Tag: Allen Kopp

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ~ A Capsule Book Review


One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest ~ A Capsule Book Review by Allen Kopp

The classic American novel, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, by Ken Kesey, was first published in 1962. It is set entirely (except for one brief scene on a fishing boat toward the end of the novel) in a men’s ward of a state mental hospital. The book owes a large part of its fame to the 1976 Oscar-winning film version starring Jack Nicholson and Louise Fletcher.

The first-person narrative of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest is told in the voice of one Chief Bromden, a very tall half-Indian-half-white-man, who is a long-time patient (maybe “inmate” is more appropriate) in the ward. He pretends to be “deaf and dumb” but isn’t. He sweeps the floor constantly, allowing him to be in places (closed-door meetings, for example) where he otherwise wouldn’t be allowed. He sees and hears everything. He is the silent observer.

The ward is ruled with an iron fist by one Nurse Ratched, who the men call “Big Nurse.” She is about fifty years old, wears lots of lipstick, has enormous breasts, and is a former army nurse. She is friends with the mother of one of the patients, Billy Bibbit, and, except for that, we know nothing about her life away from the hospital. Is she married? Does she have children? Is she a lesbian? We never know. She remains throughout the novel a rather one-dimensional character.

Over time Nurse Ratched has fine-tuned the ward to her liking. She believes in strict adherence to rules and schedule. The patients are all afraid of her one way or another. She uses fear, intimidation, humiliation—and sometimes electroshock therapy—to keep them in line. She herself is as machine-like and as tightly controlled as her ward. She seems invincible. No one will go against her.

Enter patient Randle Patrick McMurphy, transferred to the mental ward from a state work farm. He is the rowdy nonconformist, the extrovert from the lower classes, the master manipulator. He has been bucking authority his entire life and isn’t intimidated by it. Whether he really belongs in a mental hospital or not is never established. As a work-farm prisoner, he wangles a transfer to the mental hospital because the food is better, the surroundings more comfortable, and the living easier. He has made himself master of his world.

R. P. McMurphy challenges Nurse Ratched’s authority in a way it has never been challenged before. He lets her know that she has met her match in him. He isn’t intimidated by her the way the other men are. He breaks all the rules and leads the other men into doing the same. Finally they have found somebody who speaks for them, who stands up for them. He gives them courage they never realized they had. When he finds that most of them are in the mental hospital voluntarily (they can leave whenever they want to) rather than “committed,” he forces them to look at their lives in a different way: they are masters of their own destiny, most of them, instead of pawns to be manipulated by the “Combine.”

The story doesn’t turn out well for McMurphy, but has Nurse Ratched really won in the end? Hasn’t McMurphy wrought a change that otherwise (if not for him) would not have been possible? It’s the end of the road for him but the beginning of a new and better road for some of the others. In the end he has triumphed over the “Combine” in a way we didn’t expect. He is the classic antihero, the “one against many.”

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp 

by allen0997

Lawless ~ A Capsule Movie Review


Lawless ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

During the lawless days of Prohibition (1918-1933), the illegal liquor trade took off in the United States. Enterprising “businessmen” learned there was much money to be made from the illegal making and selling of the liquor that the public demanded and couldn’t buy legally. The new movie Lawless is the partly true story of the Bondurant brothers (Forrest, Howard and Jack), who thrived as bootleggers for a time during the early 1930s in a rural community in Virginia.

Jack Bondurant (Shia Laboeuf) is the youngest brother. The story is told mostly through his eyes. He is a little too sensitive for the line of work he’s in. The brains of the operation is the oldest brother, Forrest (Tom Hardy), who is tough as nails and knows how to deal with the competition and with the forces of the law that are trying to put him down. A sort of legend grows up around the Bondurant brothers that they are invincible, mostly because of the toughness and tenacity of Forrest Bondurant. When Forrest’s throat is cut, a horrible injury that he survives, Jack is forced to develop some toughness of his own. When their bootlegging business is thriving, they are producing a thousand gallons of bootleg whiskey a week. Jack Bondurant, during this time, develops a penchant for clothes and cars and courts a reluctant minister’s daughter named Bertha Minnix (love that name) whose father would gladly kill him if given the chance.

The law is represented by one Charlie Rakes (Guy Pearce), a creepy (for some reason he has no eyebrows) “special agent” from the city who dresses in a dapper manner and wears perfume. He is sent to Virginia to quell the bootlegging industry there and has a very condescending manner toward the locals. At one point he declares, “these hillbillies are a sideshow unto themselves.” When the local sheriff tells Charlie Rakes he doesn’t much like him, Charlie says, “Not many do.” This simple statement defines his character better than anything he says or does.

When Charlie Rakes delivers a brutal beating to Jack Bondurant because of who he is rather than for anything he’s done, Jack doesn’t even try to defend himself. The score, however, is ultimately settled.

A world-weary dame from the city named Maggie (played by Jessica Chastain) shows up and becomes a sort of employee of the Bondurants. She helps Forrest—at one point saving his life—and eventually falls for him, although very little screen time is given to their “romance.” That’s not what this movie is about.

Even though the Bondurant brothers are on the “wrong” side of the law, we are on their side and want them to succeed. Deep down, they are decent fellows just trying to make a living in hard times. They resort to violence only when they must to defend their interests. At one point, Forrest states that it’s the fear they have over people that makes them survive in the very ugly and brutal business they are in. Don’t mess with them and they won’t mess with you.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

My Three Least Favorite Words in the English Language

My Three Least Favorite Words in the English Language 

Any writer who has ever sent out manuscripts to publishers for possible publication has probably received a superficial form rejection letter. More often than not, the rejection letter will say something like this:

“Thank you for sending us your story, but UNFORTUNATELY it doesn’t fit our editorial needs at this time.”  

Why UNFORTUNATELY? Is UNFORTUNATELY supposed to make me feel better that my work is being rejected? One person (very possibly a person 22 years of age who just doesn’t “get” my story) has decided my work isn’t worthy of publication. Fortune has nothing to do with it. These “gate keepers” work for literary magazines and are supposed to be writers themselves, for heaven’s sake! They are judging my work, and they can’t think of anything more fitting to say than UNFORTUNATELY? Isn’t it a writers’ job to avoid being trite and lazy? A little originality couldn’t hurt here. UNFORTUNATELY is a junky word that should be avoided in speaking or writing, but especially in writing. Just because UNFORTUNATELY is a long, five-syllable word doesn’t mean people will think you’re smart if you use it.

Another overused word that I truly despise is HOPEFULLY. When you are around anybody doing any talking, you can’t go for more than a few minutes without hearing something like this:

“HOPEFULLY I will get sick after lunch so I can go home for the rest of the day.” 

