tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-84931533231367619492024-02-02T14:38:22.188-06:00Finn's WakeI'm an Author, Playwright, Creative Consultant, Raconteur, Ne'er-Do-Well, Earth Rooster and a Primate. Probably not in that order.Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comBlogger277125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-42351891165701828722022-03-01T08:00:00.009-06:002022-03-02T17:26:40.596-06:00Come to the North Texas Apocalypse Bunker<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjEv_crbc32ZA_XpCy6FF0C_g-T26qUB36ZNXaPOLg3vUzzL8vVhAjONmCXsamTI1CCrpDe426aNuYIZzbG1OO1oRsdMz_XZGt9D_2Kz7OorwoRNgw9q_UMWnIwSA6v_azSTq8ik2wai5cgbDwhKr_J-TVFYxI3vfJboGivOolxLBUfRUYRzySEPon_=s1500" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1500" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjEv_crbc32ZA_XpCy6FF0C_g-T26qUB36ZNXaPOLg3vUzzL8vVhAjONmCXsamTI1CCrpDe426aNuYIZzbG1OO1oRsdMz_XZGt9D_2Kz7OorwoRNgw9q_UMWnIwSA6v_azSTq8ik2wai5cgbDwhKr_J-TVFYxI3vfJboGivOolxLBUfRUYRzySEPon_=w203-h203" width="203" /></a></div><br />Hey folks,
This blog is going to remain up, but I won't be adding to it any more. To say there's some baggage here would be the great white shark of understatements.<div><br /></div><div>HOWEVER...I do not wish to leave you all alone to face the End Times with nothing to read. So come on over to the <a href="http://www.northtexasapocalypsebunker.com" target="_blank">North Texas Apocalypse Bunker,</a> and get the updates on me, my life, the dog, and all of the ins and out of bunker life. Lots of stuff going on and things to see. Please join me. </div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-73704041720410176722021-10-29T09:00:00.008-05:002021-10-29T09:00:00.217-05:00Top 5 Horror Movies of the 2010s<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZZLtpCkHalv6-eWQUBO4RZT5tvBkw2LIPQkNEhRa3Kw7DX6tXbXZwB06aXc2zVREVIuCEZG9_MXXkeCXndziAsycthIVciUJ4_PSa2aCkJjQR7yO_zpRlM_o7BzwKOdH_qL1vMVYvxTg/s966/02+finntop5blo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZZLtpCkHalv6-eWQUBO4RZT5tvBkw2LIPQkNEhRa3Kw7DX6tXbXZwB06aXc2zVREVIuCEZG9_MXXkeCXndziAsycthIVciUJ4_PSa2aCkJjQR7yO_zpRlM_o7BzwKOdH_qL1vMVYvxTg/s320/02+finntop5blo.jpg" width="314" /></a></div>The “teens” saw a resurgence in horror (draw your own
conclusions as to what in the zeitgeist might possibly have increased such an
interest), bringing with it a host of useful filmmaking tricks and techniques, as
well as a reverence for craft and story that was refreshing to note. These more
recent outings pack a punch and do not disappoint, both visually and
viscerally.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There may be something to the old chestnut that whenever
there is a Republican in the White House, horror sales spike. I think that,
beginning with the midterms in 2010 (when the Republican party took over
Congress), we have seen a kind of cultural renaissance in horror movies, the
likes of which I’ve never before witnessed. We are indeed living in interesting
times, and so too are the wide array of interesting takes on what a horror
movie is and what it can address.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">While quite a few films stood on the shoulders of giants,
others found fertile ground to plant a flag and try something new and
different. Some of the most inventive and genre-bending horror movies made in
this ten-year period were done so by directors who were also screenwriters, and
in several of the films below, represented their inaugural outing as directors.
This grab for new talent may have coincided with the proliferation of online
streaming services and the need for content to satisfy the increased demand
from an increasing number of new horror fans.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj85Dk9rz83_87nTqx_lVCDYd8n_4RAk3yxAfYX1dadYPEfVkeM52xWMv-OXHEh-nD_Ci0GuddK9JXZRnABHJjlC-ZdaVLLx8aFAcB4eCr-Uq1thjJtH5FUQ7vm394Y-l-f10TPjjioZ2o/s755/cabin_in_the_woods_ver4.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj85Dk9rz83_87nTqx_lVCDYd8n_4RAk3yxAfYX1dadYPEfVkeM52xWMv-OXHEh-nD_Ci0GuddK9JXZRnABHJjlC-ZdaVLLx8aFAcB4eCr-Uq1thjJtH5FUQ7vm394Y-l-f10TPjjioZ2o/s320/cabin_in_the_woods_ver4.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>Cabin in the Wood</i>s (2012)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Five college kids all pile into a van for a weekend getaway
at a (wait for it) cabin in the woods and end up driving into a night full of
terror and madness and...oh, you know how this goes. It’s been done to death,
right? I mean, even the previews made this seem like another cookie-cutter
movie about the same old, same old...right? Right. Also, no. That’s not what
the movie is about. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t want to say anything more about the plot, because to
do so, even obliquely, would tip off someone who hasn’t seen it and trigger a
torrent of “Ohmygoditssocooool!” from anyone who has, and this would be
followed immediately by “Lemme just tell you one thing that won’t give anything
away...” and then they will say something that totally gives something away.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Instead, let me tell you that Chris Hemsworth is in it.
Also, Josh from the <i>West Wing</i>. Oh, and Drew Goddard directed the movie
(he’s gone on to work on some really good projects that I know you have heard
of, like Netflix’s <i>Daredevil</i> and <i>The Martian</i>). Goddard co-wrote
the movie with Josh Whedon, and it’s one of the best things Whedon ever
co-wrote.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Cabin in the Woods</i> is both a meta-movie that not only
explains the reason for every extant slasher film cliché, and it also posits a
world wherein we are just barely keeping immense cosmic forces at bay through
the efforts of banal government employees doing what amounts to a third shift sanitation
job. It’s one of the darkest, most brilliantly conceived and executed ideas in
modern horror films. If you can find a more cynical movie than this, I would
welcome the discussion. That we have, in the film, moved well past the point of
soul-sucking horror for the situation to guys on the clock complaining about
how the other departments keep screwing things up, is all the more telling, and
intentionally so, at that. Or to put it another way, some of the scariest parts
of the movie aren’t the murder cannibals, but the people watching them. I’m not
sure if <i>Cabin in the Woods</i> is scary enough for rabid horror fans, but it
is absolutely required viewing for anyone seeking a deeper appreciation of the
genre. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Sw_pQXWLKQsdggUIoV2m0dN3xSpKI10FbdxWMN1Mql6UpO5iiV53hCrxFqLa4E-JaHuPQGxcG6LPe832zmPCGEQRm-kUwDGkYbqVj8c6sD8UvT_XGexymDCINcx-r8SyXpgVcztOups/s755/let_me_in_ver5.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3Sw_pQXWLKQsdggUIoV2m0dN3xSpKI10FbdxWMN1Mql6UpO5iiV53hCrxFqLa4E-JaHuPQGxcG6LPe832zmPCGEQRm-kUwDGkYbqVj8c6sD8UvT_XGexymDCINcx-r8SyXpgVcztOups/s320/let_me_in_ver5.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>Let Me In</i> (2010)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A young age boy, who is the target of bullies in his school,
gets a new neighbor at his apartment complex; a mysterious girl with an elderly
guardian who doesn’t seem to mind the cold. The two become fast friends and she
bolsters his self-confidence. Meanwhile, the elderly guardian is out at night,
luring strangers into dark places in order to drain them of blood...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s rare when a remake can creatively co-exist with the
original movie, and <i>Let Me I</i>n does just that. An American-ized version
of <i>Let the Right One In</i> (2008), this movie came in fast, hot on the heels
of its Swedish counterpart. When it was first announced by Hammer Studios, writer-director
Matt Reeves alleged the movie would be a remake of the book by John Ajvide
Lindqvist, but this wasn’t quite so with the finished project. And that’s all
right, because the things that we don’t understand while watching <i>Let the
Right One In</i>, asking ourselves if there is some cultural significance that
escapes us, are made perfectly and pointedly clear in <i>Let Me In</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Despite its adult themes and subjects, the movie is made on
the performances of the young boy, Owen, played by Kodi Smit-McPhee and Abby,
played by Chloë Grace Moretz. Their performances are what make you buy the
whole premise, and you find yourselves rooting for them until something
horrible happens and you remember that one of them is a monster. And speaking
of monsters, the bullies in the movie are sinister and terrible and drive the
plot like a ticking time bomb counting down to all zeroes. A novel, fantastic vampire
film from start to finish.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSsjvHLJgmPM3tNCCciMVooHJCQXx5iubbl0IfYC5yCOg-XgxA9KhKdzeFORm7BdIwwX_Ulc3mUftTgcr20EboJbHocGjcyxdzHHMleKBKEiEatyb2bMa_PpGAEubtlkxTP-PXgCINR44/s755/get_out_ver2.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="477" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSsjvHLJgmPM3tNCCciMVooHJCQXx5iubbl0IfYC5yCOg-XgxA9KhKdzeFORm7BdIwwX_Ulc3mUftTgcr20EboJbHocGjcyxdzHHMleKBKEiEatyb2bMa_PpGAEubtlkxTP-PXgCINR44/s320/get_out_ver2.jpg" width="202" /></a></i></div><i>Get Out</i> (2017)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Chris Washington is one half of an interracial couple, and
he’s nervous about going away for the weekend to meet his girlfriend’s parents
and attend their garden party. Despite several assurances that he’s among
friends, everyone Chris meets can’t help but put their foot in their mouth,
however well-meaning. But it’s when his girlfriend’s mom offers to hypnotize
him to help him quit smoking that things take a very weird turn.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Jordan Peele’s writing and directing debut is a mix of
social commentary and black comedy, and also some pulp-era scares that involve
consciousness transference, old school zombie-ism, i.e. racism, and the loss of
will and control that comes from being a stranger in a strange land. That
sounds like a tall order, but <i>Get Out</i> manages all of it and makes it interesting,
provoking uncomfortable laughs in the midst of some deeply uncomfortable scenes.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Of course, this movie is about racism, but not sheet-wearing
clansmen. Rather, the racism is of the institutional variety that allows people
the veneer of thinking they are good while also continuing to be part of the
problem. However, <i>Get Out</i> does a fantastic job of putting the shoes on
the other foot and letting white audiences see through the main character’s
eyes and experience what he deals with, and how it affects him.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWOTdbGvH31smUABiQjMmLizYxNne7ShqAXm8jJ77q8bOM9q7NfDRav_vroit5zm4nn2xrhdStsuvJcBypaP1vsis0RLd_0fQStA3rg5JyfS22a_c5UiaDskXaV5s3LK43kh-CaCIcGk/s755/it_follows_ver2.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="509" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsWOTdbGvH31smUABiQjMmLizYxNne7ShqAXm8jJ77q8bOM9q7NfDRav_vroit5zm4nn2xrhdStsuvJcBypaP1vsis0RLd_0fQStA3rg5JyfS22a_c5UiaDskXaV5s3LK43kh-CaCIcGk/s320/it_follows_ver2.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>It Follows</i> (2014)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A young college student, Jaime, has a romantic tryst with
her new boyfriend, who promptly incapacitates her and ties her up so she can’t
get away. He tells her that she’s about to be stalked, followed, by an entity only
she can see, and if this thing catches her, it will kill her. The only way to
avoid such a gruesome fate is to have sex with another person before she’s
caught, thus passing the...whatever it is...on to her new partner. Then he
drives her home and leaves.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What happens next is equal parts slow burn and 1980’s
morality play throwback (and even includes an electronic, minimalistic film
score that sounds like it came from a John Carpenter movie). Jaime’s friends
help her track down her boyfriend, who has ghosted her and left town. And sure
enough, creepy adults only she can see start walking slowly, ominously towards
her... it may not sound like much, but trust me, it’s terrifying. The friends
battle interpersonal entanglements as they try to solve the mystery, but
eventually, <i>It Follows</i> turns into a monster-hunting bloodfest and
manages to never let up on the creepiness its premise generates.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>It Follows</i> is another writer-director project. This
particular fever dream comes from David Robert Mitchell, who worked on the
story for years before getting it greenlit. It’s tempting to read the
relentless entity’s progress and the subsequent violent death it metes out as
deeply symbolic, and you probably should bring your own baggage to bear for the
movie. Anyone who grew up watching 1980s horror flicks will recognize the statement
implicitly suggested every time the promiscuous couple disappear into the woods
to have sex—they are inevitably the first ones murdered. <i>It Follows</i>
updates that conceit for the 21st century and creates a premise that feels sufficiently different to act as its own thing. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrSY6K8-U6VCUOK12GcPnOwMLL1XspQJXUaquJRAozREagNyeEuAXVVCKyo3iRW41p5m3AY50x8uKldnpVE5g6c20F7gTqolBC_3qjg6a1VeP1TGhWMdtibixhxOpYCY4OYcEUJykZokc/s755/babadook_ver4.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="512" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrSY6K8-U6VCUOK12GcPnOwMLL1XspQJXUaquJRAozREagNyeEuAXVVCKyo3iRW41p5m3AY50x8uKldnpVE5g6c20F7gTqolBC_3qjg6a1VeP1TGhWMdtibixhxOpYCY4OYcEUJykZokc/s320/babadook_ver4.jpg" width="217" /></a></i></div><i>The Babadook</i> (2014)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Amelia’s six-year-old son is acting out, bringing improvised
weapons to school, sleepwalking, and in general being a really weird and creepy
kid. She’s stressed out about this, as she is raising him by herself because,
as it turns out, her husband died in a car crash six years ago, while driving
her to the hospital to give birth. When a children’s book shows up at her
house, titled <i>Mister Babadook</i>, and she and her son read it, they
unlock...something that wants to murder them both, and they are forced to fight
for and against each other in order to survive the arrival of the baba-dook-dook-dook...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Written and skillfully directed by first time director
Jennifer Kent, based on her short film <i>Monster</i>, <i>The Babadook</i> is
one of those rare horror films that’s about something substantial and real, and
the film’s metaphor about grief and survivors is both powerful and universal. Filmed
in Australia, the only actor you might recognize is the mother, played by Esther
Davis. That works in its favor, adding to the skewed and original perspective
of the film.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There’s a lot of stuff to unpack, from the look of the
monster being inspired by Lon Chaney’s vampire in <i>London After Midnight</i>
to the raucous soundtrack and use of sound as a psychological warfare tool
against both the harried mother and the audience. The babadook itself may be
one of the most interesting horror creations of all time, tipping its literal
top hat to Lon Chaney and other creepshow favorites, but coming off as something
new and unique.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>The Babadook</i> is a disturbing horror film, equal parts
psychological thriller and supernatural monster hunt, and it doesn’t even
bother to thread the needle between the two. The movie is tense and exhausting,
and you may well need a cool-down afterward.<o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-69941461177635706982021-10-22T07:24:00.004-05:002021-10-25T08:07:01.965-05:00Top 5 Horror Movies of the 2000s<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ODju3J0jWNQ6BiOD594C10sAs93RCLIKm89SKUFITdhL6iPYMl-pNi1ea5_Itz3dOLyXfmr4ATfAw94hjaXnM6ypTyhEHE0nmIECe59vzcRBoseN4ZPq9IpP4Cr0lapAstBViYzwTXc/s966/12+finntop5bw.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_ODju3J0jWNQ6BiOD594C10sAs93RCLIKm89SKUFITdhL6iPYMl-pNi1ea5_Itz3dOLyXfmr4ATfAw94hjaXnM6ypTyhEHE0nmIECe59vzcRBoseN4ZPq9IpP4Cr0lapAstBViYzwTXc/s320/12+finntop5bw.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><br />Y2K did not plunge us into a world of darkness and despair,
much to the chagrin of all the people who’d gotten off of the grid in the 1990s
and were living in the woods in a ramshackle trailer, eating beef jerky and
drinking their own urine. The first decade of the 21st century will forever be
viewed through the lens of 9/11 and the changes it wrought on us psychically. For
at least the first half of the decade, the biggest horror show around was the
footage we watched on the nightly news. I may not be far enough removed from
the “aughts” to speak with any kind of perspective about those years.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The movies were slow to react, out of both respect and also
general confusion. No one knew what to think and where to go to think it. Our
framework for horror (make that “terror”) changed in one day. If I can offer
any insight into what the darker corner of popular culture reflected at this
time, I’d venture to say that horror movies got more personal, and more invasive.
The stakes seemed higher and the playful undercurrent that was present in the
1980s and the 1990s is largely absent here. Horror got meaner. More random.
More confusing. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Huh. Maybe I have more of a handle on the decade than I
thought. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NgqoQCfhM7GnVwnJzYtNLoaXk2UyrztDgB_Gqv1r6D9fCg4YfXrx9RYGCG7cdxXfluaIYe5wmQimTPq6vAMSg9mvjqO3SGE1stzd_8XXql84yg5R9mYvnqbACoE0Y2FZQVNShLKJ0As/s720/ruins_ver2_xlg.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="487" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7NgqoQCfhM7GnVwnJzYtNLoaXk2UyrztDgB_Gqv1r6D9fCg4YfXrx9RYGCG7cdxXfluaIYe5wmQimTPq6vAMSg9mvjqO3SGE1stzd_8XXql84yg5R9mYvnqbACoE0Y2FZQVNShLKJ0As/s320/ruins_ver2_xlg.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>The Ruins</i> (2008)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Four college students, vacationing in Mexico, meet another
world traveler, looking for his brother, who was investigating Mayan ruins
nearby. They agree to make a day of it, and go into the jungle. They find the
ruins, and also some villagers who do not want them around, and they are
willing to shoot them with arrows to make sure the Americans get the point.
Later, trapped at the top of the Myan ziggurat, they start formulating a way
out of the jungle, past the villagers. They can hear a cell phone ringing, down
in the darkness of the central shaft that runs deep into the ruins. Maybe it’s
the missing brother? Maybe they can call for help with the phone? Maybe all of
their best-laid plans are going to go pear-shaped on them and make their stone
perch into a pressure cooker.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Like <i>The Descent</i>, this movie lives in the “survival
horror” sub-genre. However, the film has a really interesting premise that, if
you can willingly suspend your disbelief, carries overtones that are nearly
eldritch in nature. The story is loaded with mishaps, misfortune, and a menace
that has to be seen to be believed. <i>The Ruins</i> is a wonderfully weird
little movie that I guarantee you’ve not seen before.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Scott Smith wrote the screenplay, based on his novel (he
also wrote <i>A Simple Plan</i>, if you liked that movie). He actually sold the
option to the film rights while the novel was being written. Boy, some people
have all the luck. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOVA4y-CLm0UrJeY33GQpTP9yHN4Fwt2ZfKQwRaKKw6B_hUr9b1g83m-yXH1RB0Q2f3D55984C80RcA6kABLS0-a6-UQsGHs5f0zIQker223_RHnsmUxOvmMMd_pRtthntZJ0XXJAGh5U/s703/Session9.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="703" data-original-width="472" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOVA4y-CLm0UrJeY33GQpTP9yHN4Fwt2ZfKQwRaKKw6B_hUr9b1g83m-yXH1RB0Q2f3D55984C80RcA6kABLS0-a6-UQsGHs5f0zIQker223_RHnsmUxOvmMMd_pRtthntZJ0XXJAGh5U/s320/Session9.jpg" width="215" /></a></i></div><i>Session 9</i> (2001)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A cleaning crew, sent to an abandoned mental hospital to
remove the asbestos in the walls, become unlikely investigators of the occult
as they encounter strange artifacts and mysterious goings-on, including a
number of audio tapes, the eponymous sessions, involving a psychiatrist and a
woman trying to work through what happened to her family. What starts out as unsettling
becomes paranoid and creepy as the crew realizes they are not alone, and someone
or something is actively working against them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The film is largely bloodless, deeply psychological, and
requires a commitment to watch, like a lot of French and Italian cinema. I know
that sounds negative, but I mean it in the nicest possible way. <i>Session 9</i> is
one of the first of the “new indy” horror films that didn’t play by the rules
and as a result, got some well-deserved attention from people who would
otherwise have turned their noses up at it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Director Brad Anderson and screenwriter Stephen Gevedon,
both newcomers to horror, are proof that sometimes you gotta break a few eggs
to make an omelet. Specifically, they sought to subvert the conventions of the
genre to create a horror story that scared you in a more subtle and impactful
way, and it succeeds way more than it fails. By the time Mike, played by
Gevedon, gets to the tape with session 9 on it, they have laid out enough puzzle
pieces to enable you to solve it. That we might arrive at very different
solutions from watching the movie is beside the point.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeUNtswyTgMdTVUEYljOTMKH-LIGANIdV4rS2jiI591DURa_d2VbK931lpngsqLcQl4Mg7YLaG3KiM2sa4lTz7oSsCC3ROvKleSKrhinqqdGYr2xsyVdjALXJLNbz-OEDP70ruUNxOAvo/s720/sm+descent_ver2_xlg.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="486" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeUNtswyTgMdTVUEYljOTMKH-LIGANIdV4rS2jiI591DURa_d2VbK931lpngsqLcQl4Mg7YLaG3KiM2sa4lTz7oSsCC3ROvKleSKrhinqqdGYr2xsyVdjALXJLNbz-OEDP70ruUNxOAvo/s320/sm+descent_ver2_xlg.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>The Descent</i> (2006)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A group of women, gathered together for a weekend spelunking
adventure (and a show of support for their friend who recently lost her husband
and child) strike out in search of the path not taken by exploring a cave
system that is not found in their guidebook. But all of their combined experience
doesn’t prepare them for what they find, and what it does to them as they
quickly go from self-discovery to self-preservation only adds to the tension.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This movie is oddly specific and that’s what I like about
it. There is no genre of “Cave Horror” to worry about “the rules” or other
movies to compare it to. In that respect, The Descent is alone, and also, it’s
out there where the buses don’t run. This movie covers multiple fears in a
single swath (claustrophobia? Check. Things that go Bump in the Dark? Check.
How well do you really know your friends and what are they really capable of?
Check.) and while it may start somewhat slowly, that pace is very much like
climbing the first, largest hill on a particularly harrowing roller coaster.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Neil Marshall, the British director who gave us the
excellent werewolf romp, <i>Dog Soldiers</i>, directed this movie, and even
though it’s set in America, the production and cast are all British. There’s
even a more dour and downbeat ending that the UK audience got that us Americans
did not (but if you get the unrated edition, you’ll be able to fully bum
yourself out). <i>The Descent </i>is a unique and interesting tension-filled
ride that does not let up once it gets going.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6pGO7v1MRmbjfywdg87O3M74YZWTGGCvIffTiCo0T2jFCkpCQEtFI-l0JFkBXd98rVssgiZjKt_by5eHHkYt6Tr40tWV5ayYmwCn775MnyIKqbSkvyMo98Gc364Q44ef4jzkRhkB94PM/s720/trick_r_treat_xlg.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi6pGO7v1MRmbjfywdg87O3M74YZWTGGCvIffTiCo0T2jFCkpCQEtFI-l0JFkBXd98rVssgiZjKt_by5eHHkYt6Tr40tWV5ayYmwCn775MnyIKqbSkvyMo98Gc364Q44ef4jzkRhkB94PM/s320/trick_r_treat_xlg.jpg" width="211" /></a></i></div><i>Trick r’ Treat</i> (2009)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A young couple walking home after a street festival...a
school principal with a dark secret...a group of young trick or treaters out
for a bit of mischief...a quartet of young, nubile women on the prowl for a
good time...a grumpy old man fuming about Halloween...and the witness to all of
them, a cute little trick ‘r treater named Sam. These narratives intertwine and
collide on the eve of Samhain, also known as All Hallow’s Eve; a time when
costumes are worn, candy is distributed, and other time-honored rituals are carried
out, and woe be unto whoever decides to break one of those Halloween traditions.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Written and directed by Michael Dougherty, this little gem makes
the most of Anna Paquin and Dylan Baker, but that’s not a dig on the rest of
the cast, who all make the most of their brief screen time. The movie has a lot
of gallows humor in it, making it tonally similar to <i>Tales From the Crypt</i>.
