Mountains Made Low

It was difficult here to pick the ten best books, with the only criterion being that they are nonfiction, from the whole of the tradition of the written word, but here we go.

10. Candace Bushnell, Sex and the City. What can I say? I loved the TV show, and when I found out that the book it was based on was nonfiction, well that just added something enormous to the whole thing for me. I particularly like that the writer is Candace Bushnell, the TV character is Carrie Bradshaw, and that many of the pieces included in the book focus on the authorial-I’s friend, Carrie. It’s a strange blurring of the boundaries, and it’s definitely worth it.

9. Jeff Gordinier, X Saves the World. I’ll admit that I haven’t quite finished this one yet, but it’s awesome enough without having finished it to make the list. No question. Gordinier’s argument, made through popular culture references and sarcastic, at times utterly caustic, wit is that GenX is the only thing that keeps the entire world from sucking. The Baby Boomers are a bunch of shallow sellouts and the Millennials are lock-step dancing spotlight seekers. GenX as a whole, and individual Xers in particular, do it all their own way, not for money or fame, but just for their own gratification. Now if we could only get some freakin’ respect.

8. St. Augustine, Confessions. An odd juxtaposition, to be sure. The Confessions is Augustine’s spiritual autobiography, most of which is devoted to a discussion of all the terrible, horrible, no-good, very-bad things he did before he converted to Christianity, became a priest, and later a bishop. (Not to mention founding an order of monks and bringing Platonic Idealism and Aristotlean Rhetoric to the study of theology and the practice of homiletics.) My favorite passage is when the bishop pretty much names the two greatest (and equally to each other in horrificness) sins as, in no particular order: shacking up with a woman, and being a teacher of rhetoric.

7. Andy Clark, Being There. A study in posthuman phenomenology. Or Heidegger for the 21st century. Clark is a philosopher who’s work is lucid and accessible, and with this volume he updates a thoroughly (late-)modern philosophical position for our postmodern and posthuman age. It, simply put, defines the there (the da of the Heideggerian dasein) as: in our time, in our space(s), and particularly in our bodies. No more are phenomena only of the mind, but our bodies as media for living mediate all phenomena.

6. Plato, Phaedrus. The basic articulation of Platonic philosophy, this dialogic treatise features discussions of the nature and practice of persuasion, the nature of the human soul, and the nature of reality itself. Surprisingly, it’s not one of Plato’s longer works, and covers all that ground pretty rapidly and in a way that is expanded upon in some of his other works. If you want to know what Plato’s all about, read this one first.

5. John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. The writings of John Locke may well have been the greatest single influence on the shaping of American Republican Democracy. This is not the work that (along with Thomas Hobbes) did that shaping, however. This work laid the foundation for much of Western philosophy, including the philosophy of science, from 1700 onwards, arguing, though an empiricist philosophy, for the totally experiential acquisition of knowledge. Locke introduced, in this volume, the nurture side of the now infamous nature/nurture debate, and argued vociferously that only experience, only nurture, mattered at all in shaping the blank slate of mind with which all humanity is born. True, Locke almost certainly overstated his case, but where would we be without that case having been made?

4. Lawrence Lessig, Free Culture. Information wants to be free. But free information is not like free beer. This is Lessig’s central argument in this volume. He points out that we must focus on access where information is concerned, not possession. Information must not be locked up in its material instantiations; instead, it must be freed from those instantiations to make it as broadly available as possible. This emphasis on availability, this de-emphasizing of material, must not and cannot be construed, however, as license to copy and distribute creative content, culture, without compensation to the creators of that content. Information’s freedom is not about P2P networks, it’s about developing new ways of thinking about ownership and licensing that allows the content to be made available as widely as possible. This new thinking is happening, but it’s not happening fast enough, because the first thought was not to adapt, but to lock down. Now that’s changing, in part thanks to Lessig and his ideas.

3. Karl Marx, Das Kapital. I know—I can’t be serious, right? Well, I am. Marx has gotten a bad rap. Leninist communism, Stalinist pogroms, and the Cold War have done for Marx. But has anyone actually read it? What he proposes is not the antithesis of capitalism, but its progression. It reflects the understanding that the workers can, should, and by nature do, control their means of production, and that such conditions as slavery and feudalism, in particular, coopt workers’ means and their natural freedom to control those means and trade them as they wish, by open agreement. His critique of free markets lies in the fact that those with jobs can, differently, coopt the labor of the worker; but this is a call for reform, not schism, the kind of reform that organized labor brought to capitalist economics even as Leninism and Stalinism festered alongside in the 20th century.

2. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations. As much, though, as Marx has been misrepresented, Smith’s articulation of free market principles remains much more important, and much more necessary to the generation of wealth. And here, too, even though most people see some form of capitalism as preferable to Marxist ideals, Smith has been misrepresented, because he is not about completely free markets. And this has been our mistake—to paint capitalism and socialism as mutually exclusive (which they are not), and to paint “pure” capitalism as a system in which the market corrects all errors. Smith never says that the market should be so open, that regulation should be so laissez-faire, that the system is subject to every abuse, to all exploitation. Still, Smith’s general ideas form the basis of most modern systems of economics, and even calling Marxism, socialism, and/or communism capitalism’s polar opposite (if we must), we must acknowledge that pretty much all of today’s economic theories are dependent upon, reactions to, derivatives of, or reforms of the general principles that Smith articulated in the 18th century.

1. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time. The primary articulation of Heidegger’s philosophical phenomenology. A discussion of what it means to be in the world, as a human being. Heidegger tells us here that we are the sum, not only of our experiences, but of how we experience them—how we go about being in those places, times, and moments; intimately and immediately, or as immediately as mediated existence will allow. Our mere (way of) being in the world both shapes and reflects both the world and our character in it. And it just gets deeper from there.

As promised here are the pics from the ghost hunting expedition. As I said, more history than haunting here, but—in typical Mike form—I spaced taking a picture of the outside of the prison. (All of the images are presented as smaller files for ease of loading; if you click the image, you’ll get the full-size original—1752×1148).

The Prison

This is the condition most of the prison is in; lots and lots of water damage.

A cell door in various stages (shades?) of decay.

Home sweet home. For two. And that’s the whole thing.

Run the sink to flush the commode.

From the very top of the cell block (5th tier), looking down.

From the very bottom of the cell block, looking 5 tiers up (the other side of the prison has 6).

The shower, aka, “The Carwash”—you had two minutes, once a week, need it or not.

This is what the water has done in the solitary confinement area. I guess “The Hole” really does grow on you.

A hand reaching out of a solitary cell.

One of the phones in the maximum security visiting area; no visitors came in, inmates talked on the phone from here. These phones are no longer connected to anything, but the ghost hunter lore has it that they occasionally still ring….

April, Matt, and Chad (in the foreground) in the “Jesus Room” (The Prison’s Protestant chapel).

Why the “Jesus Room” is so called.

Chad, Nate, and April looking at pictures.

A common area, originally the Assistant Warden’s living quarters; later, office and administrative space.

A fireplace and mantle in the Assistant Warden’s living quarters.

A messed up door in the (Assistant?) Warden’s living quarters. Look at the woodwork in this place!

Shawshank Stuff

The sampler from the Warden’s office Shawshank; shot in one of the rooms of the original Assistant Warden’s living quarters (later office space).

The movie Warden’s outer office; this divider was part of the original prison’s conversion from living space to admin space, and they used it in the movie. Also, next time you watch Shawshank look for the tile on the floor.

The Shawshank prop of Andy Dufresne’s tunnel through the wall; actually a long concrete tube.

Andy in Andy’s tunnel.

Matt at the desk in the room where the Warden’s office scenes were filmed.

The part that I was amazed was actually filmed in the prison: Brooks’s/Red’s room in the halfway house; the carving is now part of the prison.

Juvenile Behavior

In the heart of every 30-something man lurks an 11-year-old boy. It doesn’t take much to unearth him. Here we have double evidence of this: One posed and another took the “teeheehee, you’re peeing” picture.

More novels. As promised, this list includes some books that predate my arbitrary 1950 dividing line. As planned, this list includes those books (or authors) that many lit snobs think will (read: should) join the canon someday—because they’re “smart” (read: snobby, at least can be read snobbily). I don’t mean this as any disparagement on the writers or their works: These are, after all, all books I like.

10. Umberto Eco. The Name of the Rose (1980; Italian). A murder mystery set in a monastery. In the Middle Ages. With an Inquisitor as the leading “detective.” Eco raises a typical genre form to a whole new level through his understanding of history, cultural history, and Church history, without turning the tale into a dry treatise on the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, or monasteries. Perhaps, not a Herculean task, but not one that just any old writer could pull off, either.