This is a grammatically incorrect sentence! Didn’t anybody sit through eighth-grade English? HOPEFULLY is an adverb. To be used correctly, it must have a verb to go with it, as in:

“We waited HOPEFULLY for good news from the front.”  

And that brings us to the Queen Mother of all meaningless, overused, cringe-inducing words! If somebody could count up the number of times that BASICALLY is used in a year, it would be in the tens of millions. BASICALLY as a word doesn’t mean anything. What exactly does it mean, anyway? There isn’t any sentence that contains BASICALLY that wouldn’t be a better sentence without it.

“The hurricane will BASICALLY hit landfall around midnight.”  

All right, what does BASICALLY add to that sentence? You are saying the same thing with fewer words and not making anybody cringe if you just say:

“The hurricane will hit landfall around midnight.”  

There are at least two news reporters on Fox News who can barely speak a sentence without throwing in BASICALLY. If they don’t use BASICALLY in the first sentence or two, they are sure to use it in the first thirty seconds of their report. That’s when they lose me. That’s when I reach for the remote to channel over to the comforting and unreal world of Turner Classic Movies. Isn’t that the Wavishing Kay Fwancis?

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway ~ A Capsule Book Review

  

The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp 

Ernest Hemingway is probably the best known and most identifiable American writer of the twentieth century. He is known almost as much for his adventurous life and for his travels as for his writing. He wrote about the manly pursuits of big-game hunting in Africa, bullfighting in Spain, and boxing wherever it happened to be. He was a newspaper reporter for the Kansas City Star, drove an ambulance as a young man on the Italian front in World War I (which formed the basis for his novel A Farewell to Arms), was among the “Lost Generation” of artists, writers and painters who expatriated to Paris between the World Wars, went to Spain to fight with the anti-fascist forces during the Spanish Civil War (leading to his novel For Whom the Bell Tolls), and served as a war correspondent on the European front in World War II.

Throughout most of his life, Hemingway suffered from the mental condition known as manic depression, which is now called bipolar disorder. He underwent electroshock therapy, which affected his memory and his ability to write. He died of a self-inflicted gunshot would in July 1961, a few days before his sixty-second birthday. He left behind a body of work that has stood the test of time. In addition to his dozens of short stories and nonfiction work, he wrote at least three novels (The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls) that are considered among the best of the best of twentieth century American writing. His style of writing (terse, clean, straightforward, simple without being spare) has often been imitated but never equaled.

This summer I undertook the monumental task of reading all 650 pages of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway. The book is divided into three sections. The first section is “The First Forty-Nine” stories that Hemingway wrote as a young man. It contains the most famous and well known of his stories and was published as a collection in 1938. The second section contains the stories that Hemingway published after 1938, and the third section is stories that, according to the preface, had never been published before.

The section of previously unpublished work contains some fragments of unpublished novels that (sort of) stand alone as short stories. The last selection in the collection is a forty-five page novel “fragment” called “The Strange Country” that later became Islands in the Stream, a novel that was published in the 1980s, long after Hemingway’s death. If it was anybody other than Hemingway, this meandering, rather pointless fragment probably would never have seen the light of day. It’s about a middle-aged man with several failed marriages to his credit on a road trip through Florida with a much-younger woman. They drive, they drink liquor, they talk a lot, they eat, they sleep, they have sex. Was Hemingway writing about himself? It seems a little self-indulgent.

The stories are apparently just in random order, rather than in the order in which Hemingway wrote them. The African stories (“The Snows of Kilimanjaro,” “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” “An African Story,” etc.) are interspersed with the bullfighting stories (“The Capital of the World,” “The Undefeated”) and the stories of the Spanish Civil War (“The Denunciation,” “The Butterfly and the Tank,” “Night Before Battle,” “Under the Ridge”). The two “Henry Morgan” stories later became incorporated into the novel To Have and Have Not. The “Nick Adams” stories, which Hemingway wrote early in his career, were inspired by summers he spent with his family in Michigan as a boy. The longest of the Nick Adams stories, at forty pages, is “The Last Good Country,” which, for some reason, was never completed. Of the “groups” of stories in the collection, I like the Nick Adams stories the best.

Some of the stories in The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway I had read, but most of them I was reading for the first time. I liked most of the stories and found them engaging and worth my time, although some of them are not really to my taste. I’m not a fan of either bullfighting or big-game hunting and cringe at some of the long passages about killing animals, but it is, after all, Hemingway, so he must be indulged in his passions. Nobody else demonstrates such a breadth of subject matter in a body of short stories. He is a master of the form. For a great reading experience, though, read either of the novels A Farewell to Arms or For Whom the Bell Tolls. Both of them are love stories in a war setting and are superb.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

Camp Bonhomie

 

Camp Bonhomie ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

August put the strap of his duffle bag over his shoulder and looked around the room as if seeing it for the last time. His eyes lingered fondly over the books, the closet that held his clothes, the door to the bathroom, the writing desk, the bed that (he realized now) was the best and most comfortable bed in the world. He wouldn’t be back for two weeks and two weeks is a long time when you’re going someplace you don’t want to go. He was already homesick and he hadn’t even left yet.

He had been going to take the bus but his father agreed as a kind of concession to drive him the hundred miles to camp. He was silent the entire way, staring grimly out the window. When he saw a sign that said they had only ten miles to go, his mouth went dry and he felt a sick feeling in his stomach.

“You’re going to have such a good time,” his father said, as if reading his mind.

“I don’t want to do this,” August said. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

“You’re not going to be sick,” his father said. “ You’re going to be fine. Look, we all have to do things we don’t want to do. That’s the way life is. Sometimes those things we don’t want to do can turn out to be very good for us.”

“Mother wouldn’t have made me go.”

“Your doctor had to pull some strings to get you accepted. Not everybody can get into this camp.”

“I wish I had been one of the ones that couldn’t get in.”

“He believes it’s the best thing for you at this point in your development.”

“He’s an idiot. I’d like to see him spend two weeks away from home in a strange place with a bunch of strangers he doesn’t care to know.”

“Give it a chance, August. Please, for my sake.”

“How do you know I won’t run away when nobody’s looking.  Hitchhike back home?”

“Is that what you’re planning on doing?”

“No, I’m just saying ‘what if’.”

“I don’t want you hitchhiking. You’re only thirteen years old. You don’t know what the world is like yet.”

“I have a pretty good idea.”

“I don’t want to find you in a ditch with your throat cut and God only knows what else.”

“It might turn out to be a good thing.”

When they came to the camp, his father pulled off the highway and went up an enormous hill where the trees were so thick they kept out the sunlight. He turned in at a gate marked “welcome” at the top of the hill and drove around a winding drive to a low, rustic building where new arrivals were supposed to check in. He parked the car and turned off the engine.

“That’s all right,” August said. “You don’t have to wait. You can just drop me off.”