The non-linear storytelling used throughout is a lot of fun and reminds me of
Jim Jarmusch’s <i>Mystery Train</i>. Sam, the little scarecrow kid, is a great
invention; half horror host, half harbinger, able to interact directly with the
people in the segments. The last character that could do that was Freddy
Kruger, but Sam is a lot creepier and not nearly as over-exposed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Trick ‘r Treat</i> was intended for a wide theatrical
release in 2007 and got pushed back until it went straight to video in 2009. As
Halloween-themed movies go,<i> Trick ‘r Treat</i> has vaulted to the top of my
go-to list.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4USCTjkSeiql463PpCSxbhOcRoQnRvBUbqoQU-DEbgZW4A5fl0wtuaVvH5wujeBV-bZc3M5NfCBiOYBMGtBK9Gi5sj2ZJszjI7om5FcaEvqJgTRkqxw3YT18O8QpkKPAtzx3NjPvnIM8/s720/sm+The+Ring+2002.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="488" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4USCTjkSeiql463PpCSxbhOcRoQnRvBUbqoQU-DEbgZW4A5fl0wtuaVvH5wujeBV-bZc3M5NfCBiOYBMGtBK9Gi5sj2ZJszjI7om5FcaEvqJgTRkqxw3YT18O8QpkKPAtzx3NjPvnIM8/s320/sm+The+Ring+2002.jpg" width="217" /></a></i></div><i>The Ring</i> (2002)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When a teenage girl dies seven days after watching a cursed
video tape (a local urban legend), her aunt, played by Naomi Watts, decides to
investigate the circumstances around her baffling death. This leads her to
watch the VHS cassette, after which, she gets a phone call and is told she has
“seven days...” With the deadline fast approaching, the aunt uncovers the truth
about the unsettling images on the tape, but she may be too late to stop the
curse from taking another life.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When <i>Ringu</i> (1998) made piles of cash at the box
office (and ushered in a wave of Japanese horror movies, or “J-horror” as the
kids like to say), it was surely inevitable that an American film company would
re-make it. Thankfully, the director, Gore Verbinski, was interested in keeping
the integrity of the original, resulting in the best American version of a
J-horror film, one that stands on its own and (I know this is heresy) is more
satisfying in some ways to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Japanese version of the story (based on a bestselling
book by Koji Suzuki) does not bother to explain itself to its target market,
and thus, while extremely effective and unsettling, western audiences were baffled
as to the what and the why of the story (I know I was). Verbinski made the
smart decision to depict more of the backstory to better explain what we are
seeing (and being freaked out by) on the screen. If you want a better and more
credible explanation of how such horrors came to be, this is the version you
need to seek out. If you must view a J-horror movie, watch <i>Ju-On</i> (1998)
instead.<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-76682010103302302482021-10-17T06:40:00.001-05:002021-10-17T06:40:38.502-05:00Grief: Home Again<p class="MsoNormal">When Cathy was
in hospice, we didn’t talk a lot about the Big Inevitable Thing that was about to happen. It was too upsetting for her. We had, however, done some
preliminary planning many years ago, and this was codified during her
treatment. I knew, then, what she wanted; we both decided on cremation for
ourselves for a number of practical reasons. However, neither one of us wanted
to hold on indefinitely to the other’s remains and so we decided to do something with them.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I won’t tell you what I want done with mine; you’ll just
have to come to the funeral. Cathy’s solution was not nearly so interesting;
she was fine with having her ashes scattered. Several locations were mentioned,
but we always came back to Austin, where her heart’s home was.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This came up again during hospice. I asked her if she’d
thought about it, and she said, “Maybe Town Lake?” She used to row there in
college and kept it up for a while afterward as an exercise regimen. She loved it and always wished she could get back to it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was a solid choice. But I had another idea. “What about at
Cliff Drive?” I countered.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Her eyes lit up. “Yes,” she said. “Do that.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I met Cathy, she and her sister Barbara were living in
a small, heavily shaded neighborhood just off of Lakeshore Drive in Austin. Their
place was an old garage apartment, part of a quad, originally built in the
1940s as a stone wall garage with the apartment over it. Sometime in the 1970s
the garage got walled in and finished so that it was now an apartment with a
nearly identical floorplan to the original one above it. What was cool about it was the wrought iron spiral
staircase that connected the two living spaces. It was very bohemian and oh so very,
well, South Austin. I started calling it The Bungalow of Love (shades of Lou
Reed).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The Bungalow of Love was inextricably tied into our lives in
Austin. We fell in love while Cathy lived there. Later, after I moved in, we
got engaged there. We got married while living there. Dinner parties. Our first
Thanksgiving together. It was her favorite place to live. Mine, too. It seemed
absolutely right to bring her back home.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In the intervening years, the property owner had completely landscaped
the front yard and the central courtyard between the four freestanding apartments. Behind
our old digs, there was now a gravel path that flanked the house and led to a
beautiful limestone fountain, two seating areas. In the center of the circular
path, which winds around to the fountain and over to an open air patio space, there is a Chinese elm. It’s
completely in the shade of the two leftmost apartments. The whole area is clearly meant
to be a meditation space. The landlord graciously volunteered the elm tree for
Cathy’s final resting place.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It was absolutely perfect. She would have loved it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A mixture of old friends and family stood with me. I didn’t
know what to say. I had one thing planned, and I did that first. Cathy had told
our niece that she wanted a particular Tom Petty song played at her funeral.
Our niece assumed that something so important would be a thing we all knew
about, and so she didn’t say anything. Unfortunately, Cathy didn’t tell anyone
else.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I thanked everyone for coming, and then played <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMyCa35_mOg" target="_blank">“The Waiting.”</a> </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It made me laugh. Cathy had a very dry sense of humor, and I
know this was supposed to be a joke to make us all laugh. I don’t know if
anyone else did, but I appreciated the effort. Some folks spoke after that, and
said very nice things. I wanted the people who weren’t at the funeral to be
able to speak if they were so moved.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When no one else had anything to add, I played another Tom
Petty song, from one of Cathy’s favorite Tom Petty albums. The song was <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kw8vBDk880k" target="_blank">“Wildflowers.”</a></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1ceq_APzxXNL8k2j2gk_gq3gBnOeCGL_jA7dTwAmQRvXiChZJtyJcLZ4VJ_694zpQwUYFewuKZZtR0C-WKD7IS5PvrNUHXSIrKMEzyhuSM5K4OmHVWYbyaMk-2cILjntoEjcMziIqUQ/s2048/at+the+tree.jpg" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1ceq_APzxXNL8k2j2gk_gq3gBnOeCGL_jA7dTwAmQRvXiChZJtyJcLZ4VJ_694zpQwUYFewuKZZtR0C-WKD7IS5PvrNUHXSIrKMEzyhuSM5K4OmHVWYbyaMk-2cILjntoEjcMziIqUQ/s320/at+the+tree.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>I knelt down in the soft earth and I buried my wife by the
tree. I covered her ashes up and packed the soil tightly over them. I spent
more time doing that than I needed to, because I knew when I stood up, it would be over. My charge would be done. Nothing more left to do. Cathy was out of my hands
now. I had kept her, loved her, cared for her, and grieved for her. And
finally, I brought her home.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I know those ashes aren’t Cathy anymore. They aren’t the
things that made her. They aren’t her heart, her soul, her dry sense of humor,
her huge sense of fairness. It was merely, as Yoda once pointed out to Luke Skywalker on Dagobah, “this
crude matter.” But bringing her remains home, to reside in the place she loved
so much, and nourish a tree that, I guarantee, if she could have planted herself,
she would have...well, I can’t speak for Cathy, not anymore. But I felt a sense
of peace within myself when I stood up. I took a deep breath, smelling the fresh earth,
the air, pregnant with rain, and the wet limestone fountain with water softly splashing into the stonework basin. I held that breath and let it go. It felt like a sigh of
relief.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It’s okay now. It’s going to be all right. I’m going to make
it. And Cathy is home. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I added one more song to the playlist at the last minute. Another
Tom Petty song. Perfect for the occasion. He wrote it for the soundtrack to the
movie <i>She’s the One</i>. It’s called <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8eN5F22KbA" target="_blank">“Angel Dream (no 2).”</a><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">We stood around after that, hugging, talking, comforting one
another, and eventually, laughing. Old friends and family. The tree took it all
in. I hoped later, that night, during the rain that fell in thick drops, the
Chinese elm whispered to Cathy everything that was said while we stood around
the tree, and I hope something I said made her laugh and say, “Oh, Honey.”</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-7888305162123902722021-10-16T07:08:00.001-05:002021-10-16T07:08:24.046-05:00Grief: Leftover Thoughts on a Year of Mourning<p> <br />Here are a few miscellaneous thoughts, scattered hither and
yon, that I decided to combine into a single post. None of these were “enough”
for me to post them individually. Maybe all together, it’ll add up to
something.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: right;"><br /></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>The Bobby pin</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I came across a bobby pin today. It was on the floor in my
bedroom and I spied is as I was putting my shoes on. On automatic pilot, I scooped
it up in my hand, thinking, “Cathy’ll need this for something, I’m sure...” and
then I stopped, and I just stared at the bent strip of wire in my hand. Even as
I was thinking it, I knew I’d blundered into the classic trap. Now, with the
reality of the situation covering me like a thunder shirt in a rainstorm, I
stared at the bobby pin, looking for, what? A strand of hair? Some clue to tip
me off that Cathy wore it at some point?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There wasn’t any. It was just a bobby pin. Likely one that
didn’t even make it into her hair. But on that day, it pinned me down and it
took a while to get out from under it.</p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Homework For Life</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I started a thing this year called Homework for Life. You
can watch the <a href="https://youtu.be/x7p329Z8MD0" target="_blank">Matthew Dicks’ Ted Talk</a> about it here if you like; it’s not very
long.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As a journaling exercise, it’s simple, it’s useful and it’s
exactly what I needed this year in order to (a) keep up with myself and my
place in the world and (b) take note of anything real that happened to me, in
case I wanted to ruminate or write about it. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I looked back through my notes, and aside from a few personal
things, nearly every epiphany or bloggable idea was acted upon. I’m not sure I’ll
keep it up, but it’s one of the tools I used to climb back, one entry at a
time, like rungs on a sad ladder, out of the bottomless pit that was 2021. If you don't want to journal, but you want the benefits of journaling, this is a simple and easy tool that may fit the bill.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPZnKHlNNe5RgJIt9npDGgjTtANQSZ0ZyWKI5Hqa2FbCMjjNu4ZXWcEH8CRMEzNkdbATR-MPQV-W0YHasC9wqkUd0hcu0c1u4OVtvci-PBtKMLTJ0mLRf4knAEP_bBZAQE0ODeWKNwVg/s2038/us+again+oncology.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2038" data-original-width="1532" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZPZnKHlNNe5RgJIt9npDGgjTtANQSZ0ZyWKI5Hqa2FbCMjjNu4ZXWcEH8CRMEzNkdbATR-MPQV-W0YHasC9wqkUd0hcu0c1u4OVtvci-PBtKMLTJ0mLRf4knAEP_bBZAQE0ODeWKNwVg/s320/us+again+oncology.jpg" width="241" /></a></b></div><b>The Card Wall</b><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When Cathy first started getting cards of support and encouragement,
she made the decision to keep all of them. She really wanted to thank everyone
that sent something to her; it was heartwarming and overwhelming to her that so
many people cared about us.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The cards ranged in subject matter from religious to
irreverent, from encouraging to side-splitting. “Jesus Loves You” and “You Got
This” vied for attention with “Fuck Cancer” and “Shave Your Head and Start a
Punk Band.” Cathy loved them all, and she settled on an inspired way to display
them: she cut the envelopes in half, keeping the side with the return address.
This was affixed to one wall, open side up, to form a pocket, into which she
placed the card, now sticking halfway out of it. She could see all of the cards
at a glance, without even trying, and it took all of one second to see who sent
it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m not being modest or stoic when I say how humbling it
was. She got cards from people she didn’t even know; friends of mine who’d
never met her, and also fans of mine who heard what was going on and wanted to
show some support. She vowed when all of this was over, she’d sit down and
write a personal thank you note to everyone. She even started on this herculean
task when the initial “all clear” happened after her operation. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">For most of the year, all of those cards were still on the
wall. I’d sort of forgotten about them; they bled into the fabric of the wall
itself, as if to say, “But Mark, we’ve always been here.” I mean, three years
is nothing to sneeze at, but enough’s enough.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I stopped in the hall one day and re-examined the cards, one
by one. Each card set off a memory, a thought-picture of the person, or a
realized idea about the sender. “I remember when Cathy first met her,” and “Oh,
he’s an old friend I’ve not seen in years!” and “That card was the beginning of
our friendship.” I smiled as I recalled these things. They were tiny islands of
good memories in a roiling sea of pain and confusion. Those cards were lifelines,
connecting us to our people. Friends, family, fellow humans.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Then another thought crept in. I couldn’t stop staring at
the messages on the cards. The vast majority of them trumpeted encouragement,
defiance, humility. All of them were hopeful.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>All of them were upbeat and positive.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And none of them worked. They were all, at the very least, representative
of a crushing disappointment, and at the worst, a reminder to me that nothing
worked. Cathy did not, in fact, “got this.” It was the other way around. I
know, of course, that’s not at all what the cards represented. It was the exact
opposite of that. But in that moment, the wall was just a constant reminder of how
things ended up.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I took them all down. I kept them, for now. I keep thinking
someday I will write those thank you notes that Cathy never did. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-45180098552827652862021-10-15T10:00:00.017-05:002021-10-15T10:28:08.777-05:00Grief: The Last First<p></p>Widows and widowers speak to one another very differently
than people who have not experienced a loss. I say this with no judgement. It’s
just that there is a frankness, a matter-of-fact tone, that you can deploy and
it won’t be “taken the wrong way,” or “misunderstood.” It’s kind of refreshing,
since most everyone else is ninja-creeping around your feelings, throwing you
kind eyes, and nervous because they don’t know what to say, and then saying the
wrong thing anyway. This isn’t a dig; I used to do the same thing. Everyone
does, until the unthinkable happens.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I mention this because I was having a conversation with one
of my friends, who has become closer in the midst of this, because we share
similar trajectories. Anyway, we were knocking around our collective grief,
playing air hockey with it and letting it clatter around between us. I brought
up how much I was dreading October, but not the rest of the year. She
nodded. “You’ve already done it once before,” she agreed. </p><p class="MsoNormal">I told her that
October 15th would be my last first. The first of this without Cathy, or the
first of that without Cathy, happened in rapid succession last year: Our
wedding anniversary, my birthday, Halloween, her birthday, Thanksgiving, and
Christmas (all big deals in our home) happened between 3 days and 3 months of
her passing. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdFFkoXQ1vyNkB-Upo8mO4xL3brnR4f7vw2bfJmCqMcKHx43bup1Dq3LdGjWWFXy3yHgY1I45zwSvuMuyL-W66_s5OYcbhPdepLPTWMgCNPe7YqEWjMbQ5r14awKB1RmAMpZ26MYorEI/s1500/Cathy+in+Fort+Worth.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="900" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUdFFkoXQ1vyNkB-Upo8mO4xL3brnR4f7vw2bfJmCqMcKHx43bup1Dq3LdGjWWFXy3yHgY1I45zwSvuMuyL-W66_s5OYcbhPdepLPTWMgCNPe7YqEWjMbQ5r14awKB1RmAMpZ26MYorEI/s320/Cathy+in+Fort+Worth.jpg" width="192" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>An old pic, rediscovered</i></td></tr></tbody></table>About the only thing that kept me going was my seemingly
eternal, acrimonious relationship with cruciferous vegetables. It gave me a
purpose to hate broccoli. It’s the only way I got through it all. And for most
of this year, I was able to navigate the flow of the seasons, the holidays,
real and manufactured, and other perennial events that mark the passage of
time. I knew, however, that October would be rough. Her (and my) favorite
month, piled high with meaning: my birthday, our anniversary, and Halloween,
all within a two-week period. Now there’s one more to add to that list: her
death. A signpost, first in a series, like Burma Shave ads, running me all the
way to the end of the month, and oh, just TRY and be happy during your favorite
month now, sucker, I double dog dare you. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal">But a funny thing happened when the first of the month
rolled around. I made the calculation that I had given up quite enough to
cancer. It had taken so much from me. And I didn’t want to have to surrender
any more. It’s been nearly a year. Cathy’s passing would be acknowledged. It
would be impossible to do otherwise. But I’ll be damned if I am going to give
up the rest of it. All that other stuff was mine long before cancer took her
away from me. It doesn’t get anything else from me. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-60747004410793034082021-10-15T00:23:00.000-05:002021-10-15T00:23:13.426-05:00Top 5 Favorite William Castle movies<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKT2XuiF8H5PfsgtsPpx0SDvlGYSK2pzSIViY3GJ3yjfq_JEmtZXz12qEvrOMOpWw4r18ijAj3s4K2NZzNFvKAVneZZDvZ-6JcCg5pd6dL9w2in76mXceNBZG-z00c5ET-zciGrM0qlQ/s966/01+finntop5bbl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxKT2XuiF8H5PfsgtsPpx0SDvlGYSK2pzSIViY3GJ3yjfq_JEmtZXz12qEvrOMOpWw4r18ijAj3s4K2NZzNFvKAVneZZDvZ-6JcCg5pd6dL9w2in76mXceNBZG-z00c5ET-zciGrM0qlQ/s320/01+finntop5bbl.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><br />William Castle (April 24, 1914 – May 31, 1977) was one of
those Renaissance men from the studio system that doesn’t really exist anymore.
He’s known for writing, directing, and producing a string of B-pictures, and
his storied career in Hollywood takes on a Forrest Gump-like tone, as he lucked
into job after job on nothing more than gumption and bullshit. And yet, his
legacy is felt throughout the 20th century.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Castle worked with Bela Lugosi and Orson Welles (he shot
second unit footage for <i>The Lady From Shanghai</i>), and he got a reputation
for bringing in films on time and under budget. He was a big fan of Hitchcock
and even appeared in trailers and in framing sequences of his films to address
the crowd directly. Hitchcock, in turn, noticed the success of Castle’s shock-thrillers
and apocryphally decided to do one of his own—a project which became the movie <i>Psycho</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Castle is best known for his outrageous and inventive
promotional stunts; he dreamed up a number of gimmicks to help bolster the
movies he financed, and it’s fair to say his gimmicks (and the mythology
surrounding them) are better remembered than the movies he made. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">He never quite cracked the big time, but his penchant for
theatricality and the people he inspired, and the projects that got made
because of him, have earned him a seat at the table of great horror personalities,
and, I think, transcending the genre completely. Joe Dante’s film <i>Matinee</i>
(1993) is based entirely on the legacy of William Castle and his movies, and is
worth seeing for John Goodman’s inspired performance as “Lawrence Woolsey, the Master
of Movie Horror!”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The films below have been graded somewhat on a curve. While
it’s true that their appearance on the list is in deference to the inventiveness
of the gimmick, it must be the movie itself that determines whether or not they
make the grade. These lists are for horror movies first and foremost. Therefore,
the rankings below reflect the movies’ stature with regards to thrills and
chills. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RT-TOzONxFQ23FFFo675q4B6ZC9l5Gz22ryHDb3zrRpUz4KghI1rhkDAE-5ne5CjP_iBuzIw9fZw78LT26Ox1OaFHO834n2uADsLoSiH93eyuE-zd9s34h3rzx2zR15UPI4-MVaZ1-Y/s658/Macabre1958+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="658" data-original-width="411" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2RT-TOzONxFQ23FFFo675q4B6ZC9l5Gz22ryHDb3zrRpUz4KghI1rhkDAE-5ne5CjP_iBuzIw9fZw78LT26Ox1OaFHO834n2uADsLoSiH93eyuE-zd9s34h3rzx2zR15UPI4-MVaZ1-Y/s320/Macabre1958+sm.jpg" width="200" /></a></i></div><i>Macabre</i> (1958) <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A small-town doctor that no one seems to like is victimized
when his three year old daughter goes missing. While he and his nurse run around
trying to find her, the back story of what happened to the young girl’s mother,
and her blind, hell-raising sister, unspools, and we get two sets of flashbacks
before the mystery is fully revealed and the would-be murderer apprehended.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Grave-digging, one good jump scare, and a dash of <i>film
noir </i>aren’t quite enough to elevate the script, but it moves at a brisk
enough pace and would be a good, light warm-up for a double feature (which was
exactly what it was supposed to be in the first place). Jim Backus (Thurston
Howell) plays the sheriff entangled in this neo-gothic-to-the-point-of-being-Byzantine
story with a kind of menacing swagger that’s a lot of fun to watch.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIETsJmSmjFq2LpyI5krwzKHEdh5kXfiv-06-lGA3wXDzPvQlBtkeCDxP9nYUn2etvgW4J4OxO86Oe2OS1B3_nf1eAfSe9Ea1RctssbfqiTsFiX1T9IiUBbGE-qd93wJi-Zuk4EWpkW8E/s552/macabre58policyad.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="552" data-original-width="377" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIETsJmSmjFq2LpyI5krwzKHEdh5kXfiv-06-lGA3wXDzPvQlBtkeCDxP9nYUn2etvgW4J4OxO86Oe2OS1B3_nf1eAfSe9Ea1RctssbfqiTsFiX1T9IiUBbGE-qd93wJi-Zuk4EWpkW8E/w137-h200/macabre58policyad.jpg" width="137" /></a></div>What made <i>Macabre</i> such a success at the box office was
the $1,000 Life Insurance Policy payable to the family of anyone who dies of
fright from watching this movie, underwritten by Lloyd’s of London, no less (in
theory: Lloyd’s made sure their names weren’t actually printed on the policies).
Everyone in the audience got one of these “policies” which made for a dandy souvenir
since there was no way in hell the movie was going to scare anyone, period,
much less “to death.” But the promotion worked like a charm. Other movie
followed suit, right up into the early 1980s, all promising cash payouts for deceased
movie-goers, with nary a claim ever being filed.<br />
<br />
Castle had his own money on the line, and so he took to the road on a
barnstorming tour, visiting theaters with actresses in nurses outfits, popping
out of coffins (which figure in the movie—see? It’s a tie-in!) and working the patrons
up in person and on the radio. The gambit paid off, and Castle was officially
in business. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48TprJ7W5bQfmYaKriYJ7ycDx2NfD76xj9InZLSZHBWDXUIJgYlkWQx5BAc6kVE6qHCXI1kfSmZDZfZtbiZk-z-r5N4WGBGCmwYGTrqx2uPsuoN8mMhgrqDR0cIGfnmgMxyuyR1o2Kgs/s663/MrSardonicus+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="663" data-original-width="421" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh48TprJ7W5bQfmYaKriYJ7ycDx2NfD76xj9InZLSZHBWDXUIJgYlkWQx5BAc6kVE6qHCXI1kfSmZDZfZtbiZk-z-r5N4WGBGCmwYGTrqx2uPsuoN8mMhgrqDR0cIGfnmgMxyuyR1o2Kgs/s320/MrSardonicus+sm.jpg" width="203" /></a></i></div><i>Mr. Sardonicus</i> (1961) <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At the end of the 19th century, a London-based doctor visits
Baron Sardonicus at the behest of the baroness. The doctor shows up, having
once been in love with her, and Sardonicus begs him for a cure for his face,
paralyzed from fright upon seeing the corpse of his father, whose body he
himself exhumed. The doctor tries to cure Sardonicus, to no avail, and
Sardonicus threatens his own wife in order to get the doctor to cooperate. He’s
tortured everyone else for disappointing him in one way or another, so what’s
the baroness, more or less? Here’s hoping the doc can find a cure and escape
the clutches of Mr. Sardonicus!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In late 1961, Roger Corman had completed two of the movies
in his legendary “Poe Cycle”: T<i>he House of Usher</i> (1960) and the <i>Pit
and the Pendulum </i>(1961) and they were critical and financial successes. I’m
not suggesting the Castle went looking for a gothic grotesquerie that he could
capitalize on, but more than one reviewer and critic sure thought so. Again,
putting this movie in the warm-up spot for a double feature that includes any
of Corman’s Poe movies would be a right smart pairing. <br />
<br />
The movie was based on a short story that ran in <i>Playboy</i> magazine, “Sardonicus,”
by horror writer Ray Russell, who also wrote the screenplay. He would go on to
write other screenplays for Castle, and even a couple for Roger Corman
(including one of the Poe movies, <i>The Premature Burial</i>). The last movie
he worked on was 1982’s <i>The Incubus</i>, a minor drive-in cult classic,
based on his novel. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd8LT-s7DxA2QDEuFKn1AbHoB4rbreo3iR9qEWvEo3QM8Cg03AQMW6-sZMZBbvV2XIbxAV1t3OAWa0LR9gkVX_1wip9oovfKjBQ-yYwND4yyzo4BZXSgmmy0hgeKLhGB-nwzdKRa0Hzo4/s534/punishmentpoll+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhd8LT-s7DxA2QDEuFKn1AbHoB4rbreo3iR9qEWvEo3QM8Cg03AQMW6-sZMZBbvV2XIbxAV1t3OAWa0LR9gkVX_1wip9oovfKjBQ-yYwND4yyzo4BZXSgmmy0hgeKLhGB-nwzdKRa0Hzo4/w150-h200/punishmentpoll+sm.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>The gimmick for the movie was a much ballyhoo-ed (as per
usual) “Punishment Poll,” wherein the audience could decide the fate of the
villain before watching the final scene in the movie. Everyone in attendance
was given a glow-in-the-dark card, printed with a large thumb. Hold the thumb
up for “mercy,” and point the thumb down for “no mercy.” Based on the audience vote,
the respective ending would be shown. This would have been so cool...only,
there weren’t two endings. In the movie itself, Castle appears and addresses
the audience, making an impassioned case for giving Sardonicus the business,
and then he asks everyone to hold up their cards and vote. From the screen, he
makes a show of counting every card, and then declaring that the audience
decided...no mercy. The last bit of the film plays so that everyone can see just
how screwed Sardonicus is, and you are left the distinct feeling that you’ve
been had. <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWvqKG_fDMEXt4SZlY-9aAnm07b2CosAcbqwVA02VdUWQXKANdomBNB0OUu7okUedOdQmR-zKGHxUJnTmIl0bcV1MVuecr1afQbvr-VA0CjHgGehGeA16MaMxZCMe7w9iMAL59fczdMB4/s667/13+Ghosts+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="667" data-original-width="428" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWvqKG_fDMEXt4SZlY-9aAnm07b2CosAcbqwVA02VdUWQXKANdomBNB0OUu7okUedOdQmR-zKGHxUJnTmIl0bcV1MVuecr1afQbvr-VA0CjHgGehGeA16MaMxZCMe7w9iMAL59fczdMB4/s320/13+Ghosts+sm.jpg" width="205" /></a></i></div><i>13 Ghosts</i> (1960)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A down-on-their-luck family inherits a house, free and
clear, just when they need it the most. The only stipulation is, they can never
sell it, or leave. Oh, and also, it’s just a little bit haunted. The dead relative
was a noted occultist, and these ghosts were part of his ongoing experiments. Why,
he even developed a special set of kooky spectacles with which to view the
ghosts. The young boy in the family, Buck, is fascinated by these apparitions.
