  And who knows: maybe soon we’ll all be talking about that ballet based on The Ramones music.

Snorey, Sours, And Two F***ing Hands: A Dining Adventure

We decided to try a pizza and pasta place last night whose menu seemed good. They originally had three locations in the area, but apparently the one in Plano was the last one standing. Upon arrival we were told to seat ourselves after waiting a bit in confusion in the entryway.

We found a booth, and then found some menus and sat down. There were several cocktails that cost under $10, and while that’s great for the budget-conscious, it’s usually not a great sign as to their quality. Still. It was something.

After a bit the waiter approached the booth behind us, as evidently they’d been waiting since before we even seated ourselves. Oh well, perhaps they’re just short-staffed. While we waited, we had decided on a couple of different appetizers, some bargain-basement cocktails, and a couple of pasta dishes. We were ready. We were also listening in on his conversation with the people behind us.

“You see anything you like? Well, enjoy it now, because we’ve been sold to another company starting tomorrow,” which was followed by nervous and confused laughter by the other party.

Finally, it was our turn. He approached our table and it began.

“Are there any entrees you’d like me to get you started with?”

Me, kind of confused: “Do you mean appetizers? Because we’d like to start with those, first.”

“Well, sure, if that’s what you want. I was just trying to be efficient.”

“That’s appreciated, but I just wanted to make sure appetizers are still available,” I countered.

He sighed, making no effort to conceal it then removed the hipster cowboy hat he had been wearing and slowly pointed to his head.

“Look, as you can see, I’m a blond and have some blond moments occasionally,” he said as he gestured at his brown hair matted by his insistence of wearing a cowboy hat at a pizza parlor.

It was our turn to express nervous and confused laughter as he replaced the hat upon his head with a smug look of satisfaction at his “witticism.”

He started to walk away having taken neither a drink or appetizer order.

“Can we order some drinks now?” we asked with building trepidation. “We’d like a frozen Aperol spritz and a figgy mule.”

“Oh, we don’t have the frozen spritz. We’ve been sold, you know, as of tomorrow.”

“Well, do you have any frozen drinks at all?”

“We have a frozen margarita,” he beamed, “and the upside is that it’s really strong. In fact, if I can be totally honest with you, it’s fucking strong.”

It’s not often that a waiter will drop the F-bomb so cavalierly, so we were a bit silenced by shock, but then finally forced out a nervous and confused titter. It was all we could muster.

We decided against the fucking strong margarita and instead settled upon an amaretto sour.

“Oh, that doesn’t have any liquor in it,” he informed us.

“No liquor at all?”

“Nope.”

“So it’s a virgin amaretto sour?” we asked for clarification. “Isn’t amaretto alcohol?”

“Oh sure, amaretto has alcohol, but it’s what we call a liqueur. It’s not liquor though.”

Confused nervous laughter. “Um… that’s okay. That’s fine.”

“Okay,” he replied. “I just wanted to make you aware, since I had someone complain when they ordered one the other day saying ‘this does not have alcohol in it!!’ and I had to explain to him about it.”

“Sure, but to be clear, a liqueur does have alcohol in it, so….”

He started to take his hat off again but thought better of it and left.

As we waited for our drinks to arrive, we began to reassess if we should actually order anything else. We were getting a bad vibe. The other booth adjacent to us held a gaggle of women seemingly having a good time talking about their day. The waiter approached them, and they became hushed.

“Okay, sorry, but what were your drink orders again?” he asked them. After a bit of nervous and confused laughter from the gals they told him “Three waters and a Dr Pepper.” He told them he’d go get them and reminded them that this place had been sold and was changing names starting tomorrow, because why not.

It took about five minutes, but he returned with three waters and nothing else. He asked if there was anything else, and they reminded him about the Dr Pepper at which point he said, “Yeah, sure, but I only have two hands.” More tittering as he fetched the Dr Pepper, but en route decided to go to the back of the dining area and enter the bathroom.

“He’s going to the bathroom first?” one of the women asked incredulously. I wanted to remind them about his hair color situation but thought better of it.