“No,” his father said. “This is your first time away from home. I want to see where you’ll be staying. I want to talk to the person in charge.”

They went inside. His father waited patiently while August stood in line to sign in. When he had his room assignment, his father insisted on going to the room with him and seeing it. He wanted to have a picture in his head to take back home, he said, of the place where August would be staying.

Each cabin had four rooms with four boys to a room. August was in room two of cabin eight. The three other boys who would be staying in the room with him had already arrived, so August had to take the bed that was left over. He didn’t mind because it was the bed that was the farthest from the others. He threw his bag down and turned to his father.

“You can go now,” he said.

“You’ll be all right?” his father asked. “You like the room?”

“Does it matter?”

“Aren’t you going to say good-bye to me before I go?”

“Good-bye.”

“Won’t you miss me?”

“Probably not as much as you think I should.”

His father put his hands on his shoulders, patted him twice, and then left him alone in the room. Out the window August saw him talking to one of the counselors, a thin young man dressed all in white. His father had his back to the window but August could see the face of the counselor as it went from jolly to seriously attentive. He knew his father was telling him August’s history of emotional problems and how they had all been trying to get August to open up to others and emerge from his self-imposed isolation before it was too late.

After his father drove away, August lay down on the bed, not knowing exactly what he was supposed to do. In a little while his three roommates came in and August stood up. They introduced themselves and shook hands like little men. Two of them, Ricky and Eddie, were younger than August and had a callow, frightened look. The third was half-a-head taller and a year or two older. His name was Randall. He had a self-confident swagger that August found intimidating. If August had trouble with any of them, it would be with Randall.

“There’s something I think I should tell you about myself,” August said, when the others had stopped talking and he had a chance to speak.

“What’s that?” Randall asked.

“I don’t want to be here and I want to be left alone. If you don’t mess with me, we’ll be fine, but if you’re thinking about playing any little tricks on me like putting a snake in my bed or dipping my toothbrush in the toilet, I have to tell you I’m not right in the head and I can snap. I have a big knife and I don’t mind using it.”

Ricky and Eddie sat side by side on the bed looking at him, trying to figure out what he was saying. Ricky smiled but Eddie looked scared.

“I don’t believe you have a knife,” Randall said with a sneer. “Let me see it.”

“Oh, you don’t want to see it,” August said.

“You’re not supposed to have weapons here.”

“Well, nobody needs to know about it. Just knowing it exists ought to be enough.”

“Maybe Captain Jack should know about it too,” Randall said.

“Who’s Captain Jack?”

“He’s the head counselor,” Eddie said.

“He doesn’t need to know about it,” August said. “It’s just for the four of us to know.”

Ricky and Eddie nodded their heads and smiled as if a mystery had been cleared up.

“Big man,” Randall said. “Big, crazy man.”

At dinner in the cafeteria, he imagined that people were looking at him oddly, whispering about him and avoiding being near him, so he figured that Randall must have told people what he said about having a knife. After dinner he went back to the room and lay on his back on the bed with his hands across his chest. Eddie and Ricky came in and asked him if he wanted to go for a walk to see the lake, but he said he was sick from the terrible food and he couldn’t get up off the bed.

That night he couldn’t sleep because the bed was hard and narrow, he was hot, and the chirring of the insects kept him awake. He was still awake around two in the morning when a thunderstorm moved through and nearly tore the roof off the cabin, which the others didn’t seem to notice.

Breakfast was at seven-thirty. After breakfast everybody was required to attend an orientation meeting in the assembly hall, at which the rules of the camp were explained. At the end of the meeting, each camper was given a schedule of events and activities. Failure to follow the schedule resulted in demerits. A certain number of demerits resulted in expulsion from the camp. August glanced briefly at his schedule and crumpled it up. Just like school, he thought, only worse. At school he at least got to go home at the end of the day.

His first scheduled activity was a demonstration of wood carving. He was trying to figure out where he was supposed to go when the young counselor he had seen talking to his father approached him.

“Are you August Gilpin?” the counselor asked, not unlike a police officer serving a summons.

“Who wants to know?”

“Don’t get cute with me. I know who you are.”

“If you know, then why are you asking?”

“Captain Jack wants to see you in his office right away in the administration building.”

“What for?”

“We don’t tolerate any shit here from you city kids, even the crazy ones. You’re about to find that out.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” August said. “I haven’t done anything.”

“They’re waiting for you, little man.”

“Let them wait. I don’t care. They can go to hell.”

He looked over his shoulder to see if anybody was watching him and then he left camp. He didn’t go out the front gate and down the road but instead went around by the lake and into the woods. He found a path through the thick trees and heavy foliage on the other side of the lake but he didn’t know where it led. It led away from camp and that was the important thing.

He followed the path for a long way and then he came to a converging path going in another direction. He was tired of going the same way so he took the new path. It seemed to hold promise in a vague way that he didn’t understand. Maybe the path would lead him to what he was looking for, but he didn’t know yet what that was.

After a while the path ended, or turned back on itself, but he didn’t mind. He kept going because the pathless foliage was not as thick as it had been or the trees as forbidding. It was easy walking for as far as he could see.

Coming to a high hill with some large rocks, he sat down to rest. From that vantage point he could see a long way, perhaps miles. He saw some houses and a road, so he knew he wasn’t hopelessly lost in the woods. On the road he saw a few cars and large trucks on their way to the city. He would hitch a ride with one of the truck drivers. He would tell him he was hiking in the woods with friends and got separated from them, became lost on his own, and wanted only to get back home and let everybody know he was all right.

The road was farther away than it appeared. He was sweating when he reached it, out of breath and thirsty. He began walking in the direction he believed was home. Cars whizzed past him going very fast. He didn’t know how he was ever going to get anybody to stop.

He had walked maybe a quarter-mile or so with his back to oncoming traffic, when a big car, an old white Cadillac, slowed, passed him and pulled off onto the shoulder ahead of him. He didn’t understand at first if somebody was offering him a ride or if it was something else.

The driver rolled down the window and motioned for August to come to him. August saw it was an older man, much older than his father.

“Where you headed?” the man asked him.

“I’m not really sure,” August said.

“You look like you’re pretty well done in. Get in and we’ll give you a ride.”

He reached behind him and pulled the latch on the back door, opening it partway. August grabbed onto the door and got in. He saw right away that there was a woman in the car with the man.

“This is my wife, Nellie Fritchie,” the man said.

“How do you do?” the woman said. She turned around and faced August but he knew she couldn’t see him because she was blind. Her eyes rolled around in her head like loose marbles and her eyelids fluttered. Her face was very wrinkled and she wore a blond wig that seemed too young for her and lots of lipstick.

“And my name is Johnny Fritchie,” the man said.