When he finds out there is a fortune hidden in the house somewhere, he and the
estate’s lawyer make a pact to look for it together. It’s pretty clear,
however, that the lawyer has no intention of sharing the fortune when he finds
it. Meanwhile, the ghosts are ramping up their haunting, and the family is getting
appropriately spooked.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This film is almost more of an urban fantasy film, in the
same magical realism vein as <i>Topper</i> and <i>Night Life of the Gods</i>.
There’s a lot of magic and super science, and some interesting poltergeist
activity that is both seen and unseen. Aside from the modern-day setting, the
movie is structurally very similar to a lot of by-the-numbers gothic haunted
house flicks. Young Buck spends the whole movie calling the creepy live-in
housekeeper a witch, and this is funny in that she is played by none other than
Margaret Hamilton herself (and if I need to tell you she portrayed the most famous
movie witch of all time, the Wicked Witch of the West, in <i>The Wizard of Oz</i>,
then we can no longer be friends). Martin Milner takes a turn as the
opportunistic lawyer, and even though he’s both charming and despicable, I kept
expecting him to radio in a domestic disturbance using the Adam-12 call sign. </p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFmogw2pOXm9sJI00lzS0U-elFBdmw2RphYFpuFzEEf7PZDwz9euuhCrlPzzucq7q-xIs0JzqaitrJyZO62zZlW37ALSLI4_EOSLmSgTmqfJZ3RLjZt6x7-sSB9JyvIIWcZZiIR1btm6k/s654/13+ghostsIllusiono.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="654" data-original-width="427" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFmogw2pOXm9sJI00lzS0U-elFBdmw2RphYFpuFzEEf7PZDwz9euuhCrlPzzucq7q-xIs0JzqaitrJyZO62zZlW37ALSLI4_EOSLmSgTmqfJZ3RLjZt6x7-sSB9JyvIIWcZZiIR1btm6k/w131-h200/13+ghostsIllusiono.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>Of all the various William Castle gimmicks, I am most curious
about Illusiono! I am a lifelong fan of 3-D. From stereoscopes to ViewMaster
reels, from comic books to movies, and all that other related ephemera, I am
mildly obsessed with the exploitation of one’s own optics to trick your brain
into seeing images with depth. When I found out that this gimmick was a ‘hack’
of the anaglyphic 3D process (using one red and one blue lens), I was so
jealous I never got to see it in action.* The idea was simple: whenever ghosts
showed up in the movie, the screen would turn blue. If you wanted to see the
ghosts, you looked through the red lens. If you didn’t want to see the ghosts,
you looked through the blue lens. To misquote Tyler Durden, you decided your
level of involvement. Illusiono! was probably Castle’s most successful promotional
gimmick. For one thing, it actually worked, and people in the audience got to really
use it as intended. That it wasn’t used to greater effect was its only sin.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">*Note: Anchor Bay currently has a blu ray double feature available
with <i>13 Ghosts</i> and <i>13 Frightened Girls</i> and, while the package
does not contain a ghost viewer, the anaglyphic overlay process was digitally duplicated!
For the first time since the movie appeared in theaters, if you have any cheap
pair of red and blue 3-D glasses, you can experience Illusiono! for yourself!<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzSfjdzvjUR28oPraYYcBmfbnpxLFMstPhByLljaGyHlnnc1L33SKHUhW9ORIa0BivFtelE2nLDNLYgWoEwwZhJ_ufBpR6hlLBX23wcu-RogKzUMuKZSkk-7U1PRCDGFGr1Dh6bYtDtoA/s674/Tingler+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="674" data-original-width="437" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzSfjdzvjUR28oPraYYcBmfbnpxLFMstPhByLljaGyHlnnc1L33SKHUhW9ORIa0BivFtelE2nLDNLYgWoEwwZhJ_ufBpR6hlLBX23wcu-RogKzUMuKZSkk-7U1PRCDGFGr1Dh6bYtDtoA/s320/Tingler+sm.jpg" width="207" /></a></i></div><i>The Tingler</i> (1959)<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A brilliant scientist, played by Vincent Price, discovers a parasite
that lives inside the human body and feeds on fear, enlarging, or, growing
bigger, as it does (sorry: <i>Matinee</i> reference). Price manages to extract this
“tingler” from the spinal cord of a woman, but it gets loose before he can do
the scientific thing and cut it up and study it, you know, for science. And wouldn’t
you know it, somehow or another, the tingler gets loose...in a movie
theater...and the audience’s only defense against it...is to SCREAM! SCREAM FOR
THEIR LIVES!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Vincent Price’s performance saves <i>The Tingler</i>,
because he makes everything better. The premise is, well, kinda silly, and were
it not for his sincerity, the movie would fall apart. He’s convincing as the doctor
studying the effects of fear, right up to and including dosing himself with LSD—the
first on-screen trip of its kind, and freaking out in his lab while his sidekicks
watch from behind a closed door. That’s good news for us who are watching it
from the comfort of our own home, but in 1959, Price wasn’t the draw. He was
handily upstaged by Percepto!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This is it: the apex, the acme, the ultimate William Castle
gimmick. Storied, legendary, even, with people swearing to this very day that
they were electrocuted in their chairs. Percepto! was the perfect encapsulation
of what Castle was shooting for; a way to create an interactive experience on
the big screen. Here’s how it worked:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEAQGe-UW9EcIboybDWJd6tIHV9sP-zjZfd0UJJvRSBx-M9uxSPG8QeMQn99e4KDLYzkqeOgC2Px5wKw_Ctfh8Jkt9pu5d7nVSnltqfRJysWusUGcN-VdVtjO1PaGyEyOyenzybgavKKw/s571/TinglerPercepto+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="571" data-original-width="295" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEAQGe-UW9EcIboybDWJd6tIHV9sP-zjZfd0UJJvRSBx-M9uxSPG8QeMQn99e4KDLYzkqeOgC2Px5wKw_Ctfh8Jkt9pu5d7nVSnltqfRJysWusUGcN-VdVtjO1PaGyEyOyenzybgavKKw/w103-h200/TinglerPercepto+sm.jpg" width="103" /></a></div>Castle got ahold of a bunch of surplus WWII aircraft wing
de-icers; these were vibrating motors that were affixed to the hollow interior
of long-range bomber wings and wired to vibrate the aluminum and dislodge the
ice that formed on them at high altitudes. Castle then sent out crates of these
things, along with wiring and detailed instructions. These de-icers were attached
to the undersides of the theater seats (all wooden at the time) and the wiring
was strung along beneath the rows and snaked back up to the projection booth.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">At a certain point in the movie, the audience in the theater
would see a shadow of the tingler scootch across the screen (over the print of <i>The
Tingler</i>, that they were all watching, see), and then the film would stop
and melt and break (the best metaphor ever for “the projectionist buys the farm”)
and then the screen would go black, as if the projector had stopped. That’s
when Vincent Price would announce that the tingler was actually loose in the
theater and their only chance of surviving was to scream as loud as they can.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There were actual screams on the soundtrack, but that was a
moot point because by that time, the projectionist (very much alive, thanks
ever so much) had pushed the button in the booth that set all of the de-icers
to vibrating, sending many unsuspecting patrons straight up out of their chair,
yelling bloody murder. After about 15 seconds of bedlam, Price would announce
that the tingler had been dealt with, and then the movie would resume.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Not content to merely “shock” the audience, Castle planted
stooges in the crowd to start screaming, and even had someone “faint” and have
to be carried out of the theater on a stretcher and loaded into an ambulance
while everyone watched. Whoever fainted would, of course, make a miraculous
recovery just in time for the next show. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyymc0grxgZw4ApMBn6x11pEM2ITNBBeQUwaJ06oZnCkEkcvGyi8hF640BZZFIGf097lrdyGbvhmdHD-u8CGGMGozT-vO-73mTshQQ0o9ffp_kzoV8ZO5vpuTSoh3uVa1Llu1VszVkq28/s657/HouseonHauntedHill+sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="657" data-original-width="420" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyymc0grxgZw4ApMBn6x11pEM2ITNBBeQUwaJ06oZnCkEkcvGyi8hF640BZZFIGf097lrdyGbvhmdHD-u8CGGMGozT-vO-73mTshQQ0o9ffp_kzoV8ZO5vpuTSoh3uVa1Llu1VszVkq28/s320/HouseonHauntedHill+sm.jpg" width="205" /></a></i></div><i>House on Haunted Hill</i> (1959) <span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Vincent Price plays an eccentric millionaire who has rented
an infamously haunted house and invited five people to spend the night there.
After giving them a tour of the place, showing off various murder sites, he offers
each of them $10,000 to spend the night. Before anyone can seal the deal,
strange things start happening, and coincidentally, the caretaker has locked
them all in, preventing any chance of an early release.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What happens next is more akin to a Scooby Doo episode as
the people are scared, and killed off, and attempt to do one another in while
avoiding getting done in themselves. Everyone has a gun, and no one trusts
anyone. It’s a chilling and surprisingly effective movie, with good twists and
turns and a nice, tight little murder mystery in its midst. In fact, I’d argue
that the gimmick, Emergo!, actually gets in the way of the film.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Emergo! billed itself as a means for the action on the
screen to come right out into the theater. I mean, who wouldn’t want that? Hold
your answer until I explain it to you fully: there’s a scene wherein an, um,
animated skeleton is moving closer on the screen, menacing a character. Emergo!
happens as the projectionist starts furiously working the pulley he’d installed
earlier in the week, dragging a plastic skeleton, previously hidden in the
wings, across and over the heads of the audience.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t know if you have ever been inside an old movie
theater, but they are basically cathedrals, okay? Giant, cavernous spaces, some
with balconies, and others capable of seating hundreds more patrons than the
multiplex closets of today. This skeleton, then, which I’ll give the benefit of
the doubt and call “life sized,” seen from the audience, some fifteen or more
feet high in the air, would have looked nothing like the twenty-foot tall image
playing onscreen as it inches, limited by the reach of the frantic projectionist,
across the auditorium in fits and starts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Repeat customers, and likely many first-timers, would use
the prop for target practice, hurling popcorn, soda cups, and whatever else
they could throw. If the pulley got jammed up, the skeleton would hang,
twisting idly in the air conditioning, as the movie played on. And lest you
think I’m overstating it, I’ve actually seen this film in a theater that did
the whole Emergo! shtick, and can attest first-hand to its underwhelming impact.
The good news is this: <i>House on Haunted Hill</i> doesn’t need Emergo! or any
other gimmick, to be an engaging and fun murder-filled romp. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-59698898533188343462021-10-14T09:00:00.048-05:002021-10-14T09:00:00.202-05:00Grief: Rage, and the Dying of my Light<p>I’ve been putting this off for a while. Months.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">After being so open with all of my emotions and thoughts
these last few years, I wanted to take a little break from being sad. It just
got to be too much. Some of you more astute folks could read between the lines on
the weekly updates I’d been sending out over The FaceBooks and asked after me. Maybe
I gave you a platitude. Maybe I just said, “I’m hanging in there,” which is my
go-to for moving on the conversation to the next topic. I just didn’t know what
to tell folks who asked after me. “I’m still furious?” "Life is a tourniquet and my neck is turning blue?" No one wants to know how the monstrous depths of my anger. </p><p class="MsoNormal">Because that’s what I am. Still.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I thought it might be worth a checkup on the ol’ mental
health report card using the five stages of grief as our barometer. I got this list from
one of my grief counselors, mostly as a way to check in with myself to see just
how well I’m doing. Let’s follow along together. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> <span></span></o:p></p><a name='more'></a><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lCfOv2jpsZzImLSf01TXdJe6oSdXVFMxMyvWeowi8ulzITIxWeE-agGHoEXaSP94oxWjQNedvvyDnR9WL8GFrmJHJkyfh_OzsXjnquhyCKFxNnr5rZVzu9PEyV_l_Qe8VbrAE_oSRUo/s800/denialcalvin.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="800" height="251" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2lCfOv2jpsZzImLSf01TXdJe6oSdXVFMxMyvWeowi8ulzITIxWeE-agGHoEXaSP94oxWjQNedvvyDnR9WL8GFrmJHJkyfh_OzsXjnquhyCKFxNnr5rZVzu9PEyV_l_Qe8VbrAE_oSRUo/s320/denialcalvin.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b><br />Denial</b><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This one is easy; I hit denial the instant the surgical team
told me they weren’t going to operate on Cathy to fix her blocked intestinal
tract. They looked at me with the same concerned eyes that you see in medical
dramas and police procedurals and I felt everything go slack. I don’t remember
much about the first week of our ordeal. <o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal">Denial lasted right up to the point that they told me there was nothing more they could do for her. </p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><br /><b>
Anger</b></p><p class="MsoNormal">We’ll circle back around to you, buddy.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Bargaining </b></p><p class="MsoNormal">I’ve been doing this one all year; trying to decide if I’d been more insistent
with the doctors. Thinking back, trying to see if there was a time when I could
have made Cathy go to the doctor and get checked. Lots of “If only” statements
this year, along with a good number of “What ifs.” It’s only in the past month
that I’ve stopped trying to second guess myself.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rVlMqaKhVBjWqsss40C_bxiXTVBWx6WAqGYHccyR6ziOzhuQM4tFPmaxNjZjFr7oJfC6HOsvx3q8yhkr6ugrftVwxzF2Dewuvstq7y12hPP1-5lZ1R4GEat_ULaaX2WIJupnJ0imYZw/s402/lydia+alone.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="285" data-original-width="402" height="227" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3rVlMqaKhVBjWqsss40C_bxiXTVBWx6WAqGYHccyR6ziOzhuQM4tFPmaxNjZjFr7oJfC6HOsvx3q8yhkr6ugrftVwxzF2Dewuvstq7y12hPP1-5lZ1R4GEat_ULaaX2WIJupnJ0imYZw/s320/lydia+alone.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b>Depression</b><o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They say that you don’t always experience the five stages at
once. I can say with confidence that depression was the first stage I dealt
with, as soon as Cathy moved into hospice. At the time, we thought she had a
week. That lasted from August to October. During that time, I was pretty
inconsolable. I tried to hurt myself, with food. I let cheeseburgers be the hugs
I desperately needed. We were all still in masks, not touching, etc. It was the
absolute worst. And I indulged every selfish, wallowing behavior I could think
of, right up to and including dark thoughts about checking out with Cathy, for
good.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thankfully, those thoughts, while present, weren’t seriously
entertained, and never made it past the ruminating stage. It was that serious
panic attack during this time that knocked me out of my blue funk. The effects of that panic attack, coupled with the realization that I was careening towards more serious problems,
snapped me wide awake. The next day, I told Cathy I need to get on some kind of
supervised diet. She agreed.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I won’t say I’m not depressed anymore, but I have been (for
the most part) successfully battling it for much of the year. Good days and bad
days, as they say. But I’ve not given up on myself, and in all honesty, it’s this
stage I’ve been the most vigilant about.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b>Acceptance</b><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">According to the experts, “Finding acceptance may be just
having more good days than bad ones.” I’ve been keeping up with this, and here’s
some math for you.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I kept count of the days when I filled my self-care tracker
(five or more things from the list). As of this writing, I’ve had 164 good
days, if we’re using that arbitrary metric as the definition. The percentage of
good days for this year, so far, is 57%. That ain't great, but it's a passing grade. I'll take it, and worry about the rest during summer school.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9i4-pfuiZ6SZSLFivxczY2EOfhkPcPYlEtzzJZ3Ea_hJlifIo2wW7fGClrySP9LtY4NXRpzLwBnDaKmzMOzS8VT3ungMOBl0slepurKySv_y1q6pqrbI6XDmxzwZToM7RbzGiaxWGxE/s461/norem+hulk+cropped.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="395" data-original-width="461" height="274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiY9i4-pfuiZ6SZSLFivxczY2EOfhkPcPYlEtzzJZ3Ea_hJlifIo2wW7fGClrySP9LtY4NXRpzLwBnDaKmzMOzS8VT3ungMOBl0slepurKySv_y1q6pqrbI6XDmxzwZToM7RbzGiaxWGxE/s320/norem+hulk+cropped.jpg" width="320" /></a></b></div><b>Anger (a slight return)<o:p></o:p></b><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This hasn’t let up. Not once. In fact, if anything, it’s
broadened in scope, depth, and breadth. It’s taken on a rich hue, and a
vibrant, striking crimson shade. Its voice is deep, rumbling my sternum when I
let it out. And it burns. Like acid in my stomach, it burns. Like a brush fire
in dry grass, it springs up almost instantly and threatens to engulf me.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It takes me physical effort to back out of it. One of the
reasons why I stopped banging out regular updates on this blog was that I was
a little scared of how angry I was, and I didn’t want to expose any of you to
that. I know, I know...we’re in this together. I get that. But my heart, folks.
It was atrophied, and getting blacker and smaller by the second.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I didn’t want to expose myself to it any more than I wanted you to have to witness it. So, I did the
very unhealthy thing of packing it away, and that was a mistake. It only
festered in the dark. What I should have done was put a trigger warning in
front of a bunch of short, choppy posts, and let it fly. I even had a format to use; I was going to
call it “An Open Letter to All the People I’m Mad At.” I was going to post a bunch of one or two sentence rants at everyone, all of them, who might not really have
done anything wrong, but I still was
pissed at them anyway. This would have included, among other people (the
oncologist, the dietician, the surgeons, the florist, etc., etc.), myself, and
also, Cathy.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I was mad at me because I didn’t do enough. You know,
like make her go to the doctor, or encourage her to tell me if she was feeling
bad, or learn all about experimental cancer treatments and started her on them
the instant we found out she had it...or learn how to do surgery...you know.
Reasonable things.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And Cathy? She waited. I found a journal entry where she was
organizing her thoughts for a blog she wanted to write. She felt bad during the
end of <i>Sexy Laundry</i>. She waited eight months, in intermittent pain, before she
did anything. Would it have made a difference? No way of knowing. She also didn’t
want to expose me to some of the awful truths she was dealing with, before,
during, and at the end of her fight. Some things she never talked to me about.
I don’t know if she talked to anyone about them. But she did compartmentalize
her thoughts and feelings in an effort to protect mine. I am livid with her about that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I didn’t want to get into all of that, not at the time. I was really
missing her. I was incensed, and I had no focus for my rage. I talked to my
therapist about it, and that took the pressure off, somewhat. I’ve vented so
much of my spleen in the past two and a half years that it’s frustrating to me this gnawing feeling doesn’t ever seem to go away. It’s the last dregs of the ketchup that
I can’t squeeze out of the bottle.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Going forward, I’m trying to transition
back to being a creative with deep and meaningful insights on movies with sorcerers
and robots in them. I have some interesting things lined up that is going to
simplify my web presence and give me a home base from which to operate. I guess
that means, in between the robots and the wizards, you’ll get the occasional
rant, or confessional, or navel-gazing revelation. I wish I could jut be happy
fun guy again, but I think he’s gone for good. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-61864018190806604482021-10-08T08:22:00.000-05:002021-10-08T08:22:07.760-05:00Top 5 Horror Movies of the 1990s<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi56KLUJh9boquVfdEx_u228dvluthurqIaGelsSZhAMkRIYEt9mO7KWYUbSBBxpBZ38oLIcDwM__LsYE7ZeKq549SWykFzpgDb5MpZVaNU65QZ5vcBGG9qtPXRTvJ-JhqIRAu0q3feb5E/s966/04+finntop5bg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi56KLUJh9boquVfdEx_u228dvluthurqIaGelsSZhAMkRIYEt9mO7KWYUbSBBxpBZ38oLIcDwM__LsYE7ZeKq549SWykFzpgDb5MpZVaNU65QZ5vcBGG9qtPXRTvJ-JhqIRAu0q3feb5E/s320/04+finntop5bg.jpg" width="314" /></a></div><br />This decade, preceded by the plastic 1980s, and let down by
the promise of peace that accompanied the end of the Cold War, was a cynical
and increasingly angry time. The emergence of the World Wide Web was a profound
thing as fans began to congregate online in AOL chat rooms and on message
boards. eBay became a going concern, and a lot of movies, once thought to be
nigh-impossible to track down, were suddenly just a few mouse clicks and a
credit card number away. Computers were The Hot New Thing, and this was
reflected in a lot of films. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">By the end of the decade, whatever goodwill the end of the
Cold War generated was all used up us and most of us had figured out that the
fix was in, and we were the suckers. With Communism over and done with in the
early 1990s, America needed a new enemy. When one didn’t appear readily, we
decided to make a new enemy; it was us. And like the hit song from the 1990s,
we were our own worst enemy, to boot.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">As much as <i>Jurassic Park</i>, with its computer-generated
and animated dinosaurs, was a watershed moment in filmmaking, CGI had a ways to
go. That didn’t stop people from using it, badly, for most of the decade, until
Peter Jackson and Weta Workshop improved the process dramatically to create
believable characters that seemed real in the <i>Lord of the Rings </i>trilogy.
Conversely, a number of horror movies during this time were overly reliant on
CGI to their detriment, while other filmmakers managed to work around the
limitations of the technique or, in more than one case, jettisoned it in favor
of good old-fashioned practical effects.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What makes the movies in this decade so hit-or-miss is the
studios themselves. The venerable movie maniac franchises continued to thunder
along under their own weight, and other companies, with star dust in their
eyes, started remaking older films, slickly produced, but not very well thought
out. There were also a number of smaller studios and even smaller movies that
were wildly entertaining as B-movies, but weren’t scary or even very serious.
Nevertheless, some innovations and interesting things developed, maybe even as
a response to the naked and unashamed cash grab, that made the list below.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdxuIA56YJXDp74Is371lMxXErAoQtAiSIxCEnmW4K-EFCkxL-hOUT5ZaIgEFyiu1LBGJVZRCHZB5CA_uliAaK3hdCIss7dPVtgortLt-nBuOG6VWGjvzknopZ3oKnYG41TmIzjgibS4/s720/StirofEchossm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="484" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwdxuIA56YJXDp74Is371lMxXErAoQtAiSIxCEnmW4K-EFCkxL-hOUT5ZaIgEFyiu1LBGJVZRCHZB5CA_uliAaK3hdCIss7dPVtgortLt-nBuOG6VWGjvzknopZ3oKnYG41TmIzjgibS4/s320/StirofEchossm.jpg" width="215" /></a></i></div><i>Stir of Echoes</i> (1999)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Kevin Bacon is a blue-collar guy living with his wife and
son in a suburb of Chicago. His wacky sister-in-law hypnotizes him at a party,
and she tells him to be more open-minded, which turns out to mean, “now I can
see ghosts and visions of past traumas.” This psychic ability runs in the
family; their son has it, too. And wouldn’t you know it, it turns out that
something horrible happened in the house before Kevin Bacon’s family moved in,
and the spirit won’t rest (and neither will Kevin Bacon and his son) until the
mystery is solved.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This movie often gets overlooked because it sits on the same
tree branch as <i>The Sixth Sense</i>, which came out the same year. While not
as gimmicky and as “gotcha” as the former, <i>Stir of Echoes</i> does offer up
its own kind of disturbing scares, and in a wide variety, too: Jump scares,
creep-outs, gross-outs, and even a creepy kid all conspire to make this movie
greater than the sum of its parts.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">David Koepp wrote the adaptation of the Richard Matheson
novel (first published in the late 1950s) and directed the film as well.