During all of this we decided we definitely were not going to order anything else; we’d finish our drinks and leave. While he was in the bathroom, however, we contemplated just leaving right then since we hadn’t received our drinks, anyway. A philosophical conversation then ensued as to exactly how one defines “dining and dashing”: If you never eat or drink your order and you leave, does it count as dining and dashing? We decided to err on the side of caution and morality.

Finally, our drinks arrived. Or drink. He only had the figgy mule, not the liquor-challenged amaretto sour.

“Anything else now?” he asked after placing the mule on the table.

“Well… what about the amaretto sour?” I asked gingerly.

“Yeah, yeah, that’s coming,” he replied with impatience he didn’t bother to hide. “I only have two hands, you know.” 

So we’ve heard, dude.

While we waited for the other cocktail, we got to listen in on another conversation he had with the booth full of nervously laughing women. He was not bringing food or drinks, mind you, but just went over to them to tell a story about when he worked at a restaurant across the street and was dating one of the other servers whose father evidently did not approve of the relationship (what a shocker). His story was long and detailed with the occasional F-bomb sprinkled throughout, using his name, the girlfriend’s name, the manager’s name and the father’s name to explain how the father dropped by to confront him at the restaurant and who he won over with wit and grace (he must have had more than two hands then) and was invited to drop by and swim at the family pool (“…which was just two fucking blocks from the restaurant”) whenever he wanted. It was gripping; we were on the edge of our seats.

The women left after that, having only ordered some water and a Dr Pepper. I envied them as they walked out.

Finally, the other cocktail arrived, he asked if there was anything else, and we said we’d just like the check. He brought it and we gave him our credit card, but just as he started to walk away, he stopped and turned back.

“Hey, I want to ask you a question.” (Here we go, we were thinking.) “I read a study recently that said that most people cannot name all seven of Snow White’s dwarfs.”

We sort of shrugged with a “what are you going to do” kind of attitude, hoping he’d get to the point or just go run our card, but no.

“How many of them can you name?” he insisted.

“Oh, probably just one,” I replied peevishly. I don’t know what I was thinking. Cindy, on the other hand, started to name a few. “There’s Doc, and Bashful….”

“DOC!” the waiter exclaimed. “Most people don’t remember Doc!”

“Sleepy, Happy…. Is there a Happy?” Cindy continued.

“Yeah, there’s a Happy. And everyone says Doc,” he countered, evidently unaware that he was contradicting what he had just said about Doc.

Please just take our check and run our card so we can go, I was thinking as loudly as I could.

“It’s sort of a psychological experiment I’m running, asking people to name the seven dwarfs. Yeah, sure, everyone knows Doc and Snorey, but that’s usually about it” he said before finally leaving to run our card.

SNOREY? Really? He thinks there’s a dwarf named Snorey? Clearly there was more going on with this dude than simply lack of pigmentation to his hair.

We still left a 20% tip, however. Snorey would have wanted it that way.

Oh, and apropos of nothing, the last remaining Sfereco in the area will be under new ownership starting tomorrow.

In Which Hank "Reviews" Daniel Fish's Oklahoma! presented by Broadway Dallas

Let me begin by saying that Oklahoma! is one of my least favorite R&H musicals, beating out perhaps only State Fair for that distinction. I don’t like Westerns or things set in the “West”, I don’t like farmers, I don’t like cowhands (I’m friends with neither 😉), I don’t like hick accents, the “thar”s or “fir”s or “agin” or poorly conjugated verbs. There are some great songs, don’t get me wrong; I mean, it’s my least favorite, but I still like it. Now, this cuts both ways: Since I’m not in love with Oklahoma! to begin with, I’m less emotionally invested in how it’s produced and in fact might welcome any interpretation or reimagining that would shake up all these dern territory folk and make them a bit more interesting, iffin’ you see ma point. (Ugh. See? Hick talk sucks). I totally respect and can appreciate trying to update an old moldy musical, making it fresh and relatable to current tastes and styles, even if I might wish to see an unaltered  version from the 50s.