“Hello,” August said.

“And what might your name be?”

“Carl Heinrich,” he said. It was the first name that came to him, the name of an older boy he knew from school.

“And how old are you, Carl?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s pretty young to be walking along the highway in this part of the United States alone, Carl. Are you sure you’re not in some kind of trouble?”

“No, I’m not.”

“I’m not even going to ask you where you live, Carl, because I don’t think you’d tell me the truth. Would you like to know where we live?”

“Where?”

“We live hundreds and hundreds of miles from here in the state of Maine. Have you ever been to Maine, Carl?”

“No.”

“Would you like to see Maine?”

“I guess so.”

“We have a big house on the coast of Maine with more room than the two of us need. Would you like to come and be our guest for a while, Carl? For as long as you want, really. You don’t have to answer me right this minute, Carl. Just sit there and think about it. I admire a man who takes his time to make decisions.”

August lay down on the broad seat and put his legs up. He turned over on his side with his face toward the seat back. The leather smelled good and felt cool against his face. He felt perfectly relaxed and at ease for the first time in a long time. As he drifted off to sleep, he felt the tires underneath him turning, turning, putting miles between himself and everything he wanted to leave behind.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

True Blood, Season 5 ~ A Capsule Review

True Blood, Season 5 ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp 

HBO’s Southern gothic vampire series, True Blood, is in its fifth season. Sookie Stackhouse, the Louisiana waitress, is still deeply involved with vampires, good and bad. The good vampires want to “mainstream” with humans, while the bad vampires want to enslave humans and use them as a source of food, by way of their blood. These two factions of vampires are frequently at odds with each other. The bad vampires—that is, members of the “Sanguinista” movement—are personified by one Russell Edgington, a vengeful, gay vampire thousands of years old. In the previous season, he made an impromptu appearance on a TV newscast, in which he ripped out the spine of the newscaster and vowed to “eat the children” of humans, after which he would eat everybody else. “And now time for the weather. Tiffany?” Good stuff.

Anybody familiar with the character of Sookie Stackhouse knows that she is no ordinary waitress. She is a “telepath” (she can read the thoughts of others) and a kind of fairy. It seems that vampires have long had an affinity with fairies and believed fairies to be extinct. Fairies taste and smell especially sweet to vampires and can, at times, enhance their power.

Since the beginning of the series, Sookie has had an on-again, off-again “relationship” with one Bill Compton, one of the good vampires, who has only been a vampire since the Civil War, a relatively short time. Vampire Bill is a soft-spoken Southern gentleman whose vampire nature is frequently at odds with his human nature and his desire to “mainstream” with humans. I can’t tell you how many times Sookie has been in deadly peril and Vampire Bill has come to her rescue. Any other vampire might have just killed her right off and been done with her, but not Vampire Bill.

Sookie has a handsome, dimwitted brother named Jason. He has a good heart but seems to lack judgment and, at times, good sense. He knows his own faults better than anybody and wants to live a better life but doesn’t seem to know how. He is waiting for somebody to show him the way. His libido seems to always lead him down the path of danger.

Sookie’s lifelong best friend is Tara Thornton, a black girl with an unhappy history and her own share of woes. Her latest travail is that she was shot in the head while trying to protect Sookie (it’s a long story) and, to keep her from dying, Sookie and Lafayette (Tara’s gay, restaurant cook cousin) enlist the aid of the sardonic girl vampire, Pam, to turn her into a vampire. It was either that or death. Tara is not happy about having been “turned” and will never forgive Sookie and Lafayette. She has always hated vampires and has had more than her share of scary experiences from her association with them. She’d rather be anything than a vampire.

There are other interesting characters, not the least of whom is Eric Northman, a perfectly formed Nordic type who was a “Viking” at the time he was turned into a vampire a thousand years ago. His “maker” was Godric, a good vampire, who immolated himself in sunlight on the roof of a hotel during one of the earlier seasons. He was over two thousand years old. Then there’s Jessica, the teen girl that Vampire Bill “turned” by orders from the vampire “magister.” Vampire Bill had to “turn” Jessica as a kind of penalty for one of the times he saved Sookie’s life. Jessica was a hellion of a girl vampire at first but seems to have calmed down a lot, thanks to the influence of her “maker,” Vampire Bill, and is mainstreaming with humans. She had a human boyfriend named Hoyt Fortenberry (who can’t seem to get out from under his mother’s influence), but they broke up. Sam Merlotte is the owner of the honky-tonk (roadhouse and bar) where Sookie works as a waitress. Sam is an all-around good guy and can usually be counted on to help out when trouble is brewing, but he is a “shape shifter” and has his own share of troubles, including a werewolf girlfriend and a trashy family. Arlene is a ditzy waitress at Merlotte’s with beet-red hair and an odd husband, Terry Bellefleur, who can’t seem to shake his wartime experiences. Andy Bellefleur is the sheriff and cousin of Terry Bellefleur. He is a recovering addict and a not-very-effective law enforcement officer, frequently bewildered by all the supernatural goings-on in the town.

True Blood is based on a series of novels by Charlaine Harris. While it is sometimes silly (as in the case of Sookie being more in love with Vampire Bill or with Eric Northman), it’s never boring. There are at least two dozen characters and most of them are interesting in their own way. The plot line is constantly shifting. If something is going on that you find not all that interesting, wait about two minutes and the story will shift to something else. With lots of sex scenes and lots of swearing and gore, it’s definitely not for everybody and not for the younger set. What it is, though, is inventive, surprising, suspenseful, well written and well acted. Those Southern accents are impeccable.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp  

by allen0997

See a Show, Smoke a Lucky

See a Show, Smoke a Lucky ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Miss Bobbie Bouchard lived in an air-conditioned apartment on the fifteenth floor in an apartment building in the city. When her mother went into the hospital for an extended stay during the summer, she sent Bobbie to stay with her aunt and uncle on their farm a hundred miles from the city. Bobbie rode all that way on the bus by herself, feeling very grown-up and wishing she had bought along a pack of cigarettes to smoke on the way. When the bus stopped midway through the trip for a rest stop at a little café, she went inside and sat at a booth by herself and ordered a tuna salad sandwich and a Coke just like a seasoned traveler.

Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice had two children of their own, cousins of Bobbie Bouchard. Bobbie liked them well enough, even though they were younger than she was and they seemed awfully naïve. There was a girl named Freda, who was fourteen, and a twelve-year-old boy named Floyd Junior, who was just called Junior. Neither of them had ever gone to a show, smoked a cigarette or kept a secret from their mother. The only family secret was that Junior occasionally wet the bed, still, at his age. The doctor said it was an adolescent phase and that Junior would eventually stop doing it. In the meantime he advised Aunt Bernice to buy a rubber sheet.