Matheson is a much-revered author for his various contributions to literature, television
and film, mostly in the realm of fantasy, horror and science fiction, and Koepp
was interested in paying him homage. As such, it has some changes from the
book, but in the updating, it plays on some serious fears that were a part of
the decade, including violence towards women and teenagers with guns. If you
notice any familiar beats in this movie that you feel are a bit overused, you
should know that Matheson is the one who first introduced those beats, and not
the other way around.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhxHgr1mCwOmRPF0M_HEUczcH1KAiJgsxBXUWRf3_AT9Ghl1vefFwb75-KTUZTKWxYPZtDQXPibGsjPJTwR1HRjhyynBP3YTv3Ko9CCiUyfloF4UqmurZ7vP2xm3ILIr7EvrMSFZr_cE/s742/EventHorizonsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="742" data-original-width="504" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYhxHgr1mCwOmRPF0M_HEUczcH1KAiJgsxBXUWRf3_AT9Ghl1vefFwb75-KTUZTKWxYPZtDQXPibGsjPJTwR1HRjhyynBP3YTv3Ko9CCiUyfloF4UqmurZ7vP2xm3ILIr7EvrMSFZr_cE/s320/EventHorizonsm.jpg" width="217" /></a></i></div><i>Event Horizon</i> (1997)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A salvage crew (in space) is tasked with the recovery of an
experimental spacecraft called the Event Horizon, thought to be lost during its
maiden voyage. It’s carrying a gravity drive that can fold space, and would be
invaluable technology, if they can ever figure out what went wrong. The drive’s
inventor joins the crew of the Lewis & Clark (that’s the ship’s name, I
swear), all jaded hands at the wheel, and sure enough, they find the ship, and
a big mystery with it. What happened? Where’d everyone go? What’s with all of
the blood, anyway? The engineer inventor, played by Sam Neill, has his own
agenda, and it doesn’t exactly line up with the rest of the crew, who are just
in it for the bucks. And as these tensions mount, things begin to go horribly
wrong with the routine salvage operation.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This rare gem of a movie turns a derelict ship into a
haunted house, complete with ghosts and cultists and things from other
dimensions. I’ll even forgive the capricious use of CGI to render a bunch of
floating debris, all shiny and crisp, inside the ship because it would have
looked just as bad if it was done with blue screen and traveling mattes. Thankfully,
they get the gravity turned back on quick enough and you don’t have to spend a
lot of time wondering if the movie was shot for a 3-D release (it wasn’t. The
CGI is just that bad).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The cast is great, all character actors you’ll recognize,
from Lawrence Fishburn to Sam Neill, in the only other interesting role he ever
took after <i>Jurassic Park</i>. The movie itself, however, had a storied and
torturous gestation process, with an auteur director (Paul W.S. Anderson),
studio interference, multiple rewrites, and in the end, a patchwork film that
no one was happy with. All that being said, this movie scratches a lot of itches
and isn’t quite like anything else in the 1990s.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Panned when it was initially released, the film was marketed
as science fiction, but make no mistake, it’s a horror flick, wearing a lot of
influences on its sleeves, like sponsor patches on a NASCAR driver’s leather
jacket. One of the things that isn’t readily known about the movie is that “the
warp” concept of traveling through space was lifted straight out of <i>Warhammer
40,000</i>, so much so that Games Workshop fans consider it as part of the
overall 40K universe.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LJqqmMgmfIZx64HmMNleAgC4T1YXXXlqcRD-0LIZ1XhGBjOBkXeLhdxz6yHZCh0-HCBj0QqWboxag5qOubltsxJx5tQMjpgvgKEFysFhRQGjg-vcZ8gHElhUuP70frmYXB7Hf6fkpTI/s720/Prophesysm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="487" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2LJqqmMgmfIZx64HmMNleAgC4T1YXXXlqcRD-0LIZ1XhGBjOBkXeLhdxz6yHZCh0-HCBj0QqWboxag5qOubltsxJx5tQMjpgvgKEFysFhRQGjg-vcZ8gHElhUuP70frmYXB7Hf6fkpTI/s320/Prophesysm.jpg" width="216" /></a></i></div><i>The Prophesy</i> (1995)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">An L.A. police detective gets drawn into a weird web of
mysteries; a dead body with no eyes, an expanded bible with additional chapters
in Revelations about a second war of the heavens, body snatching, and what may
or may not be a possessed child. It’s enough to make the detective, who was a
seminary student, until he lost his faith, question everything he knows. And
when the archangel Gabriel shows up, played by Christopher Walken, well...you
know...you’re in...for one hell...of a movie.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The 1990s saw the apex of Christopher Walken’s career, and
this movie showcases Walken at his most Walken-esque. His turn as Gabriel is
exactly what you’d think it to be, and then it’s even creepier on top of that.
Unsurprisingly, he’s got the best lines of dialogue in the movie, but he’s not
the only big-name actor: Eric Stoltz and Viggo Mortenson also co-star, along
with Virginia Madsen.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">In truth, this isn’t the scariest movie of the decade, not
by a damn sight. But it’s got a really unique story, some effectively creepy
moments, and it’s one of those "idea" movies you keep thinking about after you’ve seen
it. Despite being something of a flop in the theaters, it subsequently spawned
four sequels. It never needed them. You can watch the first movie and feel like
you got a complete experiences, and owing much to the quality of what came after,
I’d take that advice. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjebgCSLTQD869A1_oFJ47ZMgKE5XnhDu27gNk58-N0IrLu_gTXaU2dAR8xuBOFdxKXfB6_LuU2yqpQOKipXie4WtJONjXZPIRWs9kTWPjT7aqXx5y4ijBBJfVytIyRrv8eLqzoo9IKYHI/s720/Scream2sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="720" data-original-width="492" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjebgCSLTQD869A1_oFJ47ZMgKE5XnhDu27gNk58-N0IrLu_gTXaU2dAR8xuBOFdxKXfB6_LuU2yqpQOKipXie4WtJONjXZPIRWs9kTWPjT7aqXx5y4ijBBJfVytIyRrv8eLqzoo9IKYHI/s320/Scream2sm.jpg" width="219" /></a></i></div><i>Scream II </i>(1997)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Two years have passed since Sydney Prescott survived the
ordeal of the Ghostface killer. She’s now in college, with a new life, some new
friends, and a few old ones. Everything should be perfect, but...Ghostface is
back, cutting a gory swath through campus, even as the sensationalized events
of the movie <i>Stab</i>, based on the real-life incident play out in the
background.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Everyone that was still alive at the end of <i>Scream</i> is
back for this one and you’ll likely not see who the killer is this time,
either. But it’s an answer to the mystery that works within the story. And the
blood! Everything is cranked up to eleven with this movie, and that includes
the satire. Not content to be a meta-critique on slasher horror, <i>Scream 2</i>
takes some potshots at celebrity culture and the 24-hour news cycle for good
measure.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">There are not a lot of sequels that made the other top 5
lists, but <i>Scream 2</i> is one of the few that maintains the emotional and
intellectual drive of the first movie; if anything, it’s even more self-aware
than the inaugural outing. And since sequels are such a part of the horror
genre, there are rules for them, too, as Randy again explains. The genre
conventions hold, even as they are being discussed. One of the few times you
can watch a sequel and get as much out of it as the first movie. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3YGVrmGdNHFwEw5k9ctS35oZxFFOi0ljIoHk2vMo4uyvydrHkwg6RO2zCZAJe1UBpJO7fikISvzVogdj0ucru8-suN4YlUyRox2lbcoSv6aIYJTxXNzvLc8KT9HSywi50-ZcN2KQ6PL8/s704/BlairWitchProjectsm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="704" data-original-width="474" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3YGVrmGdNHFwEw5k9ctS35oZxFFOi0ljIoHk2vMo4uyvydrHkwg6RO2zCZAJe1UBpJO7fikISvzVogdj0ucru8-suN4YlUyRox2lbcoSv6aIYJTxXNzvLc8KT9HSywi50-ZcN2KQ6PL8/s320/BlairWitchProjectsm.jpg" width="215" /></a></i></div><i>The Blair Witch Project</i> (1999)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Three college students head out into the woods with video
cameras to film a documentary about a local bit of folklore, the Blair Witch.
They disappeared. Later, their video camera was recovered and the tapes show
the students at the beginning of their adventure, along with the strange things
that plague their group when they cross into the woods.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Some films are timeless, and others are rooted in their time
and place. <i>The Blair Witch Project </i>could not have been made at any other
time because it is so specific to the level of technology used to create it and
the zeitgeist from whence its inspiration comes. The movie begins with the
declaration that “this is a true story” and then we go to video camera footage,
and a new genre is born. This is the movie from which the term “found footage”
originated, and it was so revelatory that the next ten movies that came out in
that format were scored for using it; it was that big a deal.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I wish everyone could see this movie as I first did; it was
an Academy Award screener, on VHS cassette, and I watched it on a square, boxy TV in
a darkened room with six other people. There’s something about watching video
tape on a video tape that adds a lot of authenticity to the movie, so much so
that we all went searching afterward, just to make sure it really was faked. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-7956027483163086212021-10-01T10:29:00.001-05:002021-10-06T15:42:28.550-05:00Top 5 Horror Movies of the 1930s<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUKMH9NnhMHSYG_xbJ-BUvDA72yjk4Ecp1I5DbULK3T3FIVnBlwK_o-YFuE1bEbC4nUYUqHFrlyqXnU1eM23sVRmlALynwkmuhsuFGrbvoDwTwphtNB4CgS0UzYdaCl_ZWEeCGVvC9mj8/s966/03+finntop5by.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="948" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUKMH9NnhMHSYG_xbJ-BUvDA72yjk4Ecp1I5DbULK3T3FIVnBlwK_o-YFuE1bEbC4nUYUqHFrlyqXnU1eM23sVRmlALynwkmuhsuFGrbvoDwTwphtNB4CgS0UzYdaCl_ZWEeCGVvC9mj8/s320/03+finntop5by.jpg" width="314" /></a></div>This is the decade where movies officially came into their
own, narratively speaking, with the advent of sound, and horror movies were
right there from the beginning. In fact, the studio that became synonymous with
horror, Universal, produced a whole slate of horrific features whose creatures
were so impactful that they remain recognizable icons nearly a hundred years
later.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Universal was carrying on the tradition of ghastly sights on
the silver screen that started in the 1920s during the silent era; Lon Chaney
and his grotesqueries were not far from the public’s minds, and many of the
silent stars transitioned over to the talkies and continued to thrill
audiences. Horror came into its own as a new kind of spectacle that only movies
could deliver at the time. Now that sound was possible, the audiences could not
only see the sepulchral crypt, but they could also hear the chains rattle, the coffin
lid creak open, and the helpless young women could all scream. <br />
<br />
Within reason, that is. In the middle of 1934, the Hays Code was enacted,
Hollywood’s first attempt at self-regulation of their content. “Pre-Code”movies
sometimes showed bare breasts (artfully, mind you) or other “shocking” scenes
that were deemed grotesque and unsettling. And while there certainly some
movies that benefitted from a lack of restraint, several movies listed below
were made after the Hays Code was adopted and their impact was not diminished
in the slightest. Most of these movies would also have a place on the cult
classics list, and it’s that combination of transgressive and outré that sets
them apart from others films of the decade.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The thirties were fueled by the Great Depression, providing
a relatively inexpensive escape from reality of the bread lines and doing
without. Science and scientific progress are hallmarks of the era, as magazines
like Popular Science and Popular Mechanics routinely featured experimental
vehicles and buildings on their covers. It’s also noteworthy as the decade
where Hitler rose to power overseas, producing an undercurrent of unease that
wouldn’t fully be understood by the population at large until America entered
World War II.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><br /></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyH0jsfjfuU4RoETCdo8DvJYTpjYYI60jiJ8Uqt2PzyGmUxL35bgqjtAVfc8PEYtGDIxvoBVsuPl0OQ5INqQXWX8hL_spBOfPfnsyZuIuDXiVo2CzheWyXwbCFIqIlAZBBDmERJdZdbk/s534/MadLove1935sm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="534" data-original-width="453" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgZyH0jsfjfuU4RoETCdo8DvJYTpjYYI60jiJ8Uqt2PzyGmUxL35bgqjtAVfc8PEYtGDIxvoBVsuPl0OQ5INqQXWX8hL_spBOfPfnsyZuIuDXiVo2CzheWyXwbCFIqIlAZBBDmERJdZdbk/s320/MadLove1935sm.jpg" width="271" /></a></i></div><i>Mad Love</i> (1935) <o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A gifted concert pianist’s hands are ruined in a train
crash, and a strange doctor agrees to perform experimental surgery to graft new
hands onto his wrists. But these hands belonged to a convicted killer, and they
begin to act out their murderous impulses. But the pianist’s wife is also being
persecuted by the odd doctor, who is obsessed with her. The mad doctor has elaborate
plans for both of them, and it will not end well, for “each man kills the thing
he loves...”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Peter Lorre’s first American production established him as
one of the go-to guys for insane characters, but to be fair, they courted him
after watching him in Fritz Lang’s masterpiece <i>M</i> (1931). It wasn’t quite
typecasting, but when you’re Peter Lorre, what else are you built for, honestly?
He’s compelling to watch, and this performance in these two movies is what forever
typecast him as “that guy” in thrillers and mysteries. Director Karl Freund and
cinematographer Gregg Toland borrowed heavily from German Expressionism to
frame shots and most especially light the actors, which enhanced Lorre’s androgynous
appearance and emphasized his bizarre disguise to great effect.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The screenplay was loosely based on a novel, <i>The Hands of
Orlac</i>, and was a remake of a silent film of the same name. What’s really
significant about this movie is that it’s one of the early (and one of the
best) examples of body horror, specifically dealing with mutilation and the
Frankenstein-esque tendency to reuse the anatomy of the dead. These willful
mutilations performed by mad scientists may seem silly today, but soldiers
returning home from World War I with missing limbs and other disfigurements
didn’t think so. Peter Lorre’s crazy rigging, used to fool young Orlac, looks a
lot like some of the medical instruments and contraptions used to affix prosthetics
onto shoulders and legs for the veterans of trench warfare. Other movies would
explore and remake this story over the years, but never with such style and aplomb
as <i>Mad Love</i>.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What makes <i>Mad Love</i> work are the many things merely
implied. Dr. Golgo, Lorre’s deranged surgeon, has an unhealthy fixation on Orlac’s
wife, and his solution to that condition is, well, for 1935, obscene, at the
very least. Several of the more racy elements that the newly formed Hayes committee
categorically wouldn’t allow to be shown onscreen got shuttled off into the
subtext, but the movie manages to get the point across, all the same. A near-perfect
example of 1930s horror, <i>Mad Love</i> has become a classic on its own
merits.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EUIAJFYESofF3EH3Rvh-uWecUUiAfbIfbU5jZgBNebEthVHxwOpQaYpODYpPZhyphenhyphenZgcuXIpmChKwwmV3l1Str9f24-iK4OhkpdMZS3JuEKzKR-Hef6YsgRzL-HW6VPuKLmSUMN7A8hMo/s538/WhiteZombie1932sm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="538" data-original-width="355" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4EUIAJFYESofF3EH3Rvh-uWecUUiAfbIfbU5jZgBNebEthVHxwOpQaYpODYpPZhyphenhyphenZgcuXIpmChKwwmV3l1Str9f24-iK4OhkpdMZS3JuEKzKR-Hef6YsgRzL-HW6VPuKLmSUMN7A8hMo/s320/WhiteZombie1932sm.jpg" width="211" /></a></i></div><i>White Zombie</i> (1932)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Young lovers, engaged to be married, rendezvous on the
Island of Haiti and hurry to the sugar plantation of Beaumont, a man they just
met on a ship, because that’s just what one does in the early 1930s. They pass
by a bunch of hollow-eyed, shuffling field hand and are told that they are
zombies, under the control of “Murder” Legrange, played with evil-eyed
intensity by Bela Lugosi and looking particularly saturnine in the role. But
Beaumont is already in love with the young woman he just met (ahh! Haiti!) and
he asks the zombie master for help in wooing her. Legrange says the only way to
bend the woman to Beaumont’s will is to kill her and bring her back...as a
zombie!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">One of the most enduring themes in 1930s horror is
unrequited (and sometimes forbidden) love. This movie is no exception, and the
film borders on melodrama at times. The standout star here is (no surprise)
Bela Lugosi as the zombie master whose eyes and intense stare almost qualify as
a special effect unto themselves. It’s no <i>Dracula</i>, but Lugosi was
already famous for his turn as the Transylvanian count and he steals the show
here, as well.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>White Zombie</i> makes the list because, for all of its
flaws, it’s the first zombie movie. Zombies were an established part of many different
folk traditions until the pulps got ahold of the concept and front loaded a lot
of anti-immigrant hysteria and fear of miscegenation into the gruesome stories printed
in magazines such as <i>Weird Tales</i>. This theme of a woman, helpless
against the hypnotic charm and/or strength of the zombie master, would be
repeated several times in other, better movies before George Romero rewired
everyone’s conception of the walking dead in 1968 with <i>Night of the Living
Dead</i>. Nevertheless, much of the lore and the allure of zombies continues to
borrow from <i>White Zombie</i>. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RT5TrQznGS51-cFVrAmUoki423Hcu5mf7aQNFEiUu4XkO-lBBhBrZn_f8kHtHjFOR7ydOXLIuUSzE4s2fO2cuQF0Msp16T-T6sU6k_GOCkFBOolA0QOXx8OiPsmUA-0R09dX8X7qeCA/s570/BlackCat1934sm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="570" data-original-width="437" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4RT5TrQznGS51-cFVrAmUoki423Hcu5mf7aQNFEiUu4XkO-lBBhBrZn_f8kHtHjFOR7ydOXLIuUSzE4s2fO2cuQF0Msp16T-T6sU6k_GOCkFBOolA0QOXx8OiPsmUA-0R09dX8X7qeCA/s320/BlackCat1934sm.jpg" width="245" /></a></i></div><i>The Black Cat</i> (1934)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A young, bright, American couple on their way to (wait for
it) their honeymoon in Hungary share a train car with Dr. Vitus Werdegast, who
is traveling to see an old friend. Werdegast, played by Bela Lugosi, explains
that he’d been interred in a prison camp for the past fifteen years. When the
young bride, Joan, is injured on the road, Werdegast takes the couple with him
to the home of his friend, the architect Hjalmar Poelzig (Boris Karloff).</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I won’t spoil where things go from here, but I will tell you
that the title of the movie, and the credit for same in the opening credits, is
only glancingly related to the Edgar Allan Poe story. But what the movie does
have going for it is as follows: It’s the first and best pairing of Lugosi and
Karloff in the same movie, satanic cults, psychological torture, black magic, a
dash of necrophilia, German Expressionism’s last gasp, human sacrifice, and the
creepiest chess game ever played, and that’s all I can list without giving
anything cool away. You have to see this film to believe it.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Critics’ reactions were mixed when the movie premiered but
audiences loved it; <i>The Black Cat </i>was Universal’s highest grossing film
that year, largely thanks to the teaming up of Lugosi and Karloff, two of the
biggest films stars of the decade. This movie is the kind of bonkers that will
leave you shaking your head at what they managed to cram into the movie, and
what they got away with onscreen. One of the more gruesome scenes in the movie
is accomplished with mere suggestion and it’s incredibly effective. <i>The
Black Cat</i> is a fantastic example of Universal’s non-monster-centric horror
output. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSoXvyhhp5Shtxl2TEDYWPlBw4nXY99LJ0DC6zbNDk5_9In3n9p73HIx66Ygb5sHgnzxGihfxVxV0ayzys9UVswjWbFR9sPpwnwwvT-FMpWLVM3OJ-VpNWPFPMj6fcahyRtujJwXFpGY/s279/IslandofLostSoulssm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="218" data-original-width="279" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOSoXvyhhp5Shtxl2TEDYWPlBw4nXY99LJ0DC6zbNDk5_9In3n9p73HIx66Ygb5sHgnzxGihfxVxV0ayzys9UVswjWbFR9sPpwnwwvT-FMpWLVM3OJ-VpNWPFPMj6fcahyRtujJwXFpGY/s0/IslandofLostSoulssm.jpg" width="279" /></a></i></div><i>Island of Lost Souls</i> (1932)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">A survivor of a shipwreck is deposited onto a small South
Pacific Island, along with some live animal cargo delivery addressed to the
resident Mad Scient—er, doctor, one Doctor Moreau, played to perfection by
Charles Laughton. He welcomes the newcomer, Parker, to his home and introduces
him to some of the other inhabitants of the island, including a shy, beautiful
woman named Lota. What Moreau fails to mention is that Lota (and the others)
are engineered humans, comprised of various beasts and jungle animals. Parker
is understandably shaken by this and he tries to escape, taking Lota with him,
and not quite realizing that she’s also one of the animal-people, too, and that’s
when things start to fall apart on the island of Dr. Moreau...</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This movie remains the best version of the H.G. Wells
classic novel, <i>The Island of Doctor Moreau</i>. A remake from the 1970s
features Michael York and make-up by John (<i>Planet of the Apes</i>) Chambers
and it’s middling at best. The less said about the 1996 film, the better. You
know the one I’m talking about; the version that starred Val Kilmer and Marlon
Brando and is so bad, there’s a separate documentary that goes into great detail
about just how bad it is.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i>Island of Lost Souls</i> also features Bela Lugosi in beast-man
make-up as the lawgiver, and it’s from him that we get the classic line of
dialogue, “Are we not men?” Laughton is fascinating to watch in the role of Dr.
Moreau, gleeful in his genius, and also mercurial in temperament.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Most interestingly, the film was censored when it premiered,
with many small towns refusing to show it. Not for the beast-men, or the
implied sexual relationship between Parker and Lota, but for its tacit endorsement
of evolution. Those small towns that did show it raked it right over the coals for
this transgression. But the movie had the last laugh; the cultural impact of
the film is significant, from the various lines of dialogue quoted and
repurposed, the reference to Moreau’s punishment room, the “House of Pain” and
Laughton’s and Lugosi’s performances all push this movie into cinematic history.