9. Joyce Carol Oates, Man Crazy (1997; American). Oates has more honorary degrees than you can shake a stick at. In part this means that she’s never met a speaker’s fee she doesn’t like, and it part it means that she is quite literally a giant in contemporary American letters—at least as far as colleges and universities are concerned. Man Crazy is, in my opinion, her best work, bringing incisive commentary on turn-of-the-(21st)-century American culture, into a mix with strong female characters, and making age-old coming-of-age story new again.

8. Julian Barnes, England, England (1998; English). A year before the Wachowski brothers brought Jean Baudrillard’s ideas about simulation and simulacra to the screen in the readily consumable form of Keanu Reeves, Julian Barnes enacted those ideas in England, or in England, England. In Barnes’s tale, a Disneyesque theme park is constructed on an island off the coast of England, recreating all of the country from the chalk cliffs to Hadrian’s Wall. In time this recreation comes to be accepted in lieu of the real thing, up to and including the royal family relocating to the replica Buckingham Palace. In the end, the theme park becomes England—more real than real—and England becomes Anglia, where the people can get on with the business of living, without having to worry about being English.

7. John Fowles, The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969; English). As was probably clear from the literature list, I have a soft spot in my heart for the Victorian novelists. It should come, then, as no surprise that I like this novel, which Fowles writes using the conventions (though in an absurdist sense) of the Victorian novel. It’s all here: The wild landscape, the “fallen” woman (or perhaps “‘fallen’” is more appropriate because of the levels at work), the ultra-intrusive narrator (who at one point walks past the characters on the street). Though clearly a novel, Fowles’s work also has footnotes—mostly dealing with narrative insertions and the plot, or the narrator’s additional thoughts on the story. What’s not to like? There is, after all, a certain amount of comedy there.

6. Don DeLillo, White Noise (1985; American). If you’ve seen the Michael Keaton movie, this ain’t that. This is DeLillo’s commentary on the way in which all we see, do, and experience in our contemporary culture is filtered through the fragmentary and fragmented haze that is our media culture and disjointed existence. It’s also a story of family angst, and all the things we miss in life because we do not take the time to look for them, instead paying the most attention to the things in life that matter least. Because it’s DeLillo, however, nothing is—or can be—straightforward.

5. Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977; American). If you’re ever looking for evidence that the “War on Drugs” is failing, look no further than this scifi masterpiece. In it, the top local drug enforcer is also the local dealer, and one of his best clients is both his girlfriend and a federal agent. Neither knows that the other is in law enforcement, and the local has been so programmed that when he’s dealing, he doesn’t really know that he’s a cop, either. Dick’s storyline is prescient not in the technology (or the far-out drugs) it includes, but in the fact that, beyond the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing in the War on Drugs, the left hand can’t even be sure of itself. Sound familiar?

4. Daphne du Maurier, Rebecca (1938; English). Now for something completely different. Rebecca is the story of the second Mrs. de Winter, though its title is the name of the first. A wealthy widower marries a very young girl, who finds that she must somehow live up to the idea and ideal of Rebecca, the first wife. But, of course, all cannot be as it seems. This is an early—and masterful—instantiation of the contemporary gothic, where despite appearances to the contrary all of the hauntings and demons are entirely personal.

3. Nadine Gordimer, July’s People (1981; South African). When Gordimer wrote this book, it was a clear care of fictionalizing what might yet be. Now, thankfully, we can look back and see it as what might have been. It is the story of the uprising of South African Blacks against Apartheid, an upheaval with violence devastating to both sides of the struggle, and (as the ray of hope) the story of one Black man, July, who saves his white employers from the violence by hiding them in his rural village. It is the confrontation that South Africa, in reality, avoided, and I for one will always wonder how narrowly.

2. Audrey Niffinegger, The Time Traveler’s Wife (2003; American). The most recent book on this list, this tells the disjointed tale of a man who lives his life out of order. Told from the perspective of a the woman who becomes his wife. While she experiences life in the run-of-the-mill linear fashion, he knows her from her birth to her death, long after his own demise, in the out-of-time moments in his own life. Both a testament to the enduring nature of a love always taxed by “being in different places in life” and a profound thought exercise in its own right, this, Niffinegger’s debut novel, is not to be missed or overlooked.