However, and perhaps more importantly, I’m just done in general with the sparse stylized single static set designs and lack of full orchestra that has been predominant these last several years of musical theater, so of course this didn’t thrill me, though I’ve come to accept that this is how things are now. I just assumed that there would be no real set to speak of in this version, and I was right. Again, this bothered me, but it is not unique to Daniel Fish’s current production of Oklahoma.

I’m just old fashioned. I like curtains. I like changing backdrops. I like little scenes front of curtain while a new scene/set is being put in place behind the curtain. If the scene takes place in a school room, I want to see desks and a blackboard. It if then changes to outside in a park near a gazebo, I want a gazebo and I want trees. I know, I know, how literal of me. But I’m old. I want to see a play, not what looks like the cast sitting around a table workshopping it, working on their delivery. Those days are gone, however. I’m not bitter.

Moving to the music (they’re called musicals, you know), I like more than one viola. I like hearing an oboe. Some timpani. Seeing the soft glow from an actual orchestra pit. I no longer find it “cool” or “edgy” to see the musicians on stage. Put ‘em in the pit where they belong. I can’t remember the last time we saw a musical where the “orchestra” was not on stage (or under the stage, waves at The Sound of Music and Miguel Cantu IV). Tommy, Jesus Christ Super Star, In The Heights, Rocky Horror, Rent, West Side Story, Oklahoma.

Distorted electric guitar is fine in Rent, or JCST, or Tommy, but not Carousel or Brigadoon.

So, all of these things are my Angry Old Man issues with most current productions of musicals and are not specific to this version of Oklahoma. Given that I expected all of this going in, I perhaps was not as bothered as some with the staging and direction of this production. I’m resigned to having to watch “not your grandma’s musical” and have that built in already. However, this needs to be executed well, and unfortunately, this was not the case.

I enjoy on-key singing. I guess I’m funny that way. Almost without exception the entire cast of this production was a bit pitchy as Randy Jackson used to say, and even when they hit the right notes, sometimes the delivery was questionable, as was the case with Sean Grandillo’s almost falsetto singing at times. During “People Will Say We’re In Love” it was often hard at times to determine who was singing, because Curly and Sasha Hutchings’  Laurey were basically singing in the same range. Not a fan. To me, this was the production’s biggest failure, its lack of a strong vocal ensemble.

There was also the anachronistic stylizing that has also become de rigueur as of late: The cast would sing in the traditional manner, then suddenly grab a wired mic and sing into that. The change in volume and dynamics was jarring, and even if this was the point, it just removed some of the inherent charm of these songs and also jerked you out of the moment, calling attention to the artificiality of the whole situation. Add to this the also now ubiquitous use of a live video feed projected onto the backdrop. All cool, and artsy, but again, overly artificial, and I almost always get pulled out of the moment and start watching the camera man in such situations, and wonder how they walk in the dark, or what kind of night vision lens they are using. Should I look at the screen, or the actor on stage? Did they even have wireless hidef video in turn of the century Oklahoma Territory? This worked when we saw Network on stage, as the whole point of that show was how media and technology effects and influences our lives, but in the grass prairies of 1906 Oklahoma it seems to be just a stunt.

Now, the ending, the wedding scene. I didn’t really have a problem with that. As it started to come to an end, Cindy said (in what seemed full room volume for everyone to hear), “this is EFFED UP.” (and yes she said “EFF” because she’s demure that way 😉). I mean, plot-wise, it really doesn’t differ from the traditional production, it was just more graphic. This part reminded me of The Bride from Kill Bill, in a good way. Who doesn’t want to hear a rousing reprise of the title song sung whilst drenched in blood from the person that your newly betrothed husband just shot to death in cold blood? And they sang that final reprise with a lot of anger and aggression, while Laurey stared out vacantly.

Cut to black.

So there you go.

Oh, and the "ballet." That could be an entire post on its own, so I'll spare you.