<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6yFFT87J7HG2r6-e8sf9XR8huVEhRjjfxbhlZFjrWsJ0d9hLyJoNHPNSNjFloXKWdSIwKz2hdjdnQBWpaWq-RQvCruJnBrcrYx8hJCIBbc2AgznT7LWx4Abyx_w9D06kmevAkYbDyRcw/s609/Freaks1932sm.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="403" data-original-width="609" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg6yFFT87J7HG2r6-e8sf9XR8huVEhRjjfxbhlZFjrWsJ0d9hLyJoNHPNSNjFloXKWdSIwKz2hdjdnQBWpaWq-RQvCruJnBrcrYx8hJCIBbc2AgznT7LWx4Abyx_w9D06kmevAkYbDyRcw/s320/Freaks1932sm.jpg" width="320" /></a></i></div><i>Freaks</i> (1932)<o:p></o:p><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Hans and Frieda are little people, working in a traveling
circus sideshow, alongside a host of other freaks. They are engaged to be
married, but a beautiful trapeze artist named Cleopatra starts making goo-goo
eyes at him after learning of Hans’ grand estate and inheritance. Cleopatra and
the circus strongman, Hercules, hatch a scheme for her to marry into Hans’
family, and shortly thereafter she would kill Hans and assume control of the
fortune, and then she and Samson could be horrible people together forever. Hans
is blinded by Cleo’s grace and beauty and scorns Frieda. Cleo plays her part in
the scheme for as long as she can, but eventually her revulsion for Hans and
the rest of the freaks comes out, and what happens after that...well, it’s the
reason why this movie is considered a horror film.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Tod Browning is widely associated with Bela Lugosi’s <i>Dracula</i>,
which he directed, but he will forever be remembered as the director of the
cult classic <i>Freaks</i>. This pre-code gem bombed at the box office, and it’s
easy to see why: here were circus “freaks,” shown living normal lives, being
friends with their fellow carnies, and even (gasp!) falling in love, getting
married, and having children! Oh, heaven forbid! The horror!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">This humanizing aspect of the film (as opposed to treating
the performers as mere oddities) may well have been the reason for its lack of
a draw at the box office; this was the period of time when eugenics was the fashionable
science, and such people who were born this way would have no place in the
so-called utopia that the proponents of eugenics were peddling (and this
included the nascent Nazi party). <i>Freaks</i> is clunky in places, and
teeters on the edge of being exploitative in a couple of scenes. It was also
heavily censored, coming in at just over 60 minutes (the original cut was
rumored to be 90). But the film still holds up, and the <i>denouement</i>, when
Cleopatra’s treachery is revealed, is quite macabre and unsettling. <br /><br />If you'd like to check out past Top 5 Lists, you can find them all <a href="https://marktheaginghipster.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-ongoing-and-updated-top-5-horror.html">Right Here</a>!<o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-89216947317094230142021-02-20T09:00:00.001-06:002021-02-20T09:00:01.367-06:00Grief: Death and Taxes<p><i>Note, for those of you wanting more frequent, day-to-day updates, I'm writing a "proof of life" post every Friday on Facebook, if you're inclined to brave that particular wilderness. It's more chatty, and talks about movies and TV shows a bit more than on here at the moment. You can follow me on FB and get the notification when I post, and hopefully being on FB to read it won't send you into an apoplexy. </i></p><p class="MsoNormal">Tax Season normally fills people with dread and fear; not
because everyone is secretly a white-collar criminal and living in fear that
this year will be the one where the jig is suddenly up and that end up in
federal prison; no, I think it’s just because most people don’t like to do math.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I don’t have a problem with paying taxes, per se. As soon as
I figured out in my Economics class in high school that the taxes pay for stuff
like roads, schools, national defense, yadda yadda yadda, I reasoned it was
okay to expect us citizens to pay into the administrative costs of upkeep. I’ve
only ever really groused about the exact percentages in each category.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">What’s bothering me the most is having to go back through
and relive my year, via purchases made, movies played, and that’s the trouble
because I know exactly where I was from July to October and having to keep
going over it again and again is a death of a thousand paper cuts. Cathy used
to do this, the taxes. Oh, I’d help a little bit, with data entry and printing
things out and looking at the uncategorized purchases to figure out what was
what. But she did the heavy lifting. And when she got sick (well, sicker),
pretty much the last thing on our minds was, “Now, don’t forget about the
quarterly taxes. Here’s the password, and you’re going to want to...” I’d
venture to say it was dead last at the bottom of the list of things we worried
about.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So now I get to relive all of that.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>I keep telling myself, “Next year, it’ll be better. Next
year, you’ll have all of this back in place and you’ll know what to do.” I
don’t doubt myself, but what I’m not saying aloud is that I don’t know if I’ll
ever be able to think about tax time for the business without recalling this
year and it’s relationship to 2020. It’s a mile marker I’ll have to keep
driving by every time I go down this road. I can’t avoid it. I can only hope to
speed by it fast enough to not really get a good look at it and then hope I
don’t get stopped by something else.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizh1sKZGwEH35I4CTHzFY9wYMn4NB9rxs8Xg9Rq92KnaUsjL34vFvIn0aPLyqq7aQ-b0Yd6y0ZqlRVSNc0O5XwcRQPaOgESRHfC3oOGBncEJTDKDcwVdRzSqtm3nvEUKOtezPYfgtjXnQ/s3088/IMG_0210.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3088" data-original-width="2316" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizh1sKZGwEH35I4CTHzFY9wYMn4NB9rxs8Xg9Rq92KnaUsjL34vFvIn0aPLyqq7aQ-b0Yd6y0ZqlRVSNc0O5XwcRQPaOgESRHfC3oOGBncEJTDKDcwVdRzSqtm3nvEUKOtezPYfgtjXnQ/s320/IMG_0210.jpg" /></a></div>The cold weather isn’t helping. I didn’t think to get salt.
Cathy always did. I didn’t think to check the emergency supplies. Cathy always
did. We had a bit we’d do every time it snowed or iced over. Cathy would throw
open the curtains and say, “Honey, come look! It’s a winter wonderland!” <br />
<br />
From wherever I was in the house, I’d reply, “It’s a Winter Hellscape. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Aaand...scene. This summed up the two of us and our usual temperaments
rather nicely.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’ve got the curtains open. I’m trying to see the snow the
way Cathy saw it. Magical. Pure. Innocent. And instead, all I’m doing in my
head is working out the logistics of taking the dog outside without slipping on
the slicker-than-owl-shit Terrazzo tile outside the theater and seriously
injuring myself. How would I tell anyone if I did take a fall? I’m got my phone
on me, sure, but who do I call? I’ve not had to worry about being alone for
twenty years. This feeling of forced helplessness is gnawing at me, and every
day I have to stomp down my urge to scream and throw things. It usually works.
Usually.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That’s the worst part, I think. Feeling alone when you
haven’t been alone for so long. Most days, I get stuff done and as I’m doing
it, I get real self-congratulatory, as if to say, “Look at me! I’m not
backsliding into a cro-magnon existence! I’ve got a clean shirt on! There’s
food I can eat! And I only have to check off these very elementary survival
boxes until Cathy comes home...”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I’m still talking to her at dinner time. I walk around the
house, having a conversation with myself, and everyone keeps telling me, “But
Mark! That’s normal! You need to do that! It’s what you do to help get over
such a loss!”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWoWUga39ouwXXAvUttVEK5_eLYo9Mb3PQ0dGcE8390sFcrNEXKYBuCBwOAsmNeFvA3OAC-hAZz3ycZWNnxDwV2g4iI_q86XNYRKx9yZaxbwtX4kqWhyphenhyphen6GlAsDJgN_Y0WAybtSYSH5xU/s454/anthony-perkins.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="454" data-original-width="454" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJWoWUga39ouwXXAvUttVEK5_eLYo9Mb3PQ0dGcE8390sFcrNEXKYBuCBwOAsmNeFvA3OAC-hAZz3ycZWNnxDwV2g4iI_q86XNYRKx9yZaxbwtX4kqWhyphenhyphen6GlAsDJgN_Y0WAybtSYSH5xU/s320/anthony-perkins.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"We all go a little mad sometimes." <br />Tell me about it, Tony. Tell me about it.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>And every time they say something like that, all I can think
about is, <i>Oh yeah? Have you seen the movie</i> Psycho?</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">When I get to thinking about this stuff, I find myself
living in mortal fear of purchasing a Russian Mail-Order Bride. Or getting
married again, to the first woman who asks me. Or taking on one or more
roommates. At 51. Just to have someone else in the house. Just to be able to
look over at someone who isn’t Sonya the pit bull and say, “Can you believe
this fucking weather?”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">They say it’ll take a while. They say you have to go through
all seven stages of grief. I didn’t do that when my father died, and it really
did a number on me—a number so big I’m having to eat nothing but cauliflower to
deal with it. And so I’m trying to allow myself to do that now. Every day, I
move a little bit further down that road, toward the next stage, like a
one-horse town on the highway. I won’t know until I get there if I can blow
through it, or if I need to stop and get gas, grab a shitty Allsup’s burrito to
eat and go to the bathroom, or walk the dog and stretch my legs, and all of
that other small town road tripping stuff you have to do.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Seven stages, like little Podunk towns. I have no way of
knowing which town I just blew through. Or which one is next. They all look
alike to me after a while. And if I’m not careful, the locals will kick my ass.
Well, they can try.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><p><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-60595538485269515892021-01-18T10:30:00.018-06:002021-01-18T10:30:04.052-06:00Health: the Big 5-0<p class="MsoNormal"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5tHiuO1xdoTtg1w0fwQ6lEp6aipxS-0AdEewNnKbWV6-G12eaBrrgNk8nv-SFfYa8so5OLzxHLzPiv17CF0S0LYlPU00teksuM9Zaou1klWxDVxQksMD8_2ZgxzTt7SjPv87AoyxQmOE/s2048/hail+freedonia.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="2048" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5tHiuO1xdoTtg1w0fwQ6lEp6aipxS-0AdEewNnKbWV6-G12eaBrrgNk8nv-SFfYa8so5OLzxHLzPiv17CF0S0LYlPU00teksuM9Zaou1klWxDVxQksMD8_2ZgxzTt7SjPv87AoyxQmOE/s320/hail+freedonia.png" /></a></div><div><br /></div>No, not my age, but still a pretty significant number: 50 is
the number of pounds I’ve lost since September. It’s a huge number, and I’m
excited to have reached it. My enthusiasm is tempered somewhat when I think
about that number representing only about a third of what I need to lose. But
hey, that’s a great start, and if I can keep everything on track, I ought to
reach that goal before the end of the year.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">That’s pretty amazing, if I do say so myself. This number is
an excellent milestone, but there is a more important one for me to hit, and
that’s going six months after Cathy’s passing without having a coronary event
of any kind. That grim milestone happens at the end of March. So far, so
good!</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, here’s hoping. I am well aware of what a pernicious
and sneaky bastard grief is, and my particular plague animal these days is
something I’m calling grief gnats. These are tiny mites, flecks of random
<span></span>gibberish, really, that interrupt me whenever I’m in danger of feeling like
myself again.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Driving, grocery shopping, working on the projectors,
whatever. I will be bopping alone, humming one of the 8-bar samples that occupy
space in my brain on the world’s worst spotify playlist, completely in the
zone, and my thoughts will stray in that way creative people can do one thing
and think another. I’ll get thirty seconds into that wonderful little attic
crawl space and then something will flash in my brain, just like in the movies,
a quick cut. Cathy in her hospital bed. Her tears of frustration. The sound
that came out of me at the end. It’ll only last an instant, flitting across my
eyes like a pest. But it’s enough.<p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I spiral back out of my mindset and take a few minutes to
compose myself. When I am breathing normally and not chiding myself like Crash
Davis swinging at a breaking ball, I make a valiant attempt to retrace my steps
and get back to where I was before I so rudely interrupted myself. Most days, I
can re-engage.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">The clinical name for it is survivor’s guilt. I didn’t think
I had any, but I kinda guess I do. These damn grief gnats. It’s like there’s a
switch that flips when I get to a certain cruising speed. A Wellness Circuit
Breaker. I’m cranking the Sonics and bee-bopping along, yowling out the lyrics
to “Have Love, Will Travel,” you know, like you do. And then my subconscious
sees that I am living and reminds me of what I had to endure last year. It’s
not fair. I say this with genuine resentment, since I do plenty of grieving without
any prompting from my subconscious. I even get the occasional extra bonus of
stepping on someone else’s land mine.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Last week I was buying something at the hardware store, and
the person at the counter asked me if I was a member of the rewards program. I
get the weekly flier, so, yeah. I gave him my phone number and I could
instantly see that wasn’t the right one by the look on his face. “Uh, I don’t…”
<br />
<br />
I cut him off. “It’s this one,” I said, giving him Cathy’s phone number. He
tickity-tacked on the computer and then smiled and said, “Cathy?”<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I started to deliver my standard joke in this fairly common
scenario about my parents having a really warped sense of humor, but I opened
my mouth and nothing came out. It just didn’t seem very funny. I put my head
down and said, “No...” and let me tell you that there is nothing more uncomfortable
in the world than a grown man crying in a hardware store. It’ll make water run
back up a spout, I shit you not. I stood there, and he stood there, and the
only thing missing from the chasm that formed between us was Evel Knievel
trying to jump over it in a rocket car.<br />
<br />
Thankfully the two managers, who knew the score, jumped in an took over the
transaction and on the fly changed the rewards name to mine in the computer so that
the incident wouldn’t repeat itself the next time I needed a can of WD-40 or a
tap and die. I got back in the car and made the drive home, trying to keep my
hands from shaking.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, what I’m getting at, basically, is I don’t need any
extra help being sad, grief gnats, thanks all the same. Between my own grief
hammers and the occasional clothesline everyone else leaves out for me to self-garotte
with, it’s a wonder I can get anything done. <o:p></o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-83664671625921193902020-11-21T20:20:00.003-06:002021-01-18T08:27:11.613-06:00Grief: "I Just Want Something I Can Ignore"<p> Rob says that in the film version of <i>High Fidelity</i>, one of the great Gen-X films of the 1990s, played by Gen-X's poster child, John Cusack. I love that quote. It's one of those things I wish I'd written, damn you, Nick Hornby. It's such a succinct thought that conveys something we don't often articulate about mass media; namely, that there is, underneath the Must Watch Shows and the Trending Twitter Topics, and the "No Spoilers" Fan-Bombs on Facebook, a second layer of media, movies, and music. It's the stuff that, for one reason or another, serves as a kind of white noise machine for our overly-stimulated simian brains. </p><p>Shows like M.A.S.H., for instance. That's a show everyone of a certain age remembered watching, both during prime time and syndication, for two or more decades. Now, well into our adulthood, M.A.S.H. is a show that is part of the glue of television. It's always on somewhere, and we've seen every episode multiple times. Even the episodes we think we didn't see...trust me, we've seen it. It's now a digital backdrop, visual Muzak, the kind of thing that can be on in the background during a family dinner and no one minds, because no one really pays that much attention to it, even the super serious episodes where Hawkeye cries or when Sidney tries to psychoanalyze someone.</p><p>Which leads me to <i>Gilmore Girls</i>. </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>I never watched the show when it was on the air, back in the early aughts. My knowledge of the program was based entirely on a handful of commercials I'd seen with the two leads looking wistfully at something, and then a house, an old person, and the show's logo. My impression was that the eponymous Gilmore Girls were sisters who had no other family and were living in a small town, trying their best at life and love. Again, I never watched one show. I knew people who were obsessed with the show, but from my cursory inspection, I concluded that I was not the target audience for the program and tuned all conversation out. <p>Fast forward two decades, and I am tethered in place by a 50-gallon garbage sack of emotions, feelings, and life damage. My brain is broken and it hurts to move it. I can't think about one damn thing without stepping into a bear-trap of memories that leaves me functionally paralyzed. But I can't turn my brain off, either, so the next best thing is drowning the bear-trap thoughts out with something light and innocuous. Comfort Food for my noggin. Something I can ignore. <br /><br />I can't watch anything recent, because it sets off cascading dominos of memories and thoughts. My only other go-to is to pick some stuff that Cathy never watched, because it wasn't ever really her thing. But somehow, <i>Breaking Bad</i> isn't going to be the soothing balm I need it to be. What to do, what to do. </p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjSxEw1OsUoxva-Ix6ESYlPA_0fUtgKJbwq9Knh9LOXTZ5yeN9vgJM-hyq5JHoByV8kmbW7K4Q87Wywr9V0tCMGtgJScgq8lMAcyyTeUzc3AgqVP7-jz3AHeYa1PURMdrCZ3kNj8BFiYA/s1500/GG+02.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1500" data-original-width="1484" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjSxEw1OsUoxva-Ix6ESYlPA_0fUtgKJbwq9Knh9LOXTZ5yeN9vgJM-hyq5JHoByV8kmbW7K4Q87Wywr9V0tCMGtgJScgq8lMAcyyTeUzc3AgqVP7-jz3AHeYa1PURMdrCZ3kNj8BFiYA/s320/GG+02.jpg" /></a></div>Netflix's screensaver obligingly offered up their <i>Gilmore Girls</i> revival mini-series, <i>A Year in the Life</i>. I realized that not only had I never seen one episode of this highly touted show, but that being a WB series about girls finding dates, there was no way I was going to trip over anything hazardous, or even dangerous. Finding out that the show's creator was the same woman who did <i>The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, </i>a show I adore, sealed the deal. Hell, the least I could do was watch the pilot, right? What could it hurt? <p></p><p>I was pleasantly surprised by the first episode for a number of reasons: I'd gotten the premise wrong, and at first glance, I would have been even LESS the target demographic for the show. But! There was something about Lorelai and Rory (mostly Lorelai, who was basically the same age as me in 2000) that was really compelling. Oh, sure, all of the fan sites love to cite the "rapid-fire dialogue," which is a bit of an overstatement, I think. The dialogue isn't just fast. Rather, it's the timing and delivery. I instantly "got" Lorelai because, in many ways, she's me. She speaks in movie quotes, and Rory, her daughter, age sixteen to Lorelai's thirty-two, keeps up with her pop culture-saturated mom, and gives as good as she gets. </p><p>That alone would have been enough, but the fictional town of Stars Hollow is also an idyllic oasis, full of quirky characters that never quite descend into parody, but definitely built upon the architecture set out by Mayberry and countless other shows where everyone knows everyone and just shakes their head ruefully at so-and-so's latest antics. As a town, it's a perfect Connecticut postcard, with four clearly delineated seasons, snow every Christmas, a seemingly endless parade of festivals and outdoor family fun (on the town square, of course!) and no matter how screwed up it all gets, somehow things manage to work themselves out in the end. </p><p>That's not what the show is about, of course. At its heart, <i>Gilmore Girls</i> is about the relationship between teenage Rory and her mother, Lorelai, and adult Lorelai and her estranged mother, Emily. See, when Lorelai got pregnant in high school, she toppled the filthyrich Gilmore house's plans and expectations for their daughter. Rather than have her life be controlled and predestined, she lit out, determined to make her own way in the world. That's how she ended up in a little tourist town, fifty miles away from her ancestral home, working as a maid at an old country inn. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefQ3A3MjcU8oWnwyWu4hga59Y2_Cvu-TSP8kMKqAWeD4p7KwyLUxMrSx_Fwmgz9V67X5xRmECtmXUHtVh-tfKY12xL8lflwpEFV8BU8-F5O4_sLmR5XIqLWu3pLH7Vz48P9yg7JjQbfM/s1400/GG+01.jpeg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1050" data-original-width="1400" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjefQ3A3MjcU8oWnwyWu4hga59Y2_Cvu-TSP8kMKqAWeD4p7KwyLUxMrSx_Fwmgz9V67X5xRmECtmXUHtVh-tfKY12xL8lflwpEFV8BU8-F5O4_sLmR5XIqLWu3pLH7Vz48P9yg7JjQbfM/w319-h240/GG+01.jpeg" width="319" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Three Generations.</i></td></tr></tbody></table>Now she's an adult, and she's managing that inn, and her daughter is wicked smart, like, private prep school, headed for Harvard-level smart. Rory just got accepted to one of those schools with uniforms, which would let her excel and really give her the leg up she needs to get into an Ivy league school. Only, there's the problem of tuition. The school ain't cheap. And Lorelai, despite doing well enough for a car and a house and food on the table, can't swing it. So she goes home, hat in hand, to ask her parents for a loan (that she'll pay back). Her parents, seeing their chance, agree to give her the money, with the proviso that she and Rory come to family dinner every Friday. <p></p><p>That's the pilot episode, in broad strokes. The show is about the multi-generational relationship between mother and daughter, old wounds and grievances, and about single women with agency making their way in the world, all of which is couched in an endless stream of conversations about 80s punk and new wave bands, cinema, both classic and trashy, and oblique literary references thrown about at random, as the metaphors occur to Lorelei and Rory. </p><p>Every kid in town reads, and not just Sweet Valley High books, either. Melville, Tolstoy, Kerouac, Bukowski, Proust...real books, and what's more, they like them. Rory's adorable best friend Lane has a musical knowledge that rivals 40 year record store clerks, and she's deep into <i>Mojo </i>magazine, for crying out loud. The band name checks are fast and heavy in the early seasons. </p><p></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGtZUF3ACOFwhuBgb8UyruGb3kFHoQk2j41rpxYb93e59_JB4le-YTYY3jS0WCQSO2OMAmYI359K50H_SIBfqU4KfDEnozB4GeO8h4G9l9l-ia4z6yFPiyMP2RSVJy_UYPshjWrcIQiAQ/s500/Gg+03.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="375" data-original-width="500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGtZUF3ACOFwhuBgb8UyruGb3kFHoQk2j41rpxYb93e59_JB4le-YTYY3jS0WCQSO2OMAmYI359K50H_SIBfqU4KfDEnozB4GeO8h4G9l9l-ia4z6yFPiyMP2RSVJy_UYPshjWrcIQiAQ/s320/Gg+03.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The Band, Hep Alien.</i> <br /></td></tr></tbody></table>When Lane decides to use her prodigious rock and roll knowledge to start a band, the only other guitarist they can scrounge up is an older guy...in his late 30s...who runs a sandwich shop because rock and roll doesn't pay the bills...played by Skid Row's Sebastian Bach. I shit you not. Sebastian Bach is in the show, and you know, he's not bad! <p></p><p>In the first season, Lorelai takes Rory and her prep school friends to see the fucking BANGLES in concert, and the episode is full of Bangles music. I mean, COME ON! I'm only human, here. Later in the series, Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore make cameos as buskers in town, in an episode jammed full of other alt rock legends. I don't know who this show was aimed at, but I hit me right between the eyes. </p><p>If <i>Film Threat</i> had still been around in 2001, I guarantee Rory would have been reading it in one scene, as well. The girls all speak to each other in the shorthand of pop culture. Ruth Gordon references, both from <i>Rosemary's Baby</i> and <i>Harold and Maude</i>? <i>Double Indemnity</i>? <i>Sid & Nancy? Chinatown?</i> Are you KIDDING me? </p><p>I thought I'd spend a comfortable hour. Put the show on, let it wash over me, done. Instead, I found myself crushing so hard on Lorelai. Here's a sample of how she describes herself and her thought process: </p><p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><blockquote>LORELAI: Because my brain is a wild jungle full of scary
gibberish. "I'm writing a letter. I can't write a letter. "Why can't
I write a letter? I'm wearing a green dress. "I wish I was wearing my blue
dress. "My blue dress is at the cleaners. "'The Germans wore gray.
You wore blue. ''Casablanca'. "'Casablanca' is such a good movie.