1. J R R Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings (1954-5; English). I, with the author, consider this a single book, though it is customarily bound in three volumes (as determined by the original publisher, to save on printing and binding costs). Tolkien’s epic tale of good versus evil, in which it is not always certain which side of that coin some characters will come down on, and which lauds the strength of will to keep moving toward a goal no matter what the setbacks or obstacles, has been both the inspiration of an entire genre and the standard by which that genre is measured for more than half a century now. Most enlightening, I think, is that the world is saved and the good guys win, but not through Gandalf’s wisdom, Aragorn’s heroism, or Frodo’s cleverness. Though these characters and these traits are important, it is Sam’s determination that wins the day.

While I dislike the distinction that people make between literature, literary fiction, and popular fiction, I’m using those distinctions as categories here. There are two reasons for this: 1) so that I can include 30 novels in my Top Ten lists (I’m a cheater); and 2) because I don’t so much dislike the distinctions as the reasons that many people make them (exclusivity, snobbery, various other kinds of literary ass-hat-ness). I’m using them (as a cheat) for purposes of inclusivity and to campaign for the greatness of (recent) literary fiction and popular fiction as equal to the greatness of those representatives of the sacred cow, “literature.”

On this list are those great works that most would (likely) agree are part of the canon, and I’ve used 1950 as a rough dividing line for literature and literary fiction (though there will likely be one or two earlier works on the “literary fiction” list when it comes out later).

10. Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891; Irish). The one famous work of fiction written by this master of comedic stage-craft, Dorian Gray is a fanciful adaptation of the Faustian bargain to the 19th century in which the protagonist does not age, but a portrait of him grows ever-more decrepit. The degeneration that is not visited on Gray’s body, however, seems to be visited on his soul, and we are given a cautionary tale about the quest for eternal youth.

9. Alexandre Dumas, The Three Musketeers (1844; French).The tale of D’Artagnan and Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, this novel was historical fiction when Dumas wrote it in the mid-19th century, being set roughly a century previous. It is a tale of high adventure and romance, though narrated in the particularly drawn-out 19th century style. The fact that these characters have continued to capture the popular imagination speaks to Dumas’s flair for both the dramatic and the romantic, capturing a swashbuckling spirit in characters who are truly heroic.

8. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865; English).It’s a crying shame that we tend to think of this one as a children’s story, when it’s clearly a story about growing up, and growing up too fast. It’s another cautionary tale, this one (I think) for parents, warning that they ought not too soon expect their little ones to fit into adult company or adult society. Wonderland is allegorically the world we adults inhabit daily, replete with hurry, madness, and decisions made at a whim but with no whimsy. Seriously…read it again.

7. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities (1859; English). Perhaps the best of Dickens’s novel-length work. In it, he succumbs less to the tendency of serialized novels in his day: to become protracted and bloated (The Pickwick Papers is among his worst examples of this). This story of a love triangle between Charles Darnay, Lucy Manette, and Sidney Carton, set against the backdrop of the French Revolution reminds us that that there are some things worth dying for, and that true love—both that which we feel and that which we would see survive—is certainly among them.

6. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866; Russian). Of course, I have only recently read this one, and reviewed it. If Dickens’s Carton reminds us that true love is worth dying for, Dostoyevsky’s Raskolnikov (and Sonya) remind us that it’s worth living for, too, in any situation. Crime and Punishment is, additionally, a morality tale, reminding us of the psychic toll that acting against one’s own morality can take and that the truth will, ultimately, out. All of that combined with the fact that it could well be considered the first truly psychological novel earns it this spot.

5. D. H. Lawrence, The Rainbow. (1915; English). Probably no one’s surprised to see Lawrence on this list, but the fact that the entry is not Lady Chatterly’s Lover or Women in Love may be a little surprising. Is it, perhaps, that I’m not a fan of Edwardian porn? In The Rainbow, Lawrence develops his characters much better, brings the same keen awareness of sensuality to the writing, but leaves the overt sexuality at the gate. This last is perhaps the most important in the Edwardian period, when society seems to have fully bought into the Victorian moral hype, in a way that Victorians themselves did not. The Rainbow is, to me, Lawrence’s best work, and perhaps the quintessential work of Edwardian fiction.

4. Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897; Irish). Speaking of the Victorians, it takes one to romanticize, even sexualize (though not as much as a lot of film versions of Stoker’s story have), the pre-Victorian and utterly monstrous conception of the vampire. Anyone who is a fan of the modern vampire (in its many, and variously praised and panned, forms) owes a debt of gratitude to Stoker. Even were the story not well-told and excellent in its own right (it is!), Stoker’s is probably the biggest single contribution to our modern, popular vampire mythos, whether you like that contribution or not.

3. Mary Shelley, Frankenstein; Or, the Modern Prometheus (1818; English). If it took a Victorian to romanticize vampires, it took a Romantic to make monsters fashionable. Though it is really not the monster’s story. It is the story of human hubris that creates the monster, as embodied in Victor Frankenstein (also not a doctor). Shelley’s argument is that pride truly goeth before a fall, a moral made more interesting by the fact that this novel was reportedly her entry in a private contest involving a number of more famous competitors—Shelley’s husband and Lord Byron among them.

2. William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom! (1936; American). In my view, the quintessential American novel, as it probes Quentin Compson’s (also a character in The Sound and the Fury) descent into madness, a madness that ultimately leads to his suicide. It explores, at a time when its insights were more prescient than journalistic, those particularly American paradoxes: work versus family, intellect versus strength, and the juxtaposition of rampant sexuality with puritanical mores in terms of what it means to be a man.

1. Thomas Hardy, Tess of the D’Urbervilles: A Pure Woman Faithfully Presented (1891). Speaking of puritanical mores, or the Victorian moral hype that the Edwardians bought, Tess his Hardy’s late-Victorian indictment of the hypocrisy inherent in those values—an indictment that seems to have gone largely ignored for years. How, other than hypocritical, after all, are we to describe a culture in which virile potency to the point of committing rape is excused, even condoned, while feminine chastity is so prized that being the victim of that rape is considered worse than being the rapist? Hardy, then, highlights and showcases this disparity in Tess, and there is little question whose side he’s on though he presents the story faithfully for his time. While the issues may have changed, Hardy’s indictment and conviction of hypocrisy and double-standards rings true across history and across issues.

Honorable Mention:
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales (c. 1400; English). This would easily have made the list, if it were a novel. It is, however, probably the first single-author short-story volume published in English, which make it worthy of note. It is a strange mix of poetry and prose, of story and verse, and there are clear parallels to later works of all genres and modes in literature in English. Hence, honorable mention.

William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury (1929; American). Faulkner’s other novel featuring Quentin Compson (and his siblings), this deserves honorable mention because even if not as good, in my opinion, as Absalom, Absalom!, it is synonymous with Faulkner in a way that the latter is not—in a way perhaps matched only by “A Rose For Emily” among Faulkner’s short work. And it’s still great.

Another month has gone by, and with it a quarter of the year (in terms of months, at least—the end of the day on March 31 leaves us 30 hours shy of an actual quarter of a year). So, here again, today, and without further ado, your monthly updates on my New Year’s Resolutions.

All six are still intact!

#1. Still a no-brainer, so not much to report here. I’m still doing what I’ve been doing, though as semester crunch time approaches, I’m finding the schedule less regular, if no less intense.

#2. I said in last month’s update that this had taken on a life of its own. On February 28, I had very little idea. Though the weather is not yet thoroughly cooperative, the fact that I have added a category to the blog called da bike should tell you something. It equates to fewer hours in the gym, but still stronger exercise habits, even when I don’t have access to the gym facilities—long rides on the weekends = a good thing!

#3. There is no significant change to report here from last month. Untested. What will the next month bring? Keeping my mouth shut otherwise.

#4. Again, a changed general outlook has made this easier to keep. I’m probably going to stop reporting on it at some time, just because it’s looking good for this one sticking on its own.

#5. As I said at the top, we’re not quite, in terms of days, 25% of the way through 2009, yet, but I’ll use 25% because it’s a nice round number. To be “on target” here, 25% of 30 is 7.5—the most recent post about books is #8. So far so good, but I realize that I slacked in March and am now just barely ahead. Summer’s coming, though.

#6. 25% of 50 is 12.5; the most recent post about movies is #14. I’ve been slacking here, too. (If you can call not watching enough movies “slacking.”)