In Which Hank Reviews A Movie

Warning: some spoilers contained herein

So C i n d y and I decided to kill about 4 hours this Saturday by watching The Dark Knight at our local cineplex. What follows are my thoughts on said experience.

The movie was showing every half hour somehow (maybe it was on 5 screens, who knows), so at 1:30 we bought tickets to the 2pm showing. First off, it was $7 a pop for tickets, and this was the "cheap" matinee price. So we dropped $14 in ticket fees and another $10 or so in gas since the theater is about a 8 mile round trip from our home (okay, maybe that's a bit exaggerated, but still, with the cost of gas this does become a factor). We entered the theater and it was totally empty. I was expecting it to be a bit full since it was due to start in just 30 minutes, and since a friend of mine has been keeping me updated on how much this movie was grossing and I just assumed it would be crowded. Not then, anyway. We sat smack dab in the middle, which was nice. Ten minutes later the theater began it's loop of trivia question slides. In all, there were (literally) only about five of these, so we, the audience, were asked about 20 times who said what in a given movie.

Finally, people started arriving, about 10 minutes to showtime. Unfortunately, the couple behind us included one of those guys who doesn't realize/care that he's in a public place, and talked full-volume about this inane thing and that boring thing. So we had ten minutes of that, combined with about 15 more slides asking the same dumb movie trivia we'd been viewing for the last ten minutes.

At 2pm, the house lights finally dimmed. The movie was about to start! Right? Nope. You see, in order for the theater to charge such cheap, affordable prices for their tickets, we had to watch about five commercials for Sprite, JCPenny, etc. But that's cool, since the tickets are so cheap and all. Finally, with the commercials now over, we all (about a 2/3 full house) collectively settled down to watch the Batman. Right? Nope. What then followed was about ten previews. Again, I'm not exaggerating. We had to sit through at least ten previews, along with the Loud Guy behind me complaining the whole time about how many previews we had to see, and how he'd timed his day around the running time of this movie, and assumed that would start at 2pm, and now he'd miss his next item on the agenda, etc. The good news is the preview for The Quantum of Solace looked really good.

With all that housekeeping out of the way, the actual movie did, in fact, actually start. I was a bit afraid, since I'd read several opinions that the PG13 rating could really have been an R, and specifically I'd heard of some sort of "pencil trick" that many pointed to as an example. Therefore, when the pencil scene started I was ready to look away. However, that was unnecessary, as they don't actually show anything. The same can be said for many scenes in the movie that could have potentially been overly violent; they always cut away right before the blood and gore would have made its appearance. Which is fine by me, but I wonder, then, about all the "this should have been R" chatter. Why? I actually wonder why it was PG13 instead of simply PG. Remember the Michael Keaton Batman movie with the Penguin? Now that was an overly violent movie. I seem to remember Danny Devito biting off someone's ear or nose or something, and they showed that. That was overly violent. The Pencil Trick? Not so much.

So the movie continues, and whenever Christian Bale is wearing the batsuit, he talks with a weird voice. That always bothered me in the first movie, but I was told by my Comic Book friends that he does that in order to disguise his voice. Fine, okay, so I'd just accepted this tepid explanation, and we have this movie where, in one scene, he uses this voice when talking to Rachel (I think that's her name), and another scene when he's alone with Lucius Fox and uses this same voice. Now, both of these peeps know that Batman is Bruce Wayne (or vise versa as the case may be), so why the strange voice? Then it hit me: I guess that batsuit's collar is just overly tight and Bale's thoat gets constricted, thus causing him to sound like a four-pack-a-day pissed-off sociopath. Or something.

So then the movie ends, with the death of Rachel and the birth of Two-Face, and... wait. The movie doesn't end? It keeps going. But why didn't it end there? It's the two-hour mark, after all. My body tells me the movie is about to end, as does my mind, looking at the plot. But no, we still have (as it turned out) another 30 minutes or so, and another couple of plot lines. But then it does end. I think? Yes, this is definitely the end. Okay. I can tell it's the end because the couple behind us are finally quiet.