"'Casablanca.' The white house. Bush. "Why don't I drive a hybrid
car? I should drive a hybrid car. "I should really take my bicycle to
work. "Bicycle. Unicycle. Unitard. Hockey puck. Rattlesnake. Monkey,
monkey, underpants."</blockquote><o:p></o:p><p></p>What you should know is that's really how most creative people go through most days, myself included. In the parlance of our time, I've never felt so "seen" in all my life. Granted, as hard a crush as I had on Lorelai, she would have been a nightmare to date. I would have settled with just being friends with her. <br /><br />A good friend of mine warned me that after season 4, there were diminishing returns on the series, and that's largely true. However, one of the real advantages of binging on Netflix is that you don't have to wait 9 months for the resolution to the cliffhanger, refreshing fan message boards every ten minutes, and writing fanfic about what could be happening. You can get up, stretch, go to the bathroom, plop back down, and press play. So, while the second half of the seven season series veers (and later carooms) into more soapy, weirdly melodramatic territory (they broke the rule, see: Sam and Diane can never get together), I kept watching the show. <p></p><p>Every time I'd get overwhelmed by something in my life, I'd escape to Stars Hollow and see what those wacky townspeople were up to. I'd tune back in to see if this is the episode where Emily was going to say to Lorelai that she did a good job of raising Rory. I'd delight whenever Lorelai's father, played by veteran character actor and certified National Treasure Edward Herrmann, would get an episode with Rory, as the two of them were able to bond over their disinterest in contributing to the feud between Emily and Lorelai. </p><p>Some days I'd watch one episode. Maybe two. Others, I'd find my Netflix account playing bartender, asking me if I wanted to keep watching the show. Listen, asshole, you just cue up the next one, okay? I'll tell YOU when I've had enough. </p><p>It was nice. I didn't have to think about anything, except maybe which oblique reference Lorelai or Rory made about <i>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</i> or the band names Lane dropped as being essential for anyone wanting to know anything about music. The series also stars Melissa McCarthy as Lorelai's best friend, Sookie, the chef. She pulls off a physical comedy bit in the pilot that is one of the more beautifully timed pieces of comedy I've seen in a long time. Also, for you genre geeks out there, Sean Gunn (Rocket Racoon) plays the town oddball (great casting, by the way) and Milo Ventimiglia (Peter Petrelli from <i>Heroes</i>) plays one of the bad boy boyfriends of Rory's, who also just happens to have great taste in books and music, as well. Oh, to be young again in Stars Hollow. </p><p>This past week was particularly hard, for a number of reasons. I found myself watching more and more episodes of <i>Gilmore Girls </i>in order to cope. I was on the stream, Jack. I had a real problem. A Lauren Graham-sized monkey on my back. Season seven whizzed by in a blur, and I remember vaguely about some of my friends not liking how the series ended. Again, one of the advantages of waiting twenty years to start something is that I didn't have to wait ten years to watch the four part mini-series, <i>Gilmore Girls: a Year in the Life.</i> </p><p>Be careful what you wish for. </p><p>In the ten years' time between the series ending and the Netflix revival, we lost <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001346/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1" target="_blank">Ed Herrmann</a>, who was one of the best things about the show. He was a great character actor (you know who he is; click the link for a refresher). The show's creators and writers wisely decided to incorporate that into the mini-series. We find all three generations of Gilmore Girls not dealing well with the death of Richard Gilmore. Emily's fifty year marriage is gone, and she has no identity anymore. Lorelai lost the only person who could be a real bulwark between her and her mother. And Rory list her grandfather, who she grew very close to during the original series. They are all dealing with their loss differently.</p><p>I bet you can see where this is going. </p><p>Lorelai begs her mother to see a therapist. Emily ropes Lorelai into going with her, and the episode where they are trying to make that work is vintage <i>Gilmore Girls</i>. When Emily predictably bails on therapy, Lorelai gets a solo session with the therapist, and she describes her father in the ICU at the hospital, after a massive heart attack, and how he was in and out of consciousness, and how his last words (aimed at the nurses) were "get the hell out of here!" and she chuckles at the memory and then suddenly, I felt like I'd been kicked in the chest. </p><p>I couldn't remember what Cathy's last words were. I couldn't hear them. All I could summon up was her breathing at the very end, how ragged and scary it sounded. It felt like I was being stabbed, over and over. I couldn't catch my breath. I wanted to inhale so I could scream, but all that came out where these dry, gulping sobs. </p><p>Somehow I managed to dial my therapist and she was able to talk me down. Once I got calm, I remembered the last thing Cathy said to me. It wasn't anything profound or awe-inspiring. She whispered, "I love you, honey." That was it. The next time I saw her, she had stopped talking. She could look at me, and when she did, I saw the recognition in her eyes. It was brief, just a couple of seconds, but she saw me with her, holding her hand, fighting back the tears that now came gushing out of me that day with the <i>Gilmore Girls</i> mini-series paused and me howling into my phone while Meagan calmly guided me to where I was breathing more or less normally again. </p><p>I've never had a freak out like that before. It scared me. I didn't know what was happening. I suppose it was a panic attack, but it didn't feel like one. It felt like I had rage I couldn't control, like Bruce Banner before he turns into the Hulk. It was frankly terrifying, this sudden and complete lack of control. I was embarrassed and ashamed of myself.</p><p>I just wanted something to ignore. I wanted to ignore my grief. Turns out, it's not going to let me. </p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-74581567886025046012020-11-16T09:05:00.054-06:002020-11-16T09:05:00.181-06:00Aftermath: One Month<p> Cathy died a month ago today. As hard as the last two years have been, and this includes my own hospitalization and other assorted health problems, and as rough as this year has been, and as painful as the last four months have been, the last thirty days have been some of the most challenging days of my life. I went from the funeral straight to not having a vehicle for three weeks. The enforced shut-in was both oddly comforting and ridiculously stressful, in that it made me feel even more helpless an ineffectual. Running the gauntlet between our wedding anniversary, my birthday, Halloween, and Cathy's birthday sure as hell didn't help matters one little bit. </p><p>All this to say, I am grateful that friends and family don't blithely ask me how I'm doing. Ordinarily I would be loathe to bypass the social niceties (the hi's and how are you's), but my patience is worn tissue paper thin right now, and things that ordinarily wouldn't bother me a bit are sending me into a red rage. But I can't yell in a stranger's face, "I feel like I'm trying to play the trombone with only one arm! How do you <i>THINK</i> I'm doing today!?"</p><p>That's how I feel: like I've been amputated. And phantom limb syndrome for me involves walking around the house like a mental patient, talking to thin air and anxiously waiting for an answer that will never come. </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Dinner time is the worst. We made a point of having dinner together every night, no matter how busy we were. Family time. We'd download our days on each other and talk about whatever was bugging us. Even if we weren't at the dining room table, we always ate together, unless one of us was out of town or out of commission. <p></p><p>Now I sit at the dining room table, in the flickering light of a prayer candle, sobbing into my food. That was Cathy's thing; she loved candles, for mood, for ambiance, for intimate settings, for holidays. Some of our date nights were put on pause while she spent five minutes running around the house, lighting so many candles. I never minded, because she loved them. But I never participated in any candle lighting rituals, unless is was to sniff a pillar candle's butt to see if I liked the smell. </p><p>I light a candle for dinner, every night, now. She comes to me in the flame, and for just a few seconds, I feel like she's at the table with me. I bow my head, and talk to her, and I cry until I can't anymore. </p><p>I am inconsolable at night. This place doesn't feel like it belongs to me; rather, I don't feel like I belong here. I don't feel like I belong anywhere. </p><p>Some days are better than others. I wake up with some tasks to do, and I methodically complete them and cross them off the list. Those are good days. I feel like myself, doing the things I'm supposed to do. Other days, I can't open the laptop without getting kicked in the chest. Songs, smells, memories, random thoughts, you name it. There is nothing too small or trivial that won't derail my train of thought and bring me to my knees like I've been clotheslined. </p><p>It's exhausting. It feels like a low-grade panic attack. Certain memories keep replaying in my head. A miasma of sadness and helplessness. Her last night. Finding out that she would have to go into hospice. Feeling that sense of hope falling out from under me like a trapdoor. The people in hospice talking to her like she was an old woman. All of that stuff comes pouring into me, filling me up with rage and woe and souring my stomach and I have to either scream or cry or punch thin air until it boils off and I can function again. <br /><br />How do you <i>think</i> I'm doing? </p><p>I'm making lists of things to do, both short and long term goals. I'm meditating. I'm self-medicating. I'm journaling like a Beat Poet. I'm trying, really hard, to engage with friends and family when they call. I'm taking a daily inventory of my pains, cataloging my grief in scribbled tear drops in blue ball-point pen ink, red exclamation points, and black reminders of things to do, admonishments to stay focused, notes about how I felt that day. No one asked me to do this. I'm just doing it. Because I can't think of anything else to do. <br /><br /></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMenlQxryQWVH_i3PzRBmCA-oXmmTNyV-6AOoQaQMsnQePh1E_HGdyNwIGXeifvusAevVzsLpP2rBW43eLHeCD8rbZzNC_hcq0Q07QVJsdZT2r3xMAp0FzjMZ68Otib0u1EnF4LhVhOo/s2048/The+urn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1624" data-original-width="2048" height="317" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivMenlQxryQWVH_i3PzRBmCA-oXmmTNyV-6AOoQaQMsnQePh1E_HGdyNwIGXeifvusAevVzsLpP2rBW43eLHeCD8rbZzNC_hcq0Q07QVJsdZT2r3xMAp0FzjMZ68Otib0u1EnF4LhVhOo/w400-h317/The+urn.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />Somehow, I'm getting work done. Not all of it. Not well. But small projects are being completed. The theater is operating again, even if no one in Vernon has caught on (or wants to brave the Pandemic Hellscape). <p></p><p>I have a lot of help, from friends, family, staff. People sending me really thoughtful gifts to help me with my ongoing health and wellness. And it's not all falling by the wayside, either. To date, I've lost 30 pounds in two months, and a combined 18 inches across the expanse of my manatee-esque body. Most of the weight lost has been in the lower abdomen, groin, and legs. This has really had a positive impact on my movement and ability to get around. It's been very encouraging, to say the least. Also, in the TMI department: the scrotal edema is finally shrinking. My junk is getting smaller, and I'm thrilled. I may be the only man in the history of the world to ever feel that way, but right now, I'm taking any victory I can. </p><p>I have a not-so-arbitrary goal of May 15th as the real health and wellness check-up and the the first, largest hurdle to clear; simply survive the first six month of being a widower. Those are the most crucial months for me, due to the extra stress. Light a candle and say a prayer for me, if you're so inclined. <br /><br />It's going to be rough for a while. I don't have a map, but I do have a direction. </p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-41144314362032073542020-10-25T11:58:00.000-05:002020-10-25T11:58:07.101-05:00Cancer: Aftermath<p class="MsoNormal">I feel
like I have a lot to say, but I don't really want to voice any of it. Instead,
I'll just dump my brain out and we'll see how it goes. </p><p class="MsoNormal">The
funeral was nice, insofar as funerals go. I think everyone honored Cathy with
their words and their expressions of love and admiration for her. Several
friends showed up, unannounced, just to pay their respects and be present. Most
of my family was here, too. I managed to mostly keep it together. The church
was kind enough to post the video on their Facebook page for the many people
who could not attend. If you want to see it, <a href="https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/8493153323136761949/4114431436203207354" target="_blank">it's still up</a>.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="background: white;">For my birthday this year, my middle name was Duncan, because
I Yo-Yo'ed up and down all day. Low points included missing my wife, and
figuring out that my car wouldn't work and making plans to have it towed on
Monday. Because, you know, insult to injury, and all of that nonsense.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">Thanks to everyone who wished me happy birthday, and also to
everyone who didn't, because there wasn't anything particularly happy about the
day. You were quite right. <br />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">But I tried. I really did. And I'm going to keep on trying,
because otherwise, what's the use? Don't answer that, it's rhetorical.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
After the last two weeks, preceded by the last four months, my chest is
starting to unclench and my breathing is back to normal. Somewhat. I keep
getting into crying jags. I am still pacing the house. I'm still anxious, and
scared. And sad. Just so heartbroken. I feel her absence, humming in the air
like a high note that vibrates my sternum.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
I'm going to look into grief counseling. After I fix the car. And pay the
outstanding bills. And sign back up for health insurance (we were dropped.) And
a half-dozen other things that suddenly need my attention. Somewhere in all of
this, I need to have a real serious Come-to-Jesus meeting with myself about
what happens next.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
I have been incredibly lucky to have known from the age of 15 what I wanted to
do with myself. And then I went and did it. Not a lot of people have that kind
of clarity of vision, and I know it's a gift. But for the last twenty years, my
goals have been intertwined with Cathy's goals. Oh, we had our side projects,
too, but overall, we were always working on advancing our own desires and
dreams as we helped the other person do the same.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
Now I'm alone. And I have no idea what I want to do. For the first time since
the age of fifteen, I have no direction, no heading, and no hand on the rudder.
I hate the way this feels. I'll be taking some time off for a bit, so that I
might figure out what the next phase of my life is going to be with the label
"widower" attached to me like a barnacle I can't scrape off.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
I'm tired. I'm tired of crying. I'm tired of getting hit with sudden waves of
sadness, whack, in the face, like a creme pie made from depression and despair.
<o:p></o:p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">I can't get her deathbed out of my head. I close my eyes and I
see it. I see her, arranged, eyes closed, and I can smell her skin and feel her
hair on my cheek when I cradled her in my arms and sobbed. I have twenty years
of great memories, good times, happy occasions, and all I can think about is
her final minutes.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
I'm not ready to accept this new state of being. It's still too raw. Too
maddening. I was afraid of this happening. Alone in this house, pacing around
like a caged animal, alternating between repeating lists of things I have to
do, over and over, and crying out for my wife in an empty room , because I
don't think I can do it all by myself.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
Maybe I'm just wallowing. I don't want to let go of the pain, because I don't
want to let go of her. I'm just so angry at everything right now. Things are
going to move on with or without me, and I know that. This will likely fade
into a dull ache. I'll have an epiphany or two and reorganize (and maybe even
reinvent) myself and as time marches on, so shall I, older, wiser, ready for
what comes next.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
Eventually.</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;">
Right now, I think I want to just wallow. And I don't want you to see me like
this. <o:p></o:p></p><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p><div class="" data-block="true" data-editor="4cq85" data-offset-key="705n-0-0" style="background-color: white; color: #050505; font-family: "Segoe UI Historic", "Segoe UI", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 15px; white-space: pre-wrap;"></div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-27927264055043642972020-10-16T17:22:00.007-05:002020-10-17T09:52:42.883-05:00Cancer: An Obituary <p></p><p class="MsoNormal"></p><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIP95aX75cxwvOY4OUIZw3jQGrrRJ1vT7xl8gP46vtcSeiI5WpM9vXhWZolTw8nqiJu1fZXp8e5G-Z4RG0WxYnOuqJSUbjXt0fzIYy9iG1V_BPc-1qFG-ZAAUEugv5l7XCJAVSyenzvcA/s1280/Cathy+Obit+Picture++01.jpg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1280" data-original-width="960" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIP95aX75cxwvOY4OUIZw3jQGrrRJ1vT7xl8gP46vtcSeiI5WpM9vXhWZolTw8nqiJu1fZXp8e5G-Z4RG0WxYnOuqJSUbjXt0fzIYy9iG1V_BPc-1qFG-ZAAUEugv5l7XCJAVSyenzvcA/s320/Cathy+Obit+Picture++01.jpg" /></a></div><br />Cathy Day lost her fight with ovarian cancer on 10/15/2020.
She was 56 years old. <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Catherine Day was born in Dallas, Texas, the daughter of
Richard Day and Diane More, and attended Vernon High School. After graduating
in 1983, she attended the University of Texas, where she received a master’s
degree in Speech Language Pathology. She taught in various public and private
schools in California, Maryland, and Texas, helping learning-disabled children
to read and speak, for two decades. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>Cathy was a lifelong student of the theater and she acted in
plays throughout her school years. As an adult, she was active in community
theater in Austin, appearing in Different Stages productions, and later with
the Violet Crown Radio Players, of which she was a founding member. In Wichita
Falls, Cathy was proud to call the Backdoor Theatre her creative home and she
appeared in several productions, including “Sordid Lives” which earned her a
Genesius Award for Best Actress in a Non-Musical Role, and “Dirty Laundry,” where
she co-starred with her husband, Mark Finn.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Cathy met Mark in the Summer of 2000 and they were married
in October, 2003. They later moved to Vernon as co-owners of the Vernon Plaza
Theater where they lived and worked. Cathy was a member of First Presbyterian
Church of Vernon and was active in the community as a founding member of
Leadership Vernon, The Vernon Main Street Program, and the Vernon Farmer’s
Market. She always had a smile and a laugh for everyone she met, and the memory
of her kindness, her gentle nature and her warmth will be a comfort to her
mother Diane; her step-father Pat More; her sisters: Susan, Barbara, and Erin;
her brother Mike; her many nieces and nephews, and her husband, who survive her,
but will never forget her. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p>In lieu of flowers, the family has requested giving a donation
to the Backdoor Theater in Wichita Falls in her name.</p><p class="MsoNormal"><o:p></o:p></p>My thoughts are below. Fair warning: this is uncomfortable, and I don't recommend you reading past the break unless you want my raw, unfiltered take on all of this. <p></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Let's be clear about one thing. This wasn't a "battle" with cancer. It was a mugging. It was a street fight. It snuck up on us and took a shot when we weren't looking. It hit below the belt. It sucker-punched. It kicked us when we were down. And in the end, when it looked like we were getting the upper hand, it cheated. It cut off her food supply so she would starve to death. It couldn't take her out the old fashioned way, so it starved her, like what the Germans did to the city of Leningrad in World War II. It wasn't a battle. It was a protracted siege. </p><p>Cathy had been getting worse, degree by inexorable degree. Every day brought minute changes, thump, thump, thump, like a bowling ball rolling slowly down stairs. First she lost her leg strength. Then her arms. Then her face and mouth. It became harder for her to speak. She was tired, unable to really ever get her strength back. And the cancer, free of treatment, just went to town and ran rampant. </p><p>The irony of it all was too painful. What it did to her was horrific. She had taken care of herself her whole life, and what the cancer did was strip her of the things she most loved. She couldn't eat. She had difficulty speaking. Hospice care is all about helping people to die with dignity. And this is nothing against Hospice of Wichita Falls, either. They were outstanding and the staff all came to love Cathy. She got great attention and loving, gentle care for the duration. </p><p>But they didn't know Cathy, the woman who lived for fajitas and margaritas. Cathy, who liked my mother's banana pudding more than anyone in the world. Cathy, who loved my cooking and ate heartily and well, whenever possible. With the N-G tube in her nose, what liquid she could drink that didn't get digested was suctioned back out so it wouldn't make her throw up. <br /><br />Cathy, who taught disabled kids how to speak, to read, to write, and was great at it, for twenty years. Who acted pretty much her whole life, using her voice to make people feel and believe. She was so weak, she couldn't make a complete sentence without having to stop in the middle to catch her breath. And she couldn't move her mouth and articulate without great physical effort. Robbed of her ability to really express herself. <br /><br />Worst of all, cancer took her smile. </p><p>She tried her hardest, but the muscles were just not capable. She smiled with her eyes, though, and you could see when she recognized you. For a while.<br /><br />This week was especially difficult. I'd finally figured out the only way to pull this off was for me to drive to Wichita Falls in the evening, spend the night with her, and drive back in the morning and try to get as much done as I could before it was time to drive back. It was terrible, but it was the least terrible option available to me. </p><p>Ordinarily I'd be using that time to cry, yell, and scream. But the death of Eddie Van Halen last week spawned a tribute channel on Sirius and I have to tell you, it may have saved my life. You can't be sad when Van Halen is playing. You just can't. It's biologically impossible. And all of the celebrity guests they had who picked their favorite Van Halen songs had about 85% the same songs on all their lists--and they were my favorites, too. As unlikely as it seemed, and as incongruent as it sounds, I was able to get there and back on a more even keel, thanks to David Lee Roth's howls and shrieks. <br /><br />In truth, it helped to keep me from dwelling on what cancer had done to my beautiful wife; how it altered her body, painfully distorting her and warping her. She was in great pain. It hurt to move her. It hurt to not move her. She endured it, until it was too much, and then she'd cry out. At the end of it, they had doubled her morphine, and she was still needing more. </p><p>Last night was brutal. Prior to Wednesday, Cathy had rallied on Monday and Tuesday, asking to speak to different people. She wanted to see folks one last time, I think. Her breathing was labored, and she had trouble with it. I can't believe she held on this long. She just didn't want to go. I think she would have stayed here, in excruciating pain, if we had asked her to.</p><p>But we didn't. We all told her she could leave when she was ready. No one wanted to see her suffer. One of the last things she said to me before she had trouble talking was, "I don't want to wake up." That was last week. </p><p>The staff at the Hospice center really got to know all of us, and they were so gentle and kind to Cathy, who was their favorite, even though they are not supposed to have them. Even sick, and in pain, she was still Cathy. She smiled, she asked after them, and was her engaging, considerate self through all of this. During their shift change, at 7 PM, they all gathered in the room, twelve of them, I think. They joined hands, encircled Cathy's bed, and sang "Amazing Grace" in sweet and earnest voices. Afterward, they kissed her face and told her they loved her. It was the most wonderful thing, and a memory I will treasure. <br /></p><p>There were seven of us family members in the room when she passed. When her breathing slowed down, they called me over to her. I held her hand and called out to her. Prior to that, they had been playing Bruce Springsteen. Her breath, stopping and starting for hours, suddenly stopped...and she shortly exhaled, and I felt something let go. I called for the nurse. Bruce was singing in a live concert, and he'd just started "Born to Run," I swear to God. I sang it to her as Roger, the nurse, listened for a heartbeat. There was none. She was gone. </p><p>My sweet wife was finally free of all this horrible shit and misery, none of which she deserved. We were supposed to die at the age of ninety, in our sleep, peacefully. Not gasping for breath, unable to hold her head up, robbed of her speech and her body, her strength trickling out of her through a number of humiliating tubes. The last two years took such a toll on us. But Cathy endured it all. She grinned, and she bore it. She had doubts, and many fears. There were freak out sessions, and lots of crying. But then we put on the grown-up pants and shouldered on, lifted up and sometimes carried along by the well-wishes, support, and loving prayers of so many. <br /><br />I'm glad this is over. It was too much, at times, to bear, and we both had our setbacks. But Cathy understood me, and what I needed, and she made our life together during all of this as "normal" as possible. She would make me a cup of coffee in the morning with the French press (she would have herbal tea). We cooked for each other. We did some social events, when she was feeling strong enough. We even made a couple of road trips. As much as we could do that was still "us," we did it. And we said everything we needed to say to each other. <br /><br />So I have no regrets. I've got a lot of everything else, including unfathomable rage, deep crushing emptiness, unquenchable resentment for a disease that still has no medical answer for it, and twenty years of fun and laughter to sift through into a bunch of "greatest hits" montages for my mental Man-Cave. But I have no regrets, and so far as we were concerned, neither did she. <br /><br />Rest in peace, Cathy. Thank you for everything. <br /><br /></p><p><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-27980291749362916492020-10-02T13:16:00.000-05:002020-10-02T13:16:22.535-05:00Cancer: End Stage<p>I don't know how much more of this I can take. </p><p>Cathy took a turn this week, and it was bad. Last Sunday, I worked up the energy to come into the room, brightly, like I've been doing; I don't want her to see my anguish, and I know I'm not hiding it as well as I think I am. We've cried together enough. I'm trying to be a comfort to her. <br /><br />Ordinarily, she greets me with some variation of "There you are! Finally!" However, when I came in on Sunday, she was asleep. I let her be. She didn't wake up until around 9 pm. She looked surprised to see me, but couldn't really talk. I'd seen this look in her eyes before, and immediately thought about the double-up of medicines. </p><p>But that wasn't it. She was just getting worse. Slower, weaker, more confused. </p><p>Someone is always with her overnight; me or one of her sisters. We're all suspending our lives to help Cathy at the end of hers. I made plans to go on Thursday, because the doctor said we are getting close to the end. </p><p>When I walked into the room, she was asleep again. This whole time, I've been able to see Cathy in and amongst the tubes and the gowns and the sickness. I could still see her, the person I've spent two decades with. </p><p>Last night, all I could see was the disease and what it has done to my beautiful wife. The swelling, the discoloration, the distortion of her skin, the skin she diligently cared for her whole life. It was too much. I've been holding open this gaping wound over my heart since July and I didn't think I could rip it open any wider, but I was wrong about that. I cried over her, quietly, as she slept. </p><p>She's been having pain when she uses the bathroom, and it's very likely a urinary tract infection, which can cause fogginess. They put her on antibiotics with a shrug; it couldn't hurt, they said. But they are all certain it's disease progression, a euphemism I've come to despise. </p><p>She moaned in her sleep, all night. As usual, they woke her up every two hours to see if she was resting. I couldn't help ease her pain. I could do nothing, except wipe her mouth when she coughed up phlegm. She assured me I was doing a good job. It's harder and harder to understand her. <br /><br />This morning, she was a little more alert, relatively speaking. They gave her the scheduled meds, including the antibiotic, crushed up, and mixed with pudding, Michael Scott style. She didn't eat last night. I just want her pain to go away. I don't want her to die confused and in pain. </p><p>Before I left, I put on <i>Downton Abbey</i> for her. She was watching it as I packed up to leave. There was a scene where someone turned on the phonograph and asked for a dance. Others followed suit, like one does in <i>Downton Abbey</i>. I leaned over to kiss her forehead and tell her I love her and she said, "I need you do do something for me." </p><p>"Okay, sure, what'cha need?"<br /><br />"I want you to tell the doctors..." she drifted away for a second. <br /><br />"Tell the doctors what?" I prompted. <br /></p><p>She snapped back and locked eyes with me. "Tell the doctors I've forgotten how to dance. They need to teach me. I forgot how."<br /></p><p>Somehow I managed to smile from behind the curtain of tears and said, "I'll teach you, baby. It's easy. I know all the steps. It's going to be all right."<br /><br />She nodded, satisfied, and tried to touch my hand. "Don't cry, honeybee." Her arm was swollen and she had trouble moving it. I took her hand instead. <br /><br />I don't know how much more of this I can take. </p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZGb2-DYQVyQSqSLPy7Byc8CL0BZq2lJ6JDAMkYa7QIbsIg1xWt8N3B1TsomLC5O171WcTdEKZaH3Xi6R2vtEPBusjaUi4Ot62YfQ9tOcN2z6vIIgQoUUOJCodnoEi1y7GzAQ1M-0v4w/s2048/IMGP0481.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhXZGb2-DYQVyQSqSLPy7Byc8CL0BZq2lJ6JDAMkYa7QIbsIg1xWt8N3B1TsomLC5O171WcTdEKZaH3Xi6R2vtEPBusjaUi4Ot62YfQ9tOcN2z6vIIgQoUUOJCodnoEi1y7GzAQ1M-0v4w/s320/IMGP0481.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">2010. She would hate me sharing this picture,<br />but I think it's beautiful. This is Cathy.</td></tr></tbody></table><br />Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-70464007976588466192020-09-18T14:08:00.001-05:002020-09-18T14:08:49.341-05:00Health: Weight Loss, Week 1<p>We’ll start with the good news: I have been on a really
aggressive and restrictive diet for the past week. It’s been…an adjustment…to
say the least, but I have lost 8 lbs and 5 inches in that week.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">And before you say anything, let me stop you right here and
say, “I know.” This is not my first rodeo. I know all about it. Your advice is,
and I say this with no acrimony whatsoever, not welcome. You can’t help me. No one
can help me. The only person that can help me is me. And I’m doing it this way
because that’s the only way that I can move forward at this time. So, 8 lbs and
5 inches.</p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p class="MsoNormal">I learned a few things about myself that I thought I’d share
with you. In chronological order, here it is:</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">1. The Body-Mass Index is bullshit. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">You know about the BMI? The chart that looks at your height
and your weight and tells you how fat you are, and what your ideal weight
should be? I’m sure it was established in the 1950s when everyone ate the same
things and food was all real and not chemically-laden, but even still…according
to the BMI, I should ideally weight 202 lbs. <br />
<br />
Look, I weighed 202 pounds in the sixth grade, okay? I’ve always looked at that
number and thought, “there’s no WAY I can get down to that.”</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Well, we did some calculations and some body scanning prior to
the diet, and I found out that my lean muscle mass (the bones, muscles, organs—the
stuff that is essentially me) is 225 lbs. That means that if I had zero body fat,
I would weigh about 230 lbs. A much more realistic number for me to hit is now
looking like somewhere between 235 and 250 lbs. That’s more doable (in my head)
and far less daunting. <br />
<br />
2. I stress eat WAY more than I thought<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Sure, everyone says that, but no, you don’t understand. It’s
gotten bad. This year, for some reason, has been really triggering for me.
