What all he done ain't no one's business, but he'll need blankets for the cold

[sovay]

Night on the Northeast Corridor: we just left Westerly, where the deserted station and the still sodium-lit street and the one red neon sign on the corner of the brick-faced block looked like a backlot after hours, an empty set waiting for its actors and crew. We worked our way back from Tarrytown on the Metro-North and picked up the Amtrak Regional at New Haven. It wasn't exactly late, but it pulled up some minutes after the automated announcement system had already summoned all passengers to the platform and given us the final boarding call for a train that hadn't yet arrived. The station at night looks exactly like itself except that the blue-white flatscreen glare of the new departure board interferes with the low-light orange wash of the sodium vapor everywhere else in the waiting room. (Eventually we relocated to sit with our backs to the board, figuring we would hear the announcements if anything changed. It glows and it scrolls: it makes you want to look at it even when you don't want to. I miss the flackering sound of the old display. The automated system now addresses itself to "customers" instead of "passengers.") I didn't see anyone I knew. I did not feel impelled to look in my wallet for eight dollars for a taxi to Lynwood Place. I don't think I will ever like being in New Haven, but it isn't haunted ground for me anymore. At least that's true for the train station, but I spent so many hours there between Boston and New York, it's a not insignificant reclamation.

Yesterday's reading went well; I had brought mostly new poems, but took one request out of Ghost Signs (2015) after Alisa Kwitney asked if I had anything about the fall of the Roman Empire. I got to hear Jenn Brisett read a chapter from her just-completed sequel to Elysium (2014) and then the afternoon I intended to spend in the dealer's room or browsing other people's panels turned into a three-hour nap, which I think cannot actually have been a bad thing considering last week. We were still wary of the hotel restaurant when we woke and it was late and lazily sunny outside, so we headed out to dinner at the Eldorado Diner, located perhaps half a mile down Main Street from the Westchester Marriott. It was slightly exciting: Main Street in this stretch of Tarrytown is NY 119 and it does not so much believe in sidewalks. Or crosswalks. It does believe in four lanes of traffic. But we did not turn into a game of Frogger; I had a chocolate egg cream and the largest open-faced Reuben I have encountered since the demise of Café Edison; we ended up at the next table to the party of people we had just said goodbye to before leaving the hotel and intermittently talked film with them. On the way home, we walked the concrete verge of the underpass so as not to step on either dead pigeons or broken bottles—both of which we had seen on the journey out—and felt vaguely adolescent and reckless with the cars booming by six feet below. spatch went up to the room when we got back and watched Saturday Night Live actually live for the first time in years and I peeled off for the Zacherley tribute, which included a condensed version of House of Frankenstein (1944), and a 16 mm screening of Night of the Living Dead (1968) courtesy of Movie Mike, with introduction by Edward X. Young and commentary-discussion during the reel changes. I would like very much to write about it and can make no promises, except to say that the racial angle has really not become less relevant at all.

We hit the dealer's room this morning instead—I could still not afford either of the paperbacks by Cornell Woolrich, but I said hello to them both—and headed into New York for an abbreviated day in the city. I can recommend the chocolate chipotle mezcal shake at Salvation Burger, where I willingly and happily ate pickles on a double cheeseburger for the first time in my life. The Strand must like me: I left with only one book this time, but it was the Pyramid first edition of Harlan Ellison's juvie-pulp first novel Rumble (1958), signed by the author. (I thought about taking home its recent reprint, also shelved with the mysteries—under its original title Web of the City—just for the authorized text and the additional short stories, but the original find felt lucky enough. I read it between Grand Central and Union Stations and chased it with Prison Noir (2014) edited by Joyce Carol Oates, which I had picked up at Barbara's Bestsellers on the trip out.) I had to leave the hardcover of Michael Redgrave's In My Mind's I: An Actor's Autobiography (1983) because of water damage, but now that I know it exists I can look for it here. We had no trouble with the Metro-North to New Haven. Amtrak appears to have hauled ass in the direction of Boston to make up for its slight tardiness reaching us. We're much farther along than I expected to be when I finished this post, by which I mean we're leaving Route 128 and I should start packing up.

This was good travel.

Comments

[nineweaving]

An excellent weekend! And much needed. I'm glad.