So we walk out of the dark theater into the bright, 100 degree weather both thinking that the movie was okay, but that it was too long, and we wonder how/why so many people are seeing it several times, since to us its too expensive and a bit too long and a bit too much of a pain to sit through ads and trailers and people talking, etc, to hear some guy struggle to talk in an ill-fitting suit.

I'll be buying the Blu-Ray, though.

Stacy's Heart

Background Information

So today I finally finished Stacy's Heart by one Cary Rainey. (He doesn't really have a blog per se, so I'll link to this LJ instead.) Even though I purchased this book when it was first published in 2001, and even though my lovely wife read it a couple of weeks after we received it, I didn't get around to reading it until about a week ago. Why did it take me so long to read a book published six years ago, you ask? I could say that I was an extremely slow reader, but that wouldn't be true. I could say that I'm a procrastinator. Yeah, that's true, but not the point, here. Truth be told, I was afraid to read it. I "know" and like the author, and I was afraid to read it and discover I didn't like it.

See, I gathered from Cary (may I call him Cary?) and others that this book was in the style of a Stephen King novel, and that sent red flags or smoke signals or little beeps... or whatever other metaphorical warning signs one cares to imagine... in my direction. This was for two reasons, really:

1. I don't like Stephen King novels ("horrors!", I can hear you thinking right now, followed by "pardon the pun". I know it's hard to believe, but it's true... that I don't like King, not that I can hear your thoughts). I appreciate King's writing and realize he's good at what he does, it's just not my cup of tea. I still read his stuff, however, and enjoy them to a certain extent. No, it's just not number 1 that worried me, but rather that combined with

2. So here's this unpublished novelist guy who's written a book that might be attempting something in the style of King. Now, imagine writing void of any real talent or style that strives to be like Stephen King. I don't know about you, but I imagine something that just gloms onto the violence and gore at the expense of real writing, and who wants to read 500 pages of descriptive blood and guts with no story, characterization, pace, style, or talent. Yuck. Especially considering #1 above, the fact that I'm not too keen on blood and guts and horror fiction even when it's done well.

So I was afraid to read Stacy's Heart out of fear of disappointment and thus put it off for six years. To cut to the chase (yeah, I know, it's a bit late for that already), I worried for nothing. I really enjoyed the book. It's not void of talent or style, and even if you took out the vampires and violence, you'd still have a pretty good tale in the vein of Thomas Wolfe's You Can't Go Home Again. And, truth be told, perhaps a few scenes involving stakes through the hearts of the undead would have livened up Wolfe's book a bit. He could have called it then Look Homeward, Demon or something... but I digress.

Plot/What The Hell Happened?

In a nutshell, Stacy's Heart is basically the story of Kyle Crader, successful author now living in beautiful southern California, who has to reluctantly come back to his Alabama hometown in order to promote a movie based on his wildly successful first book, a satirical novel that pilloried his hometown and is both loved or hated for all the wrong reasons. The return dredges up memories of the unrequited love which was at the heart of his self-induced exile (or escape) in the first place.

Oh yeah, and there's some vampires running amok, too.

If you insist on a non-nutshell version and don't care about spoilers, continue reading. Else, jump to the next section. You'll be glad you did.

At the insistence of his publisher and agent, Kyle returns to his home of Birmingham, Alabama, to promote the opening of the film Coming Down Fast based on his best seller by the same name. Some have used this movie and book as an excuse for a series of racist crimes that have occurred, and Kyle finds himself thus being harassed by local politicians and lawmen. He puts up with this because he wants to see Stacy again. He'd been in love with Stacy during high school, but never got around to telling her how he felt. Then, on graduation night, he left Birmingham in his dust for places west after discovering that his buddy Darren and Stacy were kadoodling.