Probably the allergies. Yeah, that’s it. Anyway…I realized this when I was
waiting in line at Walmart last Saturday to pay for some felt tip pens. The
self-checkout is shut down because of The Covid, and so I was behind a couple
who had a basket full of shit and had broken said basket into three separate
transactions. They were being helped by a woman with nothing but time on her
hands. Boop…Boop…Boop…Boop…</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Every time she slowly and carefully swiped an item from the
conveyer belt and into a plastic sack, a little piece of my soul died and flaked
off and fell to the floor. In desperation, I cast my gaze about, looking for
something to stick the pieces back together and came down with “I’m hungry, I
need a candy bar.”<br />
<br />
Then I stopped myself, because I wasn’t hungry. And I damn sure didn’t “need” a
candy bar. This diet is not one that allows for snacks outside of the
designated eating times, so I was forced to wait in line and stew in my own
juices and realize that anytime I have a hole in my chest from anxiety or
stress, I will stuff it with a burrito much in the same way a combat field
medic shoves gauze into a bullet wound to staunch the bleeding. Only I’m not
bleeding. I’m just an emotional wreck.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Food has always been a hug for me, going way back. When I
didn’t get what I wanted, I pivoted to food. This was a bad thing, and I’m
embarrassed that it went on as long as it did, and that it has done so much damage
to me. That’s what all this is about; reversing the damage and living a
healthier life. <br />
<br />
Now I eat every three hours. I have special astronaut food designed to facilitate
ketosis. I have supplements. I drink water. A lot of water. A gallon plus every
day. If I’m not eating, or about to eat, I am peeing. It’s going to be like
this for a while. I need to lose a lot of weight, as quickly as possible
without causing myself any harm.</p>
<p class="MsoNormal">It just means that all of the emotions and feelings I’ve
been papering over with tortillas are now on my sleeve and very easy to get to.
This week has been a nightmare. But hey, at least I wasn’t hungry during all of
the crying and wailing I did. <br />
<br />
Meanwhile, Cathy continues to decline, bit by bit. This weekend is going to be
a real problem for me. She is having a get-together in Hospice to say goodbye
to some close friends and family, while she still can. On the one hand, she is
moving towards acceptance of her situation and that’s a good thing for her, because
it cuts down on her day-to-day anxiety. On the other hand, I have enough
daggers in my chest without walking into the axe throwing arena, and that’s
what this will be. I need to be there, and I will be, with Sonya, the wonder
pooch. But hearing Cathy saying goodbye to people is exactly the kind of thing
that will have me chewing off my own arm until I can get to a cheeseburger. And
that cheeseburger will not materialize, so I’m going to be unhinged for the
weekend. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">I appreciate everyone who continues to check in on me and
ask about Cathy. I just don’t have anything good to say right now. <o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-47249912787046549782020-09-04T08:30:00.012-05:002020-09-04T08:30:10.061-05:00Hospice: Our New Normal<p> Cathy has been in Hospice for five weeks now. It feels like forever. I am struggling with watching Cathy's gradual shutting down. She is at the point now where she is bedridden; her leg muscles can't support her and so any scenery changes she wants to make are done with nurses and a wheelchair. Her short term memory continues to fade, as well. People, faces, events and things are all crystal clear to her. But she can't keep up with her phone. In bed. She can't quite remember from day-to-day how to work it, either. She learns it in the morning, but by the evening, she needs help again. Hospice keeps telling me it's "disease progression." It's getting on my nerves. She's not sick, she's hungry. <br /></p><span><a name='more'></a></span><p>Her body is still alive; it wants to be. It's running the best it can on such limited calories. They give her food, and then two hours later, they have to pump most of it back out. She's not getting even all of the protein that's in the meager amount of food she's drinking. So she gets a little weaker every day as her body tries to pull fuel in from somewhere and unfortunately, it's taking it out of her muscles. <br /><br />She used to not be able to sit through a two hour movie. She had to get up, move around, always be doing something. Now she needs help going to the bathroom. I know she's angry and frustrated, but she doesn't yell or scream. She's always apologetic when she calls them in for help. I have to remind her to work through her feelings with the councilor who visits every day. Otherwise, she'd ask them how <i>their </i>day was. So, she's still Cathy, as much as she possibly can be. </p><p>Me? I am a shotgun shell full of bile and broken glass. I have no place to put my inexhaustible rage, and so I have made the decision to stay as far away from people as I can for the time being. Also, I'm limiting my Internet exposure, for reasons I shouldn't have to explain. Finally, I am so in fight-or-flight mode that I have fallen back on my old failsafe of compartmentalizing. Yes, it's <i>compartmentalizing</i>, that wonderful coping mechanism handed down from father to son throughout the ages. Here's how it works:<br /><br />Picture a paper bag in your mind. Now, from inside your own head, scream into that paper bag like you are falling into the abyss. When you're out of breath, simply gather up the bag and drop it into a box marked "shit I don't want to process right now" and put that box on the metal shelf in your mental garage. That's it! Now there's no more crying! No more yelling at the television! Displaced aggression? Forget it about it. It's compartmentalization! And it's good for current events, inexplicable tragedies, and any kind of trauma you've not processed as an adult. Compartmentalization: Try it Today!<br /><br />I'm not kidding. I can't seem to function without running into Cathy-Thoughts, and it derails me for up to an hour sometimes. Working the business without her seems particularly invasive, a betrayal on my part as I try to make sense of where we are in this ongoing fustercluck with regard to re-opening the theater. I have to do my part, and then think about what Cathy would be doing, and it feels like I'm writing a letter with someone else's hand. I hate it. <br /><br />This New Normal is just that; this is our life right now, and it's effectively on hold. While it's on hold, I have decided to get a head start now on making sure I don't follow my wife six months later. Starting next week, I will be on a medically supervised diet to get this weight off as quickly and as safely as possible. My health has gotten worse since all of this started, and I am frankly worried that I am setting myself up for a major problem that I can't come back from. Also, Cathy is worried about me and has mobilized several of her friends and family to check on me to make sure I don't wind up face-down in a bucket of bean dip.</p><p>I am telling you this because I will be talking and posting about this often, and I don't want this to seem like it's coming out of the blue. In truth, this has been on the table since 2018, before our world became Oncology 101. l don't regret one second of it; I made the right call. But I also put my own health at risk and I can't do that anymore. Especially not now. <br /><br />I know some of you are worried about me, too, and I appreciate it. That's why I am doing it. You must be exhausted worrying about us. It's gone on for long enough. This has been a long time coming. I need a distraction, and y'all need a little peace of mind, and this kills two birds with one stone. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu-mDtDSWUh9aJFQwVM8UwgS0V10k-gKENdYmQImGmtToXSl-HGDQkDPyNO_vpXtrIts2uo6M22R4rB0OL7TYqkVV4_uQZ_1FuRHwYwWc8ooiITiY9aYg5DKC4rymZzhefVa5ffaM3EsE/s2048/08+the+girls+at+home.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1530" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu-mDtDSWUh9aJFQwVM8UwgS0V10k-gKENdYmQImGmtToXSl-HGDQkDPyNO_vpXtrIts2uo6M22R4rB0OL7TYqkVV4_uQZ_1FuRHwYwWc8ooiITiY9aYg5DKC4rymZzhefVa5ffaM3EsE/s320/08+the+girls+at+home.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The girls, chilling at home, years ago. <br /></td></tr></tbody></table><br /><p><br /></p><p><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-24521422519188201712020-08-17T09:00:00.019-05:002020-08-17T09:00:04.209-05:00Cancer: Hospice, Week 4<p> (Warning: Language)</p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxa0DvyZm9qJ7shPi5v-g3MGllYgGMRGFLePzoWPq2_FCX6-5KPQu6VOV-6PJL_PhAtqhcrmoqux4VtJVbU22buCSmLi0oa9R047k7-o3tuNLVAEz3s0etzxhoWhGe8db2OKUnywGXb4c/s2048/20200807_144454.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="262" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxa0DvyZm9qJ7shPi5v-g3MGllYgGMRGFLePzoWPq2_FCX6-5KPQu6VOV-6PJL_PhAtqhcrmoqux4VtJVbU22buCSmLi0oa9R047k7-o3tuNLVAEz3s0etzxhoWhGe8db2OKUnywGXb4c/w197-h262/20200807_144454.jpg" width="197" /></a></div>What a shitty week. <p></p><p>Sonya wasn't too happy about us leaving Cathy behind at the Hospice Center. This is her as I was driving out of the parking lot. Her way of saying, "You left a man behind, dude!" </p><p>Trust me, Sonya. I know. And I'm not happy about it, either. </p><p>Cathy continues to hang on, her heart beating strong, her mind struggling to connect, to understand, her lungs working, her muscles flexing. She's willing. But her body is slowly killing her. It's the worst kind of torture to see her slipping in increments that could be measured in centimeters, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it. <br /><br />What makes this doubly galling is that Cathy's own body is cutting off her food supply. And Cathy has never been one of those people with hang ups about food or eating. She loves to eat, and she loves good food. She's always appreciative of anyone who cooks for her. Our first date, I made her chicken parmesan, and she was so impressed, she married me three years later. </p><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>Now she can only swallow liquids. And her stomach immediately goes to work, trying to break everything down, but the colon is not having any of it. Because of the blockage caused by the cancer. So, the food sits in her stomach, and her body brain says, "Something is up on Digestion Level 3. Send more acid to deal with the problem." And like a good machine, her stomach floods itself with acid, like how you pour the whole jug of Draino down the pipe to break up that horrifying hair clog. Only, this clog won't budge, and so here comes more acid, and eventually, the stomach says, "Okay, this isn't working, let's send it back up the chute." <p></p><p>I'm making light of it, because I can't punch it. I'm so pissed off and I can't do anything about it. All week I've been having minor (very minor) panic attacks, and it's forcing me to stop what I'm doing and calm down. I've felt like I'm spinning my wheels over here, and every day, Cathy gets a little more anxious, a little more confused. </p><p>And yet...and yet! She keeps having bowel movements. I've never been so happy for shit in my whole life. </p><p>See, the BM means that her body is getting SOME of the fuel it needs. Not enough to get her out of the bed, mind you, but enough to keep the lights on and the plumbing working. Everything is still humming along. The BM is proof of that. It's almost like a reassuring telegram at this point. Whenever she has one, whoever is with her sends out the general message: "She pooped!" and we all cheer and let out a breath we didn't know we'd been holding. </p><p>This is bullshit. All of it. This one thing--granted, an important thing, but still--this one thing is all that is keeping Cathy from continuing treatment, signing up for clinical trials, etc. I can't stand it that this is how the story ends. It's the most hollow, most unfair, most dastardly ending that only Life In 2020 can offer up. It's very hard for someone like me to accept. I've always had real problems with control, and the need to control, and these past two years have just about slapped it out of me, as we had to surrender so much control to the care and feeding of Cathy and the knocks that our personal health gave us both. I get it, The Universe. I control nothing. Got it, message received. <br /><br />But this is a bridge too far. If the cancer overtook her, and there was nothing else we could do, at least we'd be sort of prepared for that. This? A bowel obstruction? It's like the cancer said, "Ah hah! I see what they are doing! Well, we'll just see about that. I'll gut-punch her and that'll show them they can't mess with me!"<br /><br />I wish I was a super hero. I would have figured out a way to use whatever power I had to fix Cathy. <br /><br />I wish her own stomach wasn't an accomplice to the cancer. <br /><br />I wish I had better news. </p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9AXSD2PSPld4yqtp9KIPizI7x-w7JdR8qkkNLYra9p63wnwYFSjYHFkEZBiyQKydX3nD4B8uT0bVVPPVBdG8HZwRGw863ehGu_kyTIOl5G692Sdn5-BSWpEqYagxwagzljcZUVghklg/s2048/08+b+Austin+Visit+01.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1437" data-original-width="2048" height="359" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiO9AXSD2PSPld4yqtp9KIPizI7x-w7JdR8qkkNLYra9p63wnwYFSjYHFkEZBiyQKydX3nD4B8uT0bVVPPVBdG8HZwRGw863ehGu_kyTIOl5G692Sdn5-BSWpEqYagxwagzljcZUVghklg/w512-h359/08+b+Austin+Visit+01.png" width="512" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Visiting friends in Austin, circa 2013. A pretty good picture of both of us. <br />Not necessarily flattering, but really accurate. </i><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p><br /></p>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-68584599002934777132020-08-10T09:00:00.004-05:002020-08-10T09:00:05.402-05:00Cancer: Hospice Supplemental<p> </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12AFSK6DTaxei18_BbAUqAKdEV4M2joA0FOL6ZyaRMfIZ8Lz5s5dsCbhyphenhyphendD6SMz5y0jAVPDLEO7O-wuYYjODhUEYmMHLhzrDERLx2CYvbayPnGVZG2lPr3YLGxC2zKeqOSFlaCDx_3vQ/s960/sonya+for+the+win.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="960" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh12AFSK6DTaxei18_BbAUqAKdEV4M2joA0FOL6ZyaRMfIZ8Lz5s5dsCbhyphenhyphendD6SMz5y0jAVPDLEO7O-wuYYjODhUEYmMHLhzrDERLx2CYvbayPnGVZG2lPr3YLGxC2zKeqOSFlaCDx_3vQ/w328-h328/sonya+for+the+win.jpg" width="328" /></a></div>Most long-time readers here will recognize the name of Sonya, our affable pit bull pooch with the winning personality and a bevvy of entertaining tricks. She's ten years old now, and she's lost a little bit of bounce, but only a little. We've been pretty lucky in terms of dog maintenance; she hasn't cost an arm nor a leg, and aside from the occasional itchy eye from high pollen days, she's reasonably healthy. <p></p><p>Last year, we took her to a specialist in Wichita Falls because (and I didn't know this) apparently pit bulls have those big, fleshy mouths that continue to grow as they age. The teeth get covered up by the gums and that's what causes the stinky-mouth, and left untreated, can rot teeth, forcing an extraction. We didn't want that, but Sonya's mouth was definitely in bad shape. </p><p>The process is straightforward; they use a laser to cut off the excess tissue and cauterize it. This was a little more than Cathy and I could pull off last year, so we made plans to do it in 2020. </p><p>Fast Forward to August, with the world on fire and my life in turmoil. I've got a dog with a stinky mouth, and she's in the dumps because she can't find her human, Cathy, anywhere. I've also got Cathy, pining away for her sweet baby. I've squirreled some money away for Sonya's health needs, and I thought this would be a great way to kill two birds with one stone. </p><span></span><p><span></span></p><a name='more'></a>I made the appointment for Sonya with the avowed intention of bringing her by afterward to see Cathy, even if this meant getting up at 6:30 AM to get everything done so I could make the hour-long drive with the dog in tow. And that's what happened; got to the animal hospital, got her admitted, and reminded them what she was there for. The intake person took one quick look in my dog's mouth and then ran out of the room to get the surgeon. <p></p><p>He was a gruff, no nonsense kind of vet. Not a lot of chitchat, but he was very good with Sonya and figured out how to get both of his hands in her mouth with no complications. When he looked at her upper left gum line, he freaked out. She had a growth there, all right, but it wasn't the same as the others in her mouth. This one had, well, essentially, it's like a bone spur on her jaw. And the tissue was impacted around it, and now suddenly, this simple procedure had become major surgery. </p><p>They started talking about her teeth, and whether or not I would want to be notified if they have to pull any, and then I had to sign a consent form for the anesthetic, because she could have a problem with it and they wanted me to know it was a risk. Oh, and also, this procedure would take the longest of any others that day. When they found out I'd driven an hour to come in, they graciously bumped Sonya to the top of the schedule. I thanked them, made sure they had my cell so they could call me when everything was done, and I went back to my car and sobbed for five minutes, just big ugly sobs that shook the car. <br /><br />This was supposed to be so easy. So simple. I was going to do this thing that we'd been trying to get to, and also, bring Cathy her dog for a visit. Now I'm worried sick that complications will arise and I'll have to tell Cathy that her dog died on the operating table. I couldn't fathom how that was going to work. </p><p>I drove to a coffee shop, ordered herbal tea, and pretended to read a book. Eventually I got tired of that and was planning on visiting Cathy sans pooch when the phone rang. It was the young woman from the clinic, and thankfully she didn't bury the lead: "Sonya came through with no problems and she's doing great!" I asked about the horrible growth, and she said they were able to remove it, along with the less horrible stuff. She would need extra painkilling meds for a few days, but she was already up and wagging her tail. "She's such a sweetheart," she said. <br /><br />"Yep, she's a keeper," I agreed. <br /><br />On the way to pick her up, the surgeon called, and proceeded to overshare what he had to do and what he discovered in the horrible growth. "I saved it," he said, "so you can take a look at it. There was all <i>kinds </i>of stuff in there," he added. <br /><br />Awesome. Then he said,"She's a great dog, you know. Real sweet disposition." <br /><br />I assured him that I did know, and I'd be there soon. When they brought me back to the exam room, sure enough, they'd saved the horrible mouth growths for me to admire, and, I dunno, mount over the mantle. I was told they had to use a special tool to remove it from the jaw. I also got the full drill on the medicines she was to take, and how to administer them. She'd be on soft food for ten days, so, for Sonya, that was like Thanksgiving and Christmas all rolled together. Then the vet tech said, "She's such a good girl. So gentle."<br /><br />For ten years, I've had people tell me what a great dog Sonya is. She's great with kids, adults, other dogs, even cats, and aside from a taste for squirrel, hasn't been any trouble. I've never tired of it, either; it's one of the first things people notice about her. She's got a wonderful, affectionate personality, kind eyes, and just wants to be friends with everyone. <br /><br />As I was putting her leash back on her, preparing to take her out to the car, a thought lanced my skull for the first time ever, and I felt both idiotic and brilliant at the same time. Of course she's a sweetheart. It makes perfect sense that she'd be gentle and loving and friendly. <br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ43-YG2PgfU7Sto8njfYBoRbI3roCsPGrkynmnO0Z3WeQaF8BhpCJw8Um7C0uY-uUUNsjBo5CvCvi0p_dCM2MPbZ_2_khMoUCbL7RBbPA4dMiJNoMRUE1_r2M7tT3cVfy-5aZD-1YIZ4/s2048/2020-08-08+14.45.35.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ43-YG2PgfU7Sto8njfYBoRbI3roCsPGrkynmnO0Z3WeQaF8BhpCJw8Um7C0uY-uUUNsjBo5CvCvi0p_dCM2MPbZ_2_khMoUCbL7RBbPA4dMiJNoMRUE1_r2M7tT3cVfy-5aZD-1YIZ4/w307-h410/2020-08-08+14.45.35.jpg" width="307" /></a></div>She's Cathy's dog. <div><br /></div><div>Cathy trained her and carried her around for the first six months, and Sonya was Cathy's companion through adventures in gardening, the farmer's markets, daily errands around town, and walking outside when the weather permitted. That dog has a piece of my heart, but she's got a piece of Cathy's soul in her. And, without getting too metaphysical for all of you, I think that's part of what people respond to when Sonya is around. <br /><p></p><p>The visit did not go quite as planned, because Sonya was still groggy from the surgery and all she wanted to do was rest, so after checking to make sure that both of us were in the room, she plopped down on the floor, between us, and took a little siesta. </p><p>We'll try another visit next week, when she's more like her old self. </p><p><b>Canine Update:</b> The dog is on the mend, still in some pain, but able to move around without staggering. She's been pampered a lot since coming home, so there's a chance she's milking this for all its worth. That dog is smarter than she looks. </p><p>Good thing, too, because I'm docking her allowance until the vet bill is paid off. </p><p><b></b></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><b><br /></b></div><br /><p></p></div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-62262193001433394482020-08-06T16:51:00.000-05:002020-08-06T16:51:58.602-05:00Cancer: Hospice, Week 3I'm running hot and cold. Some days, I've got full functionality and can do normal things and feel like an adult, and other days, I'm clutching my stomach and staggering around like I've been junk-punched by a silverback gorilla. The worst days are the ones that start out as normal and end up junk-punched. <div><br /></div><div>Cathy is still in hospice. I don't want the word "still" to have any undue emphasis, like I'm disappointed. Quite the contrary. Rather, the emphasis should be on "in hospice," meaning, she's not home yet. Yet. <br /><br />I'm still trying to find a scenario where she gets to come home. I don't have a solution yet, but I'm working on it. In the meantime, I find that a routine is settling in with us, almost like the schedule of a long-distance trucker. I'm on for three, off four four. But those three are 18 hour days a piece. This is exhausting, and the whole family has been rocked back and forth, up and down, and we are all frazzled. <div><br /></div><div>I don't want anyone to think that I am not grateful for the assistance; I am. It's been really nice having someone, anyone, in the house when I get home. But I want everyone to know that I am absolutely festooned with feminine energy right now. Covered up, even. I'm pretty sure I've started to ovulate. Everyone's cycle is all linked up, now. Mine, the dog's, everyone. <br /><br />I've been sitting on some short takes and little incidents that have stacked up in the last few weeks, and I want to share a few, if only to take my mind off of the grind of the days. </div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div>I had the doctors make an adjustment to the meds they were giving her and Cathy has woken up now. She's not so spacey and disconnected, and I hope this will improve her Quality of Life while she's at the Hospice care center. The NG tube is still in place, and her stomach is being suctioned every two hours. She's drinking food, and pooping. Honestly, if this bowel obstruction hadn't happened, I think we could have jumped into the clinical trial with no problem. I try not to think about that too often. Today is today.</div><div><br />That being said, there's something a little disorienting about the care center. They all wear the same purple scrubs, and they all have masks on, and to make matters worse, there's a LOT of people working there, more than you would expect. Most of the caregivers can be separated into two general groups: middle aged, plump, grandmotherly women with Busy Mom haircuts that call Cathy "honey" and "sweetie" and fuss over her; and taller, younger, willow-thin women with their long straight hair pulled back into a pony tail that all say, "HiiiIIIIIiiiiii..." when they enter the room. I just need a little more to go on, is all. Maybe numbers on the scrubs? The masks? Without a whole face to look at, I am baffled. <br /><br />So, the other night, during shift change, a woman walked in, and said "Hello," to me, and I said it back and waited to see if she introduced herself, meaning, "I'm new here," or "I haven't seen you before." But she didn't, so I just assumed I'd seen her previously and now I was supposed to know who it was. My social acumen is suffering greatly with these life-saving masks, I tell you what. <br /><br />Cathy, on the other hand...from a morphine fog, drifting off to sleep, she smiles at the nurse and says, "Hi, Nurse's Name Goes Here! How was your vacation?" <br /><br />Without missing a beat, they began to discuss the particulars of Nurse Name Goes Here's "staycation," as she labeled it. I just stared. <i>Of course </i>Cathy has made friends with the staff. And <i>of course </i>they are telling her all about their lives. And <i>of course</i>, Cathy can recognize them even as they are covered up like purple health ninjas with only their eyes glinting in the twilight. Because that's Cathy. <br /><br />There's a male nurse/helper at the hospice center, a big guy, six foot four, built like an ex-football player. He's very nice, and gentle with Cathy, but with his mask on...from the bridge of the nose to the top of his head...he looks exactly like mid-90's Steven Seagal. <br /><br />And so it came to pass one night that the evening shift nurse was checking on Cathy and asked if she needed anything, and Cathy replied, "One of those chocolate shakes," momentarily forgetting that she'd sent the big guy off on a quest to find one about fifteen minutes prior. I interrupted the exchange to tell the nurse that someone was already on that task. <br /><br />"Oh? Who?" she asked, a very normal question.<br /><br />"Now, I should know who this guy was; after all, he wasn't grandmotherly or willowy. But I blanked on his name and blurted out, "Steven Seagal." <br /><br />The nurse shot me a look, and I felt really embarrassed until she doubled over with laughter. "I can't unsee it, now!" she said. <br /><br />Cathy, from the haze of her meds, patted the nurse on the arm and said, dreamily, "I can't take him anywhere."</div><div><br /></div><div>Before this is all over, I'm going to get him to say to me, "I'm just a cook."<br /><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKi9dmfeNB7K3Gp0d9M7u6CRN7gdPF_DotQCSGsnP0DJpTGSzmfumT9LNfGtXb5uArcV6e8zY4CVS5C5aacdx2bNjGl5u78YF16v2OQEXblzScRHWC87z-cOHVMc5DmYzsVUFSrxuSfQ/s960/0004+engagement.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="display: block; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; padding: 1em 0px;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="799" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhiKi9dmfeNB7K3Gp0d9M7u6CRN7gdPF_DotQCSGsnP0DJpTGSzmfumT9LNfGtXb5uArcV6e8zY4CVS5C5aacdx2bNjGl5u78YF16v2OQEXblzScRHWC87z-cOHVMc5DmYzsVUFSrxuSfQ/s640/0004+engagement.jpg" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From our Engagement Photo shoot, from deep within the VCRP years.<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><br /></div></div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-5578075005451949752020-07-27T16:58:00.004-05:002020-08-06T16:52:16.127-05:00Cancer: Hospice Week Two UpdateI'm going to start this with a strange little coincidence. Cathy was moved into the hospice care center in Wichita Falls about ten days ago. They got her in and comfortable and settled and I hung around outside while nurses and orderlies swarmed over her and did stuff. <div><br /></div><div>As I was sitting outside, I noticed the tiles in the building were all donated--you know what I mean, where you pay a certain amount and sponsor an oblong tile in the name of a loved one, or just as a donation from a family or an organization. These tiles (bricks?) run two-up all around the walls, like wainscoting, down every wall and across each doorway. Outside each room, however, there is a larger plaque, presumably reserved for larger donations, or to sponsor a room. Here is the plaque outside of Cathy's room.