Bobbie was just as naïve about the farm as Freda and Junior were about the way things were done in the city. She thought chickens were strange, exotic creatures and a pig was a kind of dog that might bite her if she got too close. She could hardly believe that you could go all day on the farm and not see any people or cars and hear nothing except the wind in the trees and the sounds the farm animals made. At night the crickets kept her awake, but after three or four nights she didn’t notice them as much.

When Bobbie saw in the newspaper that there was a show in the town of Delford, about ten miles from the farm, and that they had a two o’clock matinee on Saturday, she asked Aunt Bernice if she and Freda and Junior might go. Wanting Bobbie to have as much fun as possible during her stay on the farm, Aunt Bernice agreed.

Saturday was the day that Aunt Bernice had to see her doctor in the city for her female trouble; Uncle Floyd would be driving her in his pickup truck. They left at nine o’clock in the morning and wouldn’t be back until evening. Before she left, Aunt Bernice gave Bobbie a wad of bills from her egg money and put her in charge of the trip to Delford to see the show, since she was the oldest. She was to watch out for Freda and Junior and make sure they were careful and that nothing bad happened to them.

After breakfast and after Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice had left, Bobbie and Freda were still sitting at the kitchen table. Bobbie was telling Freda a funny story about a family of midgets that lived in her apartment building in the city. There was a write-up about them in the newspaper. They had tiny furniture made especially for them, a tiny bed, table, sofa and chairs just a little bit larger than doll furniture. They had a special-made door on their apartment, with the knob and the lock about knee-high to a normal-sized person.

Bobbie stopped mid-sentence and looked appraisingly at Freda. “You have hardly any eyebrows at all,” she said.

“What?” Freda asked. She had difficulty making the transition from midgets to eyebrows that fast.

“Hold on a minute!” Bobbie said.

She ran into the bedroom she shared with Freda and when she came back she was carrying a makeup kit. She unzipped it and took out an eyebrow pencil and gently penciled in where Freda’s eyebrows would be if she had any.

“You look just like Joan Crawford!” she said when she was finished, handing Freda a mirror.

“Like who?” Freda asked.

When Bobbie saw the effect of a little eyebrow pencil, she wasn’t going to stop there. She endowed on Freda’s face a full complement of makeup, including rouge, lipstick, mascara and eye shadow. Not too much but just the right amount; if she had learned anything at all in the city, it was how to apply makeup. Freda had never worn makeup before and was amazed at the way it made her look. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a much older, more sophisticated girl looking back at her.

“Mother would die if she saw me like this,” she said.

“You look great!” Bobbie said. “Your hair ruins it, though.”

She seemed to have a solution for everything. She just happened to have a curly blond wig in her suitcase. She went to the bedroom and brought it back to the kitchen and put it on Freda’s head, covering up her own lank, colorless hair with it, tugging it until it was in place and pushing the stray strands underneath.

“There!” she said, handing Freda the mirror. “Now you look like somebody.”

“That’s not me,” Freda said.

Junior came into the kitchen with his hair slicked back, wearing his favorite blue plaid shirt. When he saw Freda, he said, “Who are you supposed to be?”

“Doesn’t she look glamorous?” Bobbie said.

“Daddy is going to kill her!”

“He’ll never know about it,” Bobbie said.

“And you’d better not tell him!” Freda said. “If you do, I’ll tell him and mama about how you skipped Sunday school.”

“I didn’t skip Sunday school,” he said. “I just didn’t go.”

“I hope I don’t see anybody at the show who knows me,” Freda said. “They’re bound to tell on me.”

“You look so different nobody would ever know who you are,” Bobbie said with a laugh.

They walked half-a-mile up the highway to the crossroads to catch the bus to Delford. Bobbie carried a big patent leather handbag that contained the money to ride on the bus and see the show, along with a headscarf, cough drops, lipstick and some other things she might need. She still had not been able to come by any cigarettes since she had been on the farm, though. Freda felt funny at first in the wig and makeup, but after a while when she realized people weren’t staring at her she felt more comfortable.

The bus ride to Delford, at about fifteen minutes, was all too short for Bobbie Bouchard. After being on the farm for several days, she was happy to be moving again and to see people. There were hardly any people on the bus and they were very quiet, absorbed in their own thoughts. Nobody paid any attention to Bobbie, Freda and Junior. Junior sat in a seat by himself and looked out the window at the passing scenery as if he had never seen it before. Bobbie talked the whole time about motion pictures she had seen and about her favorite motion picture actors and actresses. She found it very nearly incredible that Freda and Junior had gone their entire lives and hadn’t seen a motion picture. She felt sorry for them and didn’t know how they could have stood such a life.

The bus let them out at a little gas station on the edge of the Delford downtown business district. It was an easy walk to get to the show and the stores that lined the two streets, Main Street and First Street. Bobbie told Freda and Junior to wait for her for a minute while she went into the gas station. They thought she needed to use the restroom, but when she came out they saw that she had bought a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes, with a complementary book of matches, which she ostentatiously placed inside the patent leather handbag.

Bobbie was a little disappointed that the movie that was playing was a western—she much preferred musicals or love stories—but she was willing to see the western for Freda and Junior’s sake and not complain about it. If she had been in the city, she would have had four or five movies to choose from. In a little town like Delford, though, when a western was playing, a western is what you saw.

There was lots of action in the movie, lots of riding and shooting. When the characters in the movie, mostly men, weren’t sitting around in the saloon talking and drinking beer while they played poker around a big table, they were riding horses through the desert or getting into fights or shooting at each other from behind big rocks. The sheriff of the town had a red-haired girlfriend with big breasts who was always crying and begging him to take her away and marry her. She had a brother with a big scar on the side of his face that gave him a lopsided grin. He was a cattle rustler and a murderer and the mortal enemy of the sheriff. The red-haired, big-breasted woman was torn between her love for the two men, one her brother and the other her sweetheart. In the end there was the inevitable showdown between them, the struggle between good and bad.

When the show was over, they still had plenty of time before their bus back to the farm, so they went to the Idle Hour Café across from the courthouse. They sat at a booth next to a window. After an elderly waitress in a black-and-white uniform came and took their order, Bobbie opened her purse and took out her cigarettes and lit one as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Did you like the show?” she asked Junior.

“I liked it fine,” he said. He never seemed to have too much to say about anything. “Can we go again sometime?”

“I don’t think your mother would like it if she knew you were smoking,” Freda said, looking over her shoulder to make sure nobody was looking.

“She’s not here, though, is she?” Bobbie said. “Would you like to try one?”

“No.”

“I’d like to try one,” Junior said.

“You’re twelve years old,” Freda said.

“Go ahead and take a puff,” Bobbie said. “Nobody’s looking.”

“Only if Freda does it first,” he said. “Then she can’t tell on me if I do it.”