Nine

[gwynnega]

That all sounds excellent. I'm adding Night of the Living Dead to the list of films I really need to see on a big screen. I'm curious about the condensed House of Frankenstein, as it's a pretty short film even unexpurgated.

A chocolate chipotle mezcal shake sounds intense.

[sovay]

An excellent weekend! And much needed. I'm glad.

Thank you! I would generally have enjoyed more programming and/or interaction with the convention for the distance we traveled to get to it, but I don't think it worked out badly this time: I came into it very tired and this way I could mostly just recover from the travel. I had a good book haul: the Brackett and Grant mentioned previously, plus Jenn's Elysium, which I had read but did not own a hard copy of, and the second edition of Richard Bowes' From the Files of the Time Rangers (2017), with its cover of classical statues from all over New York City. I had not expected the media track and it was a nice thing to do in the evenings.

New York is just a good city for me. I think it always has been. It gives me things like signed Harlan Ellison pulp (for which the Strand was charging far too little, though I do not feel bad about not correcting them) and a hamburger stacked with improbably successful toppings, which I had been wanting ever since we watched How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) last week. I really appreciate it.

[sovay]

That all sounds excellent.

I like traveling. I can't do it nonstop, but it seems to treat me well when I do. Knock on wood.

I'm adding Night of the Living Dead to the list of films I really need to see on a big screen.

I really recommend the experience. I don't know if seeing it late at night helped, but seeing it in a room full of people who were taking it seriously, I realized after the fact, was invaluable. I am a little afraid that if I'm tried for it in a theater in Boston, I would have gotten the same crowd who MST3K'd The Birds (1963) and attend Mother's Day screenings of Psycho (1960). Here people laughed at Johnny's goofily British-voiced "They're coming to get you, Barbara!" but did not razz the actually horrific moments, except for a kind of grossed-out collective "Whoa!" at the first real flesh-eating scene. That kind of thing matters a lot to me. I appreciated, too, that while Ed did some commentary-tracking during the first reel, he stopped except for quick actor point-outs (apparently all members of the main cast who were not Duane Jones doubled as ghouls at some point, while other living dead were played by friends, neighbors, and other members of the Pittsburgh community who had donated either funds or props or equipment in return for the chance to shamble and moan and eat internal organs onscreen) when he realized that people were just responding to the movie as a movie, and then I really enjoyed the discussion in between reels.

I'm curious about the condensed House of Frankenstein, as it's a pretty short film even unexpurgated.

As far as I can tell, it was just the Dracula thread plus some framing sections, which worked pretty well as a standalone short. Karloff makes a great mad-scientist-cum-larcenous-showman and I'm kind of sorry John Carradine never got a straight Dracula film of his own, because he's a very elegant version of the Count. The whole movie sounded almost like an anthology film the way Ed and Mike described it.

A chocolate chipotle mezcal shake sounds intense.

It was the best booze milkshake I'd had since the Friendly Toast changed ownership and stopped serving the Vertigo. The mezcal made it smoky and the chipotle provided a warming heat that made the chocolate earthy rather than just spicy; it was almost savory, which is not a trait I associate with most successful milkshakes, but it worked fantastically here. It was wisely served with a boba straw, since the thickness of the shake would have choked a smaller bore. Between my accidentally eating dessert with my meal and the size of spatch's beer-cheese-and-twice-smoked-bacon-crowned Salvation Burger, I think we made the right decision to take the lemon pie to go—and eat it four hours later in New Haven.

[poliphilo]

I hate it how we're all customers and consumers these days- as if we only exist in relation to big business.

[sovay]

I hate it how we're all customers and consumers these days- as if we only exist in relation to big business.

It does not flatter me to hear it. It feels like a term of contempt.

[redbird]

That sounds like a good trip. I find myself mostly wanting to comment on the travel bits:

You have me wondering whether it's worth changing for Metro-North in New Haven if I'm going all the way to New York City (it might be; I once took commuter rail NYC-Philly rather than Amtrak, partly for the savings and partly because it tickled me to get to Worldcon by commuter rail). Also wondering whether I ever took a taxi from Union Station to Lynwood Place rather than walking; it would have felt weird to do so without significant luggage. (I lived with cattitude, and for part of the time two housemates, for a little over a year, and the street name jumped out at me.)