Now, after his return, he hooks up with Stacy again, along with some of his other boyhood friends, all of whom would be right at home in the basement of that kid in The Seventies Show. Still, he can't tell Stacy how he really feels. While in Birmingham he becomes intrigued with Lacy, who evidently is a cutter, someone who gets erotic pleasure from being cut or cutting. Kyle begins his new book using this cutting fetish as his main theme. It turns out that most of these cutters are actually vampires, vampires that are sick and tired of hiding in the shadows. They want to be out in the open. They want to rule over humans. And, apparently, they want Kyle to be their leader. Kyle isn't too keen on the idea, and they try to use Stacy in order to get him to change his mind. Kyle battles these vampires, killing several with the help of some wolves, some sharp sticks, gasoline, and his wits. However, in the end The Big Daddy Vampire kills Stacy, and Kyle does become, albeit unwillingly, a card-carrying member of the undead.

Upon his return to Los Angeles, however, he kills himself by self-stakeification, after first sending off the new completed manuscript to his publisher.

End Scene.

General Musings, or, Hmm This Is Interesting

The book within the book, or rather the book within the book that's already written and is the basis of the movie within the book, is called Coming Down Fast. This book doesn't seem to be very autobiographical to Kyle Crader's life in Birmingham. Instead, it seems to have taken a page from Charles Manson, who was trying to use the Tate/La Bianca murders in order to incite a race war in the United States. Manson wanted the murders to be blamed on "The Blacks" and hoped "The Whites" would rise up in anger, causing an apocryphal race war that would bring about the End Times. Manson believed The Beatles had predicted and were encouraging this through songs such as "Helter Skelter", from which one assumes Kyle Crader gets his book's title. The unintended consequences of this book are a series of race related crimes across America. The racists love Crader and the book, viewing it as a sort of "how-to" manual, whereas the authoritarians who miss the satire intended overreact in the form of censorship and even try to hold Crader legally responsible for the various hate crimes that follow in the book and movie's wake.

There's also a second book-within-the-book; this is the follow up book to Coming Down Fast called The Cutters, that Kyle is working on during his downtime in Stacy's Heart. This book seems more autobiographical, for Kyle seems to more directly deal with his high school relationship with Stacy and their mutual friend Darren . This book is ostensibly about a group of people who derive erotic pleasure from cutting each other, but in reality in appears to be a thinly-veiled account of that night senior year when Kyle saw Darren and Stacy hooking up, and the ramifications that caused.

When you add the fact that the real author, Cary Rainey, also grew up in Birmingham, also wrote a book about his home town, and also left for California, you're presented with a book within a book within a book within, I think, still another book? It's sort of like a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma, swallowed whole by a vampire. Or something.

Okay Fine. But Did You Like It Or Not?

The book was more character-driven that I'd expected. Minor characters, like for example the truck stop short order cook and the man running the homeless shelter, to name just two, come alive on the page and are more than just afterthoughts. Kyle's various fuck-up friends from high school are other examples. They fleshed out the story and made it more than the series of gruesome killings that it could have been. You believe that they could be real people. Again, lesser writers would skimp on these details in their hurry to get to the scene where someone gets their face blown off. In this I was pleasantly surprised. And when he did get to the violent scenes, A. Cary Rainey comes through with flying colors, creating the ballet of blood and mayhem that is the hallmark of such prose. Even if I'm not into that, I "know what I like" as the boorish art critics say.

Furthermore, the flashback structure, going back and forth from the present to the past, was used well and helped the pace a bit, though I think there's room for some improvement in this area. Still, Mr. Rainey (I think I can call him that), at least tried; again, more amateurish writers would have just slapped everything down in a chronological manner, and if they addressed Kyle's past at all it would have simply been a few perfunctory paragraphs at the beginning. The back and forth helps create the tension, at least the non-vampire-related tension. There's not only the back and forth between present and past, but also the back and forth between dream and reality. Cary does a good job keeping us guessing at which is which, too.

He uses music to set the mood, too, and in a manner that's a lot cheaper than the way Stephen King does it. (He can simply state that "Living After Midnight" was playing on the car stereo; by not quoting lyrics, no money has to change hands with the music publishers. Etc). It's almost cliched to invoke musical references in horror fiction, but screw it. I like it in general and liked it here.

So yes. I liked it. A lot, actually, and that surprised me.


P.S. One Robert Lieberman did a great job on the cover, too.