“I’m not going to do it,” Freda said.

“Then I won’t either,” Junior said.

Bobbie placed the cigarette on the ash tray and slid it across the table to Freda. “Nobody’s looking,” she said.

“Go ahead,” Junior said.

Freda picked up the cigarette and took a small puff and blew the smoke out as quickly as she took it in.

“It doesn’t count if you don’t inhale,” Bobbie said.

Bobbie took the cigarette back from Freda and showed how to take the smoke into the mouth and draw it down into the lungs before letting it out. Freda tried doing what Bobbie had done but started coughing.

“It tastes terrible,” she said, “and it burns my throat.”

“You get used to it after a while,” Bobbie said.

“Now let me try,” Junior said.

He took a couple of preliminary puffs before making a show of trying to inhale.

“I don’t think you did it right,” Freda said.

“Close enough for twelve,” Bobbie said.

“Can they put you in jail for smoking?” Junior asked.

“Smoking is silly,” Freda said. “I don’t know why anybody wants to do it.”

“It’s very sophisticated,” Bobbie said. “All the best people do it.”

While they were eating, an older gentleman with a big belly and a toupee stepped up to the table and snapped Freda’s picture with a camera he had hanging around his neck. “Pardon me,” he said. “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”

Freda looked at him, bewildered. She thought it had something to do with the cigarette. “Yes?” she said. She put down her hamburger and wiped her fingers. She half-expected to be handcuffed and led away.

“I couldn’t help noticing you sitting there in front of that window. Your face stands out above all the others.”

“What?” she asked. “I was just sitting here.”

“The way the light shines through the window behind your head, I think you would photograph very well.”

“I, uh—“

“What are you talking about, mister?” Bobbie asked. “You’re scaring the poor girl.” She had learned how to deal with his type in the city.

“May I?” the man asked, stepping closer to Freda. He put his finger under her chin and lifted her face. “You have a very interesting physiognomy,” he said.

In the excitement of riding on the bus, seeing the show and eating in a restaurant, Freda had forgotten she looked like somebody completely different from who she was. “I, uh, this is not me,” she said.

“I’m a casting director for a motion picture production company,” he said, handing her his card. “We’re shooting a picture locally and want to hire some non-professional actors for some of the smaller speaking parts. I think you might be right for one of the parts.”

“A part in a movie?” Bobbie asked.

“Well, perhaps,” he said. “That is, if she’s available and interested.”

“I, uh, I don’t know,” Freda said.

“Are you a minor?”

“What?”

“He’s asking you your age, dumbbell,” Bobbie said.

“I’m fourteen,” Freda said.

The man took a step back. “You look older than that,” he said. “You look about sixteen or seventeen.”

“That’s what I’ve been telling her,” Bobbie said.

“No matter,” he said. “Since you are a minor, have your parent or guardian call us at the number on that card and we’ll arrange a time for you to come in and talk to us.”

“She sure will, mister!” Bobbie said. “And thanks.”

The man tipped his hat and walked away.

“What just happened?” Junior asked.

“Imagine that,” Bobbie said. “A part in a movie!” She didn’t know whether to be jealous or terribly happy for Freda, so she was both.

Freda laughed. “They wouldn’t want me if they knew what I really look like underneath.”

“Don’t be silly,” Bobbie said. “They don’t care about underneath. They care about what they can see.”

“It’s just about the silliest thing that’s ever happened to me,” Freda said, flushing with embarrassment.

“I told you you looked great and you didn’t believe me.”

“Are they going to make you a movie star?” Junior asked.

“It’s too ridiculous,” Freda said.

“You’ll call, won’t you?” Bobbie asked. “Just as soon as you get home?”

“No,” Freda said. “I can’t call. It’s not me they want. It’s somebody who doesn’t even exist.”

“Have Aunt Bernice call.”

“I can’t have her know about this. She’d just about die.”

“So does that mean you’re not going to call?”

Bobbie considered calling herself and saying she was the girl the man saw in the restaurant, but she didn’t know if she would be able to pull it off. He would know as soon as he saw her that she was somebody else, the “other girl” who didn’t even rate a second look.

When they left the Idle Hour Café, they still had more than an hour before their bus, so they walked around, looking in store windows. Bobbie smoked on the street and tried to get Freda and Junior to light up, but they refused. They had smoked once already and that was enough. All the fun had gone out of it.

Bobbie tried repeatedly to talk Freda into calling the number on the card, but Freda wanted no part of it and she refused to let Bobbie call on her behalf and pretend to be Aunt Bernice. She wanted to forget all about it, she said, but, above all, she wanted to keep Uncle Floyd and Aunt Bernice from ever knowing about it. She made Junior promise not to ever mention it. If he should forget and let it slip, she would tell them he had smoked. Never mind that she had smoked, too.

Bobbie believed that Freda was passing up the chance to be a big star, maybe even bigger than Linda Darnell, Rita Hayworth, or Susan Hayward. She believed a chance like that only comes along once in a lifetime. A part of her, deep down, though, was glad. She wouldn’t have to go through life seeing Freda a movie star while she herself was something less. She believed that things always work out for the best.

A few days later, Bobbie received a call from her mother. She was going home from the hospital and she wanted Bobbie to come home and help take care of her while she recuperated from an operation. Bobbie hated the thought of being cooped up at home taking care of her mother, but she promised to come back to the farm as soon as she could. For the next trip, she would think of all kinds of fun things for the three of them to do. She had some secret pictures she would bring along next time to show them.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp 

by allen0997

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ~ A Capsule Movie Review

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter ~ A Capsule Movie Review by Allen Kopp

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is based on the genre-bending (part horror, part historical fiction, part fantasy) novel of the same name by Seth Grahame-Smith. In the movie and the book, Abe Lincoln is an intrepid vampire killer, due in part to the notion that his mother was killed by vampires when he was at the impressionable age of only nine years. He soon discovers that vampires are everywhere, waiting to become the dominant species.

Abe is assisted in his hunt for vampires by one Henry Sturgess, who, Abe discovers, is a vampire himself but also a sworn enemy of all vampires. It seems that vampires can’t kill each other, so Henry uses Abe as his instrument in bringing down select vampires. Abe doesn’t use firearms against vampires, but instead prefers a silver-edged axe. There is much severing of heads and spurting of blood.

As Abe grows into manhood, he meets and marries Ann Todd from Springfield, Illinois. He becomes a lawyer and becomes interested in politics. He abhors slavery and sees the growing struggle between the North and the South as a struggle between vampire and non-vampire. Vampires want a nation of their own, it seems, and the vampire nation will become the separate nation formed if the South is victorious over the North in the epic War Between the States. When Abe becomes president, he has the monumental task of keeping the Union together and making sure the vampire nation does not become a reality.