[lemon_badgeress]

I hate it for a slightly different reason.

I first heard an unexpected 'customer' over a decade ago now, when I started with my current company (health insurance), and at a meeting reference was made to servicing the customer.

I gather that has become more common parlance? But at the time it had really only had mental associations with ONE industry, for me. I laughed. Loudly. The vice president wanted to know why.

I'm me. I told him. His FACE. (And thus became a long run of my supervisors plotting to keep me away from upper management).

So in addition to all the ways it's insulting it also irritates me as emblematic of the mangling of language culture through lack of care and attention.

[lemon_badgeress]

I wonder what would have happened if you'd been able to see and board the first instance of the train?

[sovay]

I wonder what would have happened if you'd been able to see and board the first instance of the train?

"There's a little black train a-comin' . . ."

[sovay]

You have me wondering whether it's worth changing for Metro-North in New Haven if I'm going all the way to New York City

It was significantly cheaper than taking Amtrak all the way from Boston to New York, which is how we'd been doing it these past five years. I always took the Metro-North into New York when I lived in New Haven, but it didn't occur to me to run the numbers until this last trip when we needed to take the Metro-North out of Grand Central anyway and the changeover in New Haven shaved a solid hundred off the per-person cost.

Also wondering whether I ever took a taxi from Union Station to Lynwood Place rather than walking; it would have felt weird to do so without significant luggage.

It did not feel weird to me not to walk the mile and a half home at one or two in the morning, which was usually when I was getting back from New York.

[sovay]

So in addition to all the ways it's insulting it also irritates me as emblematic of the mangling of language culture through lack of care and attention.

That's a good reason!

[redbird]

That makes sense; I was generally getting back significantly earlier (most often Sunday afternoon or evening after a weekend in the city).

[gwynnega]

The whole movie sounded almost like an anthology film the way Ed and Mike described it.

It is close to being one.

[sovay]

It is close to being one.

Talk to me about it?

[gwynnega]

The previous film in the series, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, was the first to do a monster mash-up, and House of Frankenstein goes even further, featuring Dracula, the Wolf Man, and Frankenstein's Monster (played fairly terribly by Glenn Strange). The following film, House of Dracula, also features Carradine as Dracula, along with the Wolf Man and the Monster (again played by Strange). Long-suffering Larry Talbot (and his quest for a cure from lycanthropy) is pretty much the emotional center of both films.

[gwynnega]

Oh, and Larry Talbot is actually cured (by mad science!) in House of Dracula.

[sovay]

Oh, and Larry Talbot is actually cured (by mad science!) in House of Dracula.

Hooray! (Does this mean he gets a happy ending, or just an unhappy one that doesn't involve being a werewolf?)

[gwynnega]

He gets a happy ending! (Although he does wind up being a werewolf again in one of the Abbott and Costello monster movies.)

[sovay]

Frankenstein's Monster (played fairly terribly by Glenn Strange)

Okay, I can see that having Karloff act against himself might have been technically complicated, but I think he could have pulled it off!

[gwynnega]

I think Karloff was tired of the heavy makeup, plus he had back problems from doing the earlier Frankenstein films, so the heavy boots were probably a bad idea. Unfortunately none of the actors (Lon Chaney Jr., Bela Lugosi, and Glenn Strange) who played the Monster in the later Universal films did a particularly good job.

[lemon_badgeress]

...I admit I was thinking more urban fantasy or mythpunk realism rather than christian apocalyptic, but that does fit...

[sovay]

...I admit I was thinking more urban fantasy or mythpunk realism rather than christian apocalyptic, but that does fit...

Huh. I guess it is Christian. I associate it so much with the underworld, I kind of appropriated it right into Hadestown this summer and didn't think twice.

[lemon_badgeress]

...mmmmm. I might have to buy the track so I can ponder that properly! I love Hadestown so much. But bandcamp is already yelling at me about the number of times I've listened to it XD

[sovay]

But bandcamp is already yelling at me about the number of times I've listened to it

Psst.

As I type this comment, I can hear a train whistle blowing in the night.

[lemon_badgeress]

*!!!* thank you :D