So that’s it. You’re up to date, and all six are still going. Whoda thunk?

Movie #14 (2009)

Confession time (why do so many of my reviews begin with confessions?): When I was in high school, my friends and I often used big school projects as an excuse to get together on the weekends, play with video cameras (of the VHS variety, back in the day), and “make movies.” We did this several times, and some of the incriminating evidence is still in existence. (I’ve come to believe that there should be a statute of limitations on things like this, particularly the ones you do when you’re 15-17).

I’ve often thought of trying something like this again, as an adult, with the benefits of digital video cameras and iMovie, GarageBand, and iDVD at my fingertips (and even better software pretty readily available). And I’ve recently become aware of of at least one group of people who do make movies in their spare time (another story for another day—but an incredibly cool thing, imo). But have you ever wondered what might happen when those who are actually in the movie/tv business get their friends together (friends who are also professionals) and make a movie?

One answer, quite honestly, is Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog—writer/director/producer Joss Whedon’s brainchild featuring Nathan Filion (of Whedon’s Firefly, Serenity, and, for one season, Buffy) and starring Neil Patrick Harris (connected to Whedon through Alyson Hannigan, Harris’s How I Met Your Mother co-star and, with Whedon, Buffy alum—Hannigan and husband Alexis Denisoff are also godparents to Whedon’s son). Dr. Horrible started as an Internet phenomenon, and it’s now available on: its own Website (linked above), hulu.com, YouTube, iTunes, and on DVD (from Amazon at least).

As I said, Dr. Horrible is one answer to the question. A Dog’s Breakfast is another. Perhaps not to be out-überdorked by Whedon, actor/writer/director David Hewlett grabs a pen, a camera, his sister (Kate Hewlett), and a number of his Stargate castmates (Paul McGillion, Rachel Luttrell, and Christopher Judge) and makes a movie. A movie rich in dark comedy and about as far from these actors’ SciFi channel adventures as possible, but still poking fun at that, because if they didn’t, everyone else would.

A Dog’s Breakfast tells the story of siblings Patrick and Marilyn (the Hewletts, real life siblings and the first nod to Stargate where David Hewlett is a regular as Dr. Rodney McKay, and Kate Hewlett has appeared as McKay’s sister, Jeannie Miller). Marilyn, a Hollywood make-up artist, shows up at Patrick’s house, which used to be their parents’, with her fiancé Ryan (McGillion), an actor, upsetting Patrick’s solitary and utterly neurotic existence with his dog Mars.

Overhearing Ryan as he talks on his cell phone, Patrick becomes convinced that Ryan intends to kill Marilyn, and decides to take matters into his own bumbling hands and eliminate Ryan first. After several bungled attempts, Patrick watches as Ryan dies in a ladder-related accident, and attempts to hide the body (and his murderous intentions, despite his lack of success) from his sister, with the ingenious cover story that Ryan has simply left. But Ryan’s body refuses to stay hidden.

The comedy ensues as Patrick first tries to sell his cover story, by helping his sister “move on” from this jilting by setting her up with Chris (Judge) through an online dating service, but Marilyn will not move on. She contacts Ryan’s aunt, Detective Morse (also McGillion, this time sporting his real accent), who arrives and accuses Marilyn of Ryan’s murder. Between this, and Ryan’s unquiet corpse, Patrick is forced to come clean with Marilyn, who helps dispose of Ryan’s body by dismembering him with a power saw and a blender and feeding him to Mars and the other neighborhood dogs.

Through this, Patrick is forced to admit that he did, in fact, approve of Ryan, and Marilyn and Ryan come clean with him—they had faked the whole thing using Ryan’s stunt training (in another unveiled Stargate reference, he’s an actor on a “space soap,” where Luttrell is his love interest/costar), Marilyn’s skill with make-up, a sex doll filled with water, and some steak to feed the dog.

All seems to be resolving well until Ryan’s sister, Elise (Amanda Byram), shows up and has a love at first sight moment with Patrick, reversing Ryan and Patrick’s roles of brotherly approval at the film’s end.

A Dog’s Breakfast is a dark comedy in the truest sense. Hewlett’s writing honestly makes murderous intentions, accidental death, dismemberment, and feeding a corpse to the dog funny. The Hewletts bring the same real-life sibling chemistry to Marilyn and Patrick that they have brought to Rodney and Jeannie before. McGillion gets a passing grade for his American accent (he’s Scottish) and is truly amusing both as a romantic lead in this film and as a soap opera leading man. And of course Judge brings an interesting element as a man both imposing (toward Patrick) and sensitive (toward Marilyn), bouncing between the two seamlessly within his single scene in the film.