I was a fan of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, the novel, when I read it a couple of years ago. For my money, the movie version doesn’t work as well as the book. We don’t really feel Abe’s anguish and experience his personal misfortune the way we did in the book. We don’t feel the threat the vampires pose (to Abe, his family and the country at large). Also, the ending in the movie seems rather flat, as if they squandered the book’s ironic ending. It could have been a great movie but isn’t. Still, it’s not a bad summertime movie if you like that kind of movie, a toss-away, that you see and forget about. It could have been a lot more than that.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp 

by allen0997

Never Marry

Never Marry ~ A Short Story by Allen Kopp 

Mrs. Shockley had been a widow for many years. Just when she was thought to be past such things, she began “keeping company” with an old man named Wallace Timpkins, who worked as a janitor at the grade school. Nobody was more chagrined at Mrs. Shockley’s recent flowering than her forty-year-old unmarried daughter, Edith. She watched in disbelief as her mother and Wallace sat on the couch on the evenings when he came for dinner, whispering and grappling together like a couple of adolescents. Edith was embarrassed for her mother. She knew that she, of all people, had to rescue her from the spell that Wallace seemed to have cast over her.

When Wallace Timpkins proposed marriage to Mrs. Shockley and she told him she needed a few days to think about it, Edith knew the situation was spiraling out of her control. Having dinner together and sitting on the couch afterwards was one thing, but talk of marriage seemed to be taking it a step too far. She had hoped her mother would come to her senses about Wallace but, if she married him, it would be too late; she would be stuck with him for as long as she lived and where would that leave Edith? She had no intention of being put out of her home.

One rainy Saturday morning when Edith had washed Mrs. Shockley’s hair at the kitchen sink and was putting it up in rollers at the table, she broached the rather sensitive topic of a union with Wallace.

“You wouldn’t really marry him, would you?” she asked.

“I don’t know why not,” Mrs. Shockley said. “He’s free and I’m free. We’re both of age.”

“Yes, but why would you even want to marry him?”

“Why does anybody get married?”

“I know why he wants to marry you.”

“Why?”

“He needs a cook, laundress and housekeeper and he can’t afford to hire one.”

“What a terrible thing to say!”

“How do you know he isn’t already married?”

“His wife died. He told me all about it.”

“How did she die?”

“She was hit by a train.”

“How do you know he didn’t push her?”

Mrs. Shockley sputtered with laughter and turned around so she could see Edith’s face. “Why would he do that?”

“So he would be free to marry you.”

“Oh! This conversation is getting out of hand!”

“You know nothing about him.”

“I know enough.”

“How long as he worked at the school?”

“Six years.”

“Where was he before that? Has he ever been in prison?”

“Why don’t you ask him yourself? He’s coming over tonight for dinner.”

With that revelation, Edith went upstairs to her room and locked herself in, refusing to finish rolling up her mother’s hair. Let her do it herself for once and see how she likes it, she thought.

For the rest of the morning and most of the afternoon, Edith remained in her room. She didn’t come down for lunch but instead sampled generously from a box of chocolate candy she kept in her dresser drawer. After that she took a long nap, waking up to a pounding headache and the smell of cooking food. She went downstairs silently and set the dining room table for three.

Wallace arrived just as dinner was ready. He seemed, Edith thought, to have a sixth sense where food was concerned. As she brought the chicken in from the kitchen and set it in the middle of the table and Wallace pulled out her chair for her to sit down, she thought: the dinner is already ruined for me. Mrs. Shockley was giggling like a schoolgirl and Wallace had only been there for five minutes.

Edith sat and nibbled at her food (what appetite she had was gone), looking coldly at her mother and Wallace. Mrs. Shockley spread some butter on a roll and held it up to Wallace; when he took a bite of it, the butter rolled down his chin. He began laughing to himself and when Mrs. Shockley asked what was so funny, he leaned over and whispered something in her ear, which caused her to erupt into a fit of laughter. When Wallace’s left hand wasn’t engaged in stuffing food into his maw, it was usually someplace or other on Mrs. Shockley’s body. Edith thought she was going to be sick. She needed to say something to remind them that she was also in the room.

“Being a janitor at a school must be terribly exciting,” she said, with an archness that Wallace and her mother both missed.

“What was that?” he asked, taking his eyes off Mrs. Shockley to look directly at Edith.

“I said it must be so exciting to be a janitor.”

“No, it’s not exciting,” he said. “It’s a living, that’s about all I can say. There are the good days and the bad days.”

“How long do you intend to be a janitor?” Edith asked.

“Until I retire, I guess.”

“And when might that be?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“Why all the questions?” Mrs. Shockley asked.

“I don’t know,” Edith said. “I guess I’m just trying to get better acquainted.”

“Yes, that’s a good idea,” Wallace said, “since we’re all going to be living in the same house together.”

“Why do you say that?” Edith asked.

“I haven’t told her yet, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said.

“Told me what?” Edith asked.

“I’ve accepted Wallace’s proposal of marriage. We’re going to be married in about six weeks, when school is out.”

Edith wasn’t even mildly surprised. She had been expecting the news. “This is rather sudden, isn’t it?” she asked.

“We decided the time is right,” Wallace said. “We neither one of us are getting any younger.”

“Do you think it’s wise for two people of your age to get married?” Edith asked.

“You’re beginning to sound rude,” Mrs. Shockley said, reaching over and taking Wallace’s hand in hers. “I was hoping you would be happy for us.”

“I am happy for you,” Edith said. “I just think there are some practical considerations that must be taken into account.”

“Like what?” Mrs. Shockley asked.

“Where are you going to live?”

“Wallace is going to move in with us, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said. “He lives in a rented place. We own our home.”

“I see,” Edith said. “And where does that leave me?”

“Why, what do you mean?”

“Where am I supposed to live?”

“You’ll live here with us, of course.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“This has always been your home. I never thought of having it any other way.”

“I see,” Edith said, tears forming in her eyes. “While the two of you are mooning around, giggling and pawing at each other in a nauseating fashion, I’ll be doing all the housework, all the cooking, cleaning, washing and sewing. I’m to be relegated to the role of unpaid servant, is that right?”

“Well, of course not!” Mrs. Shockley said. “What a ridiculous notion!”

“I think she just needs some time to get used to the idea,” Wallace said. “It’s a bit of a shock for her.”

“I just might be getting married myself,” Edith said defiantly.

“Who would marry you?” Mrs. Shockley said with a laugh.

“Do you realize how insulting that is?” Edith asked. “As if nobody in the world would ever want to marry me!”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Mrs. Shockley said. “It’s just that we’ve already gotten so used to the idea that you will never marry. It seems your time has come and gone.”

“Oh!” Edith said. “So that’s what you think of me, is it?”