<br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7bwBeWuOo8U3VUjBOERAVWEW2iLvbc4CxF20HG9lxMdAbNo1Csbwxbq7ycf4J8Y50moUPFCffR0PtMRjq7Om_CL8r-QMxPmP5sPTph7PT2BDLaYF84P0KN5TnwJoZWIuLKQKnUHyKbw/s2048/Hoblitzelle+Plaque.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1169" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEib7bwBeWuOo8U3VUjBOERAVWEW2iLvbc4CxF20HG9lxMdAbNo1Csbwxbq7ycf4J8Y50moUPFCffR0PtMRjq7Om_CL8r-QMxPmP5sPTph7PT2BDLaYF84P0KN5TnwJoZWIuLKQKnUHyKbw/s320/Hoblitzelle+Plaque.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div>It says "The Hoblitzelle Foundation" for those of you who can't make it out. I read it and a chill ran down my neck. Let me explain why.</div><span><a name='more'></a></span><div><br /></div><div>Back in the day--like, a hundred years ago--the movie industry in Texas was run by a guy named Karl Hoblitzelle. If you live in a town like Abilene or Austin and it has one of those grand theaters named the Paramount or somesuch, chances are, it was owned by Interstate Theater Company. Hoblitzelle's operation was so big, it drew Hollywood to the Metroplex, and for decades, there were field offices in Dallas for the major studios. Whenever celebrities would go on promotional tours, they would start in D-FW and be driven or flown around to the various Interstate Theaters to smile and wave at the crowd and otherwise press the flesh. <br /><br />Interstate Theater Company got SO big, in fact, that they were investigated for anti-trust violations in the late fifties and early sixties and forced to sell off pieces of the company to pare down into a respectable size. A lot of theaters were cut loose, to be operated locally, including one of their crown jewels, a theater that they built back in 1953, during the height of the 3-D craze (the first one). Interstate had been one of the only organizations in the country that could afford the installs on the new systems, about ten thousand dollars of 1950s money at the time. In 1952, there were about twelve theaters that could show 3-D movies in Texas, and they were all owned by Interstate. And when one of their assets burnt to the ground in 1952, they rebuilt it six months later, using state-of-the-art fire suppression, and included a cry-room, stereo sound, and of course, 3-D--the first theater in the country to have been built with 3-D installed from the get-go. Italian Terrazzo marble tile, modern design, and cathedral-like seating...they'd never seen anything like it in Vernon, Texas. <br /><br />Yep. The Vernon Plaza Theater. The theater we owned, the reason why we came to North Texas. Cathy had been under Hoblitzelle's (former) roof ever since we moved to North Texas. Now, one last time, his philanthropy would shelter her.<br /><br />There have been ups and downs since Cathy came to the Hospice center. Mostly, it's been playing catch up. They get her stabilized, it's good for a day and a half or so, and then the nausea comes back and they have to monkey around with her meds again. Lather, rinse, repeat.<br /><br />This weekend, however, the nausea won the race, and she started throwing up again. It was bad. Neither of us got any sleep Friday night. Saturday morning, Cathy okayed them to replace the <a href="https://www.healthline.com/health/nasogastric-intubation-and-feeding" target="_blank">NG Tube</a> in her nose. You can click through on the link; there are no photos. <br /><br />Cathy had one in the hospital and she hated it. Who wouldn't? But it helped get all of the gunk out of her stomach. The blockage isn't letting food--liquids--past her large intestine. Everything is backing up into her stomach, where the acid keeps trying to deal with it until it gives up and sends it back the other way. <br /><br />As soon as she was intubated, she couldn't eat or drink anything; the tube would just suck it up. Not worth doing. So I watched Cathy get weaker and weaker, crunching on ice chips, which was all she could have, for most of Saturday and Sunday. Her NG tube kept pulling gunk out of her stomach. A lot. More than before. It was bad.<br /><br /></div><div>The meds they gave her made her sleepy, tamped down her anxiety, and basically knocked her out. She woke up in fits and starts. We had small, brief conversations, in between her begging me to take her home. My heart shattered every time she asked. <br /><br />It's not likely that she's going to come home. <br /><br />Sunday night, I made the decision to get her as comfortable as I could. I put on an Office dvd for her, mostly to listen to, as she kept her eyes closed. We got through a couple of episodes, and then she announced she had to go to the bathroom. </div><div><br /></div><div>The nurses ran in like a Nascar pit crew at Talladega. Cathy did, well, a lot of stuff, sort of all at once, if you know what I mean, and I think you do. The nurses got her cleaned up, and back in her chair, she said, "I want...SPRITE." She started drinking sprite and water, and while the meds made her a little confused, she finally went to sleep. We both did. <br /><br />This morning (Monday, July 27th), she woke up and said, "I want...TOAST." The nurses were quick to point out that she couldn't have it, as she was still on the NG tube, and toast would clog the tube right up. I then pointed out to them that her container, which had been dark brown, horrible, and gross, was now filled with clear fluid--like, you know, water and sprite. No trace of brown goo. <br /><br />The nurses felt Cathy's stomach and not only was it no longer distended, but it was soft, and didn't hurt her to touch it. Over the weekend, it was like she'd eaten a tetherball. Now, it was normal again. </div><div><br /></div><div>I have learned not to get my hopes up.Every time I do, someone throws a rock at me and I start bleeding all over again. But as of this afternoon, they have clamped her hose off, and given her some clear liquid, and she's had no stomach problems or nausea. That could go away at any time. There's a slight--very slight--chance that the obstruction has opened up enough to let stuff in. It will not last. But for now, Cathy is not in pain. And, fingers crossed, she'll be able to take some soup. <br /><br />I'm going to be honest with all of you: until this morning, Cathy was not expected to last a week. Now, it's a guessing game. This will certainly buy us some time. How much is anyone's guess. A day? Two? Three? Maybe another week? We have no idea. It's up to the cancer and the bowel obstruction at the moment. <br /><br /></div><div>But for the short term, Cathy doesn't have to fight her own body anymore. She may well get to sleep through the night. And I will be able to do the same. Tomorrow may find us back to where we were on Friday. I don't know. They don't know. Cathy doesn't know. There's a whole lot of "don't know" going around at the moment. We are using it to take a few deep breaths and keep our heads down. <br /><br />If you are praying for us, please don't stop. If you're lighting candles, please light another. If you're throat singing, praying at an altar, or invoking sacred energies, all are welcome in this house. Focus on the bowel obstruction. We can't do anything about the cancer; right now, her large intestine is the villain here. And I am so sorry I haven't had the bandwidth to reply to everyone on social media, but y'all, thank you so much. Those well wishes and comments and personal remembrances and everything else you're sending our way is really getting me through the day. And I'm reading to Cathy when she is able to focus. We love you all. Thank you. </div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgjIV88mlwjEXqlCJRiHN8Utpfsnx0nDeCTI9vBplNDkBnE8vq96zzuUOcnYZcU2TPuT2JEuCGfnkn-vqi6i0_beL8HMwTUdnF_Z6ujTHwgfWOKyt5aoQCWkA5D0aVeq5wJOEklClDHA/s676/us.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="553" data-original-width="676" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzgjIV88mlwjEXqlCJRiHN8Utpfsnx0nDeCTI9vBplNDkBnE8vq96zzuUOcnYZcU2TPuT2JEuCGfnkn-vqi6i0_beL8HMwTUdnF_Z6ujTHwgfWOKyt5aoQCWkA5D0aVeq5wJOEklClDHA/s320/us.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Just an old picture of us. Happier Days. <br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>The <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/f/cathy-day039s-cancer-fight">GoFundMe</a> is still up. I'm only including it because so many have asked what we need help with, and I don't know what to tell anyone anymore. It's going to mostly be bills. </div><div><br /></div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-3535942177461333122020-07-17T09:28:00.000-05:002020-07-17T09:28:03.835-05:00Cancer: HospiceWe tried.<br />We really did.<br />Cathy tried hardest. <br />But in the end, the pain won out. <br /><br />I took her home from the hospital on Wednesday, with the understanding that in order to qualify for this eleventh hour clinical trial that had just opened up, Cathy would need to be able to eat without throwing up. She had to keep food down. Or, well, you know, broth. Soup. Liquid. <div><br /></div><div>Her family was waiting for her when we got home, and they helped her upstairs and get settled. It was nice having folks around, and Cathy seemed cheered by their presence, if a little tired. She tried to eat something, but gave up. The heartburn and nausea were back. </div><div><br /></div><div>We tried to get home health to come out, but a snafu with the hospital showed our visits had been canceled because the social worker thought we were going to Oklahoma City. That was frustrating, to say the least, and so I spent an hour on the phone lining up meds for Cathy to be administered tomorrow. All she had to do was get through the night.</div><div><br /></div><div>She got about one hour of sleep. The pain and the cramps were just too much. I didn't do much better, but I napped a bit, and then started calling people at 7:30 to get her some help. I was on and off the phone for roughly four hours. In the middle of all of it, Cathy said, "Call hospice." </div><div><br /></div><div>When everyone showed up, it was all within a ten minute window. The house was full of health care folks, and it took a bit of sorting out. In the end, this is what we decided: the Hospice people have an actual facility in Wichita Falls, and by checking her in there she'd have constant care. They would get her stabilized and comfortable, and then we could send her home for home care in a couple of days. </div><div><br /></div><div>Back into the car we went, and drove back to Wichita Falls. I've come to really resent that drive.<br /><br />She was made comfortable, in a nice, spacious room, that looks like a nursing home room decorated by a mid-price hotel room. Hey, it beats the hospital. She was feeling better, and we were amiably chatting about I don't even remember what, when she grabbed her nausea bag and filled it. </div><div><br /></div><div>I jammed the button and yelled for nurses. They came running and took over as the crap in her stomach poured out of her. I've never been so scared, nor felt so helpless. </div><div><br /></div><div>They cleaned her up and changed sheets and all of that, and also gave her a powerful anti-nausea med in her port. Later, at midnight, she would get a drug that limits the production of stomach acid. But even after she threw up, she was feeling better. And I think we both realized at that point that what she did next was dependent on her stomach. She wouldn't be able to eat solid food anymore. And for now, liquids were working, but they may one day stop. And then the clock would start counting down. <br /><br />I read to her until she fell asleep. I watched her, until some time after midnight, and then I crashed in the chair. I woke up with a nurse in the room, and Cathy awake. "Hi, Honey!" she said. Perky. Like her old self. She was hungry, and wondered if they would bring her crackers. I told her no. But I get it; she's feeling better now. We had a long talk about stuff, interrupted only by a nurse who said her doctor had ordered some more drugs for her. He wanted to know if he should order a NG tube (that thing that went up her nose in the hospital). I said no, she didn't want that. Cathy looked at me and said, "Well, maybe."<br /><br />This is what we are currently weighing. With the tube, she's going to be able to hang on for a while. But she will have to stay in the center. She can't come home with the NG tube. If she takes that NG tube out, the timeline is shortened, but then so is her pain and discomfort. <br /><br />The drugs she is on right now seem to be working spectacularly. She has a day or two to mull it over. We've all decided that whatever Cathy wants, Cathy gets. That includes Ginger Beer, as I am under strict instructions to bring some back when I return. </div><div><br /></div><div>And that's all I know at the moment. She's resting and she's comfortable--well, as comfortable as she can be in a hospital bed. She's seen a lot of family and she's got more coming. She's making calls and talking to people. I don't know if this is a rally, but I hope it is. I hope we see a few of them. </div><div><br /></div><div>I know these posts are upsetting to a lot of you, and I don't want you to have these terrible images in your head as the last memories of Cathy that you have. I'm not going to show any more pictures of her fight with cancer. Instead, I'm going to show only pictures of the Cathy we all remember, the Cathy we know and love. This is one of the photos we took for our engagement announcement. Not a lot of people have seen it. I guess it was a little too mushy. But it's a really good picture. <br /><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOD0K2v4bbDluAOIax9OEZqKyu1hbEvDcgaHI1V_ZUIxgkpUP3v3npwK2lSWIk08B2FP5YIibb_0MApZ556PVURaqPNVtNwCex2_MfnhBTmXyJh6nQHbsCCVz83zxNt7qHLkEWXXejNTg/s1177/Mushy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1177" data-original-width="1177" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOD0K2v4bbDluAOIax9OEZqKyu1hbEvDcgaHI1V_ZUIxgkpUP3v3npwK2lSWIk08B2FP5YIibb_0MApZ556PVURaqPNVtNwCex2_MfnhBTmXyJh6nQHbsCCVz83zxNt7qHLkEWXXejNTg/s320/Mushy.jpg" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>I will post again when something changes. Hopefully I can get Cathy home one last time. <br />Thank you, everyone, for your friendship and your love. Thank you for your courage and for going through this with me. Thank you for everything, from me and from Cathy. You've all made an incalculable difference in our lives. </div><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div>Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8493153323136761949.post-29642584258779267062020-07-09T12:31:00.002-05:002020-07-09T12:32:47.227-05:00Cancer: Three Days Later<p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><font color="#1d2129" face="inherit"><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;">Many of you aren't on Facebook and don't follow me there, so here is the update on our situation. Suffice to say, we are mostly out of the woods now, and Cathy is doing much better. Thank you all for your words of comfort, </span><span style="font-size: 14px;">encouragement</span><span style="font-size: 10.5pt;"> and strength and support during this hellish ordeal. It's been a long week. I feel like I've aged a month. But things look much much better.</span></font></p><p style="background: white; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 0in;"><font face="inherit"><span></span></font></p><a name='more'></a><font face="inherit"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;">It's a profoundly moving and humbling experience to see so many
people galvanized into thinking and praying for us. I am at a loss for words
(take a picture!) to describe how I feel. For all that you have done, and how
you sat with me and Cathy in this, our darkest of times, I am grateful to the
atoms of my being.<o:p></o:p></span></font><p></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">You deserve an update, so here's what's what.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Monday was the worst. Cathy was rendered insensible because they
gave her enough morphine to knock out a Chrysler. She was able to hear me, but
for most of the day, unable to really communicate except with hand gestures
that, it turns out, I COMPLETELY mis-interpreted. They gave me a lot of scary
information, and I couldn't look at my wife and give her our "can you
believe this" look. It was one of the most stressful days I'd ever had.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Tuesday was 100% better. Cathy came off of the morphine and had
a kind-of-a-good-night's-sleep. In the hospital, they wake you up every four
hours to make sure you're resting, do something horrible, and then leave the
room. Been there, done that. But she was alert, and able to talk, and later in
the day, laugh.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Medically: she *technically* has pneumonia, in the same way that
if I'm holding a box of rat poison, it can be said that I have strychnine
poisoning. There are traces in her lungs (probably from when she had it last
year) but she has no symptoms other than that. She is being treated with
antibiotics and they are making her suck on a plastic toy that makes her lungs
open up all the way, but they are fully on top of this and she is in no danger
of developing a case like last time.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Also: the catheters are doing their jobs, keeping the pressure
off of the obstruction. And thanks to being re-hydrated, her kidneys look and
feel "much better" according to the kidney specialist. In short,
Pneumonia and dialysis are off the table. Our only real concern is the bowel
obstruction.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">She's tired, and she's uncomfortable. They installed a Pic line
(remember the thing I had in my arm?) to give her stuff because they were out
of holes and ports to administer food, liquids, and medicine to her. She looks
like the world's worst giant squid at the moment. But she's Cathy again. And we
had a good visit after we acknowledged how uncomfortable this all was. By the
afternoon, she was laughing at my stupid jokes. We were performing for the
nurses. It was us again. The Mark and Cathy show.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">That was somewhat squashed by the evening visit from her
oncologist. No new news on her obstruction unkinking itself. We've basically
got one more day of fingers crossed. If it won't unkink by itself, we have to
discuss other options. She has a full CT scan scheduled so that the oncologist
can really get a good look at what's going on down there. We will all know more
by the end of today, Wednesday.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">I was just so happy to have my wife back for a day. We were able
to talk about how stupid and crazy this whole thing is.<o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p style="-webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; background: white; font-variant-caps: normal; font-variant-ligatures: normal; margin-bottom: 4.5pt; margin-left: 0in; margin-right: 0in; margin-top: 4.5pt; orphans: 2; text-align: start; text-decoration-color: initial; text-decoration-style: initial; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">I came home last night to notes left on the theater and chalked
messages of love and support on the sidewalks. I spoke to friends, family. So
much positive energy is concentrated on Cathy right now (and me, too) that I
felt like I could let go for a minute, take a couple of deep breaths, and just
cry to relieve the pressure. I slept last night, for 8 hours. I haven't slept
that long in years. I had dreams of old friends, and laughter, and I woke up
with energy and clarity.</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><b><font face="inherit">The Wednesday Update:</font></b></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Cathy Farted! I Repeat: Cathy has
Farted!</font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><font face="inherit"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><o:p> </o:p></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;">Okay, I think I need to provide
some context for this. I got to the hospital on Wednesday to find Cathy sitting
in the weird recliner, surrounded by people. She had just done some physical
therapy, walking around the floor and also in the room. The PT lady was reading
her the riot act about not letting her go until Cathy could guarantee that she
wouldn't climb any stairs. Which is ridiculous, as the staircase to our house
is epic. Nevertheless, Cathy made arrangements to stay grounded. </span></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">But that wasn't what concerned
me. What drew my immediate full attention was the fact that Cathy's nose, chin,
neck, and chest were fire engine red, and the color was spreading. Then I
noticed she was hooked up to a bag of white goo that was clearly her
nutritional supplement. And I got a little mad.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">You see, the nutritionist came in
on Tuesday to explain to Cathy that she'd be getting goo in a bag because she
can't have solid food at the moment. We all agreed that would be great. Then
she said, "Any food allergies?" <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">"Well, I..." Cathy
said.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">"Soy. She's allergic to
soy." I said it matter-of-factly. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">What happens if she gets
it?" the nutritionist asked. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">"She has an allergic
reaction," I replied. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">The nutritionist took a deep
breath and said, "Okay, I'm asking because I have two things I can give
her. One is all soy, and the other one has soy in it, along with some other
things."<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Cathy said that small amounts of
soy weren't as problematic, and I said, if those are the only two options,
we'll that the one that has some soy, and not all soy, because, you
know...Cathy's allergic. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">As it turns out, there was more
soy in the "some soy" bag than anyone thought. And with it being
administered into Cathy's bloodstream directly, it spread like wildfire.
Thankfully, the nurses were on top of it. They stopped the white bag of goo and
alerted the nutritionist. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[if !supportLineBreakNewLine]--><br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">By that time, the redness had
spread to Cathy's arms. Not itchy, just inflamed, like a horrible case of
sunburn. Deep, beet red. Crazy. The nurses were really freaked out; they'd
never seen that reaction. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">I stepped out of the room so
Cathy could have another visitor and when I came back in, they had switched her
food to a clear bag of goo. And Cathy was no longer beet red, but merely
crimson. I asked the nurse, "Is that the new stuff?" And she said,
"Yep, no soy."<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit"></font></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_U5YlcSCUZWR95e71524Aa5Lcf35CwEl4c1_aECHTtGxZ2R4arqe-wwuSv0nwjgjobK4UyH1KvEELPBlm_DP5gXpvjaDES5wQEdhz4-_KAoZmkNP2wN0z9Rq0e-MBTJ06tthXmgovWDo/s2048/20200708_110632.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_U5YlcSCUZWR95e71524Aa5Lcf35CwEl4c1_aECHTtGxZ2R4arqe-wwuSv0nwjgjobK4UyH1KvEELPBlm_DP5gXpvjaDES5wQEdhz4-_KAoZmkNP2wN0z9Rq0e-MBTJ06tthXmgovWDo/s320/20200708_110632.jpg" /></a></font></div><font face="inherit">Pop quiz: see if you can guess
when I got angry? If you said, "Just then," you know me very well.<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">As nicely as I could, I asked,
"If there's no soy in that bag, then why in the ding-dong hell didn't we
get that from the get-go? We told her she was allergic to soy!"<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">The nurse said, "I don't
know, but she's coming back to talk to y'all."<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Oh, good. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">When she opened the door, about
an hour later, Cathy looked better still, but you could where the redness still
was, like a sunburn. When she opened her mouth, it was to say. "In
twenty-seven years, I've only had four reactions to soy."<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Now I was at a crossroads. Did I
call BS on that, because come on, lady? Or did I change the subject and try to
end the conversation? Cathy shot me a look (she's well enough now that she can
shoot me looks). I chose door number 2. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">With all of that sorted and with
no more chance of soy showing up in a bag of goo, we settled down to wait for
our oncologist. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">You see, the doctor who was in
there with the physical therapist was telling Cathy what the CT scan showed. I
made him tell it to me, as well. He said: Looking at the CT scan, we don't see
the obstruction anywhere. However, her intestines are still asleep. We need
them to wake up, and start moving, and we need Cathy to pass gas or have a
bowel movement. That means that her intestines are functioning again and she doesn't
have another obstruction somewhere. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">This all sounded great! The
obstruction was gone?! Wow! The guts can take up to a day or more to wake up,
and we were sure the oncologist had more to say about this. So, we were
waiting. And hoping for gas. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">I hung out until 7 pm, two hours
later than he showed up on Tuesday. No visit. Cathy's sister drove in from
Austin, and had just hit town, so she tagged in for me and I went to visit
friends who gave me a drink and let me sit and jabber about other things. I had
only intended to stay for a bit, when Cathy texted me this charming phrase:<br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white; text-align: center;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 14px;"><font face="arial">Passed gas officially!!!!!</font></span><span style="color: #1d2129; font-family: inherit; font-size: 10.5pt;">
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">I started laughing, and then I
started crying. I've never been so happy to hear about my wife's fart in my
whole life. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit"></font></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><font face="inherit"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWL0FMhHDbaxpzmZI8kPO8xwAZ6DT4Lkz2mWO7QzGECGiVxxh3JvEVDRxrup6ssbFRLBrdLX1GqjobwcdmOgVS4rdeTQTvQ3TIQo-YD5A9eRhgD7kFBAxLKeKmwMAMOHekm0DDQa9aJyk/s2048/20200709_110033.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWL0FMhHDbaxpzmZI8kPO8xwAZ6DT4Lkz2mWO7QzGECGiVxxh3JvEVDRxrup6ssbFRLBrdLX1GqjobwcdmOgVS4rdeTQTvQ3TIQo-YD5A9eRhgD7kFBAxLKeKmwMAMOHekm0DDQa9aJyk/s320/20200709_110033.jpg" /></a></font></div><font face="inherit">Never mind why I spent the night
in Wichita Falls. I'm a grown-ass man. Don't judge. But when I pulled into town
this morning, I saw that the front of the theater was even more decorated with
letters of well wishes, drawings, messages of encouragement, and hope, and
love, and prayer. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">We have turned a corner. We can
now start talking about coming home. Some stuff has to change, and we still
don't know what this does for the chemo, if anything. Diet will be paramount,
along with rest. But I'm hoping Cathy can come home by the weekend. Man, that
would be so sweet. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
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<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Know this, folks: we--I--could
not have done this without you. Sometimes it seems like a brush off to like a
post and not comment. With the number of messages I received over the past
week, it's been nearly impossible to reply. But know this: I read every word.
As a writer, I value words most highly, and I considered each message and took
it in, and took strength from you words. They did not go into cyberspace. They
went into my heart. I shared a lot of your messages with Cathy, and I look
forward to showing her all of them when she is home. <br style="mso-special-character: line-break;" />
<!--[endif]--><o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="background: white;"><span style="color: #1d2129; font-size: 10.5pt;"><font face="inherit">Thank you for lifting us up. We
felt it and continue to feel it. I'll post more when I know more. Right now, I
need a shower and a cup or four of coffee. <o:p></o:p></font></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><font face="inherit"> </font></o:p></p><br />Mark Finnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02085303208733639998noreply@blogger.com