I enjoyed A Dog’s Breakfast in its own right, but it was made even better by the idea that these professional actors and filmmakers did this, stepping out from behind their big-budget tv productions and having fun with the creative process with their friends.

I’ll post the pictures later.

Is it already Tuesday already? I suppose that’s what happens when the weekend passes in a blur of staying up all night Saturday and mostly sleeping Sunday away.

Ghost hunting on Saturday night was awesome! I didn’t even have any trouble staying awake on the walk-of-shame-esque drive home on Sunday morning—but believe me, I crashed hard pretty much the minute I walked into the house at 7 am.

I met my friends, Andy and April, their friends Nate and Matt, and April’s brother Chad at the old prison in Mansfield a little before 8 on Saturday night. I actually got there first, which surprised me, though maybe it shouldn’t have because I was only trying to get one person ready to go. The “hunt” started at 8 with a tour of the facility led by the volunteers. Different volunteers gave different tours, it became quite clear. Some of the tours were over by about 8:40, because the volunteers leading them were wandering around without a bunch of visitors in tow. Our tour, however, was more…I guess thorough is the word; we were being toured around until about 9:30. Which, while not what we were there for and a little frustrating to members some of the people I was with, I thought was a pretty good thing—it allowed me to get my bearings in the prison, and I’m the sort of person who, once I’m oriented to a place, can find my way around, even in the dark. Which is important, because at about 10, they turn the lights out.

So we wandered around the place from about 9:30 until about 2. Took some pictures. (Note to self: if doing such things again, get a little point-and-shoot digital camera; I love my camera, but it’s actually too good for this kind of environment: it doesn’t deal with dark/near dark conditions very well.) Most of the pictures I took were more “historical” than “haunted,” which is really fine by me because the historical nature of the prison and the popular culture connections were a big part of why I wanted to go in the first place (Shawshank, Tango and Cash, and a number of other films have been shot there—when I get the pics up, you’ll be able to see just how much of Shawshank was filmed there; it’ll probably surprise you…it did me).

At about 2, we took a pretty significant break. One of our number was getting quite tired. Another was having problems with some arthritis in his knees. So we went outside and those who wanted to have a sit down could. In this process, we lost the tired one, who spent the rest of the night sleeping in the van.

But the other five stalwart adventurers went back in. And the funny part is, it was a lot more fun between 2:30 and 5:15 (when we actually called it a night) than it had been before. For several reasons:

First, the crowd was actually thinning out. They say they let 100 people in per hunt. This weekend there were more like 150 there. I know that we were part of that problem, because the date was technically sold out by the time we registered, but April played the birthday card (Sunday was her birthday, and this ghost hunting experience was what she had asked for), and they added us, because it was actually her birthday. With fewer people around, the prison became quieter and creepier. Much more fun.

Second, we kind of figured out what we had been doing “wrong” in the first part of the night, by talking to some other visitors, some volunteers, and amongst ourselves. We’d been running around for about 5 hours straight. The idea is not to hold still all night—not just to set up camp, in other words—but to pick your spots and hold still for a half hour or so at a time. We did that in several places for the rest of the night.

Third, we met some guys who were a little more experienced at this than we were (doesn’t take a whole lot, even yet). They were from Michigan Apparition and Spirit Hunters (and ironically, for this hunt, these three guys’ jobs, when they’re not hunting ghosts, are in a Federal prison). They talked to us a little bit about the holding still part, which we’d already sort of figured out, but they confirmed our own thinking, and they let us tag along with them to their next couple of spots. I sincerely hope that expanding their group from three to eight, including five rank amateurs, didn’t ruin their hunt.

On the whole, it was a fun night spent with friends and meeting some new people (my friends’ friends, mostly). And it was spooky and creepy, even if nothing truly weird happened (d’oh!). I’ll post my history-oriented pictures here later on tonight, and I’ll post some interesting, possibly paranormal pictures that the others took, when I get them (we’re sharing).

Oh, and Andy came to me in the office yesterday, and said that they’re going again in November. I very well may, too.