“I think we just need to calm down and take a deep breath and watch what we say,” Wallace said.

“You don’t need to be giving me orders in my own house!” Edith said.

“There’s no need to be so touchy about everything!” Mrs. Shockley said.

“Let’s talk about something more pleasant,” Wallace said, “and talk about the marriage stuff later. There’s no hurry.”

“My mother and I own this house,” Edith said. “If she dies, the house belongs to me. If she marries you, does that mean you own the house?”

“We haven’t thought about anything like that,” Mrs. Shockley said.

“We can work out those details later,” Wallace said. “Let’s not spoil this lovely dinner.”

They sat in silence for a few moments, with Edith snuffling back tears. When it was time to serve the dessert, Mrs. Shockley started to get up to go into the kitchen.

“You just stay put,” Edith said, “and keep Mr. Timpkins company. I’ll get the dessert and make the coffee.”

“All right, dear,” Mrs. Shockley said.

Edith went into the kitchen and squeezed the tears out of her eyes. She took the banana cream pie out of the ice box where it was chilling and sliced three big pieces. While she was waiting for the coffee to brew, she took the flashlight out of the drawer and went quietly down the basement steps.

She went to the far corner of the basement—shining the light in the murk—behind the furnace and past the hot water heater, to the little shelf where her father used to keep paint cans. Now the shelf was empty except for a box of rat pellets that her mother had bought when she mistakenly believed she saw a rat under the basement steps. She shook two of the pellets into her hand and went back upstairs.

The pellets were hard like stale cookies. She crumbled them up with a butter knife and, after she had poured three cups of coffee, dissolved the rat pellets into one of the cups. She put the three slices of pie and three cups of coffee on a tray—the cup with the rat pellets in it separated from the other two—and took them into the dining room.

Her mother was talking about a murder case she had been reading about in the paper and Wallace was, as usual, hanging on her every word. After Edith set the coffee and pie in front of Wallace, she resumed her seat and watched him closely after he began taking small bites of the pie and sipping the coffee. She didn’t know how many pellets it would take to kill him but, if he was going to die, she hoped he would not die until later, until after he had gone home. Maybe the small amount she had used would only make him sick. Maybe it would have no effect at all.

When they were finished eating, Mrs. Shockley began clearing the table, but Edith told her to take Wallace into the living room and have a nice “visit” with him while she washed all the dishes herself and put everything away. Mrs. Shockley readily complied, believing that Edith was over the “unpleasantness” that had occurred earlier.

While Edith was in the kitchen, she could hear her mother and Wallace talking and laughing in the front room. He played the piano while she sang in her quivery soprano. After a while she heard nothing, so she was sure they were locked in an intimate embrace on the couch. In that way did all their evenings conclude.

She went upstairs to her room and read for a while and then readied herself for bed. She was aware when Wallace Timpkins left to go home about eleven-thirty. She heard her mother come upstairs a short time after that and go into her bedroom and shut the door.

She slept well and soundly and was awakened at dawn by the ringing of a bell. It took her a few seconds to realize the ringing was the phone in the hallway, halfway between her room and her mother’s room.

After several rings, her mother opened her door and come out into the hallway to answer the phone. Edith listened carefully to the voice of her mother as it went from a barely audible murmur to a gasp and a cry of distress. She turned over on her side and covered up her head. When her mother came into her room to tell her the news, she would pretend to be asleep and would not be smiling.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997

The Borgias, Season Two ~ A Capsule Review

The Borgias, Season Two ~ A Capsule Review by Allen Kopp  

The Borgias, on Showtime, is nearing the end of its second season. Anybody who has seen any part of The Borgias knows it is a lavish and beautifully photographed series about the Borgia family during the time of the Italian Renaissance. The Borgia family is not billed as “the original crime family” for nothing; it seems there is nothing they won’t do to get what they want or to hold onto their considerable power.

Pope Alexander VI (played by Jeremy Irons), whose name is Rodrigo Borgia before he becomes pope, is the patriarch of the Borgia family. To achieve his ends and to maintain his position on the papal throne, he is aided by his loyal son, Cesare, who becomes a cardinal when his father becomes pope. Like his father, Cesare will stop at nothing to achieve his ends (or his family’s). Also like his father, he seems driven by the belief that he is always right and always justified in his actions, no matter how brutal or ruthless they might seem. More often than not, he is aided in his dirty work by his faithful friend, Micheletto, who was bred on the streets of Rome and who has some secrets of his own.

Pope Alexander’s beautiful daughter, Lucrezia Borgia, started out as a young innocent but was soon disillusioned when she was married off to a boorish nobleman in an alliance that was supposed to help her family (it didn’t). She has a dalliance with a handsome, illiterate stable boy, Paolo, that results in a son. Paolo meets a violent end at the hand of Lucrezia’s brother, Juan.

Juan Borgia, Cesare’s younger brother, is an oversexed hellion who is, more often than not, an embarrassment to his family. He is cruel, arrogant and foolish, frequently caught up short by his rash actions. When he is sent away to Spain for a while to get him out of the way, he returns with a wife and a case of syphilis, for which there is no cure.

Pope Alexander was never married to the mother of his children (played by Joanne Whalley), so, to avoid the appearance of impropriety when he becomes pope, he sends her to live elsewhere. She remains a player in the family, however, even though Pope Alexander has taken up with the beautiful Julia Farnese, whom he quickly installs in the papal palace as his mistress.

Pope Alexander has an arch-enemy, one Cardinal Della Rovere (played by Colm Feore), who seems motivated entirely by his hatred of the Borgia family and by his desire to see Pope Alexander removed from the papal throne. He will rally the pope’s enemies against him if he can, or he will see the pope poisoned (or otherwise murdered) if there is no other way.

Another enemy of the Borgias is the religious zealot Savonarola. He despises Pope Alexander (and what he sees as his excesses and extravagance) as much as Cardinal Della Rovere does. He travels around the country preaching fiery, anti-Borgia sermons to anybody who will listen. He and Pope Alexander are destined to clash in one way or another. Pope Alexander will burn him at the stake as a heretic if he has his way.

There’s no shortage of sex and violence in The Borgias, sometimes in the same scene. (In one telling scene, Lucrezia Borgia tries to murder her brother Juan by letting a chandelier tall on him while he is engaged in a sex act with a prostitute). There is also spurting blood, severed heads and limbs, stuffed cadavers, torture and ceaseless warfare. It’s TV for grown-ups. It’s also fascinating to watch, intelligently acted and written, and beautiful to look at. The sets and costumes are lavishly detailed and amazing to see. The photography, especially in the outdoor scenes, is gorgeously reminiscent of Italian Renaissance painting. The Borgias is a feast for the eyes.

Copyright © 2012 by Allen Kopp

by allen0997