Subdural Hematoma in the Decline of Randy Quaid

"Well, don't you see, he's typical of the man who has married a whore--" Anatole France, reimagined.

Boris Karloff goes without saying, but then came realism, Randy Quaid's temper, De Niro's ferocity coupled to Branagh's need for succor, Peter Boyle's hilarious send up, Jennifer Beals and Sting, Aaron  Eckhart's  relatively recent fizzled attempt. The Revenge of Frankenstein, with Peter Cushing, is a transitional knock-off of Shelley's novel, more minimalist than the time stamped Karloff, it's outer-lying framework, as written by Sangster and James, combines a whiff of vampirism and perpetual reconstitution, with Cushing emanating a false humility and ruthless process, some years before directors suddenly had to display fealty to the Enlightenment transitioning into early Victorian anxieties, treating the novel like scripture. The book endures because Mary Shelley annihilates domestication. Scripts may give Dr. Frankenstein a feminine halter in a tug of war with the hubris of the God complex, but Shelley doesn't dwell on doomed love for long in her fast paced death chase.

Quaid's trappings in the role are of menacing sympathy. Such a creature would be developmentally challenged. What Wickes tapped into in 92 isn't so far removed from Quaid turning dodger of justice across the border today; even when actors snap, they still tap into their greatest strength which now makes them difficult to bridle. There is a wee bit of Frankenstein as creation myth in Vanilla Sky too.

The Cushing reprisal points to where science fiction went after such adaptations, in the analog age: transplantation. It might be far simpler to stay with this macro-biological grafting than manipulating gene switches toward the transhumanism of Weiner's uneven study. Weiner's main problem as an author is he attempts to fuse too many choices.

Fidgets

"It's hard to find much of a pulse."-- Drew Taylor

For a high functioning quadriplegic, reliable power chairs are the difference between life and death. Even with two models though, snow storms strain already vulnerable survival skills. Getting to Trader Joe's tomorrow or not with which chair is an issue, and I've been gently starving on tuna and eggs a bit of fish, for over a week. During the blizzard of 96 I cracked a castor on dry ice and went through hell with a black woman who sat at my table and played solitaire and walked me in my manual to my closest Dunkin Donuts franchise so I would stop discussing my failed engagement. I detached myself from any further working relationship with her for no real valid reason, and she moved on to an ancient crone of her own ethnicity. "Do you clean up dog shit?" her soul sister asked her. This was before the renovations, and my studio reeked of fecal tobacco and urine, and in 2014 the pungency may not be the same, but years of Tim the Mule and the failed cleaning service hasn't changed much about lived poverty in a studio with six year old carpet, dander, fur, flaking ceiling, stained drop ceiling over toilet because David, the toffee gang banger casualty, cannot cease and desist from dislodging his toilet from the flush system. Is it this level of powerlessness that breeds spree killers like maggots? We need to stop this, despite Aaron Eckhart's persuasive argument about technologies and trade offs, even if I cannot speak to Taylor's lampooning glee over Mary Shelley's original zombie. Even my rage is now passe, transmuted, it seems, into an argument about modern capitalism and confusion over rights and entitlements.

Guns basically have one design function, and in the best of all possible utopias, the technology which have given us this kill candy isn't going away, but I have to break with conservatives on treating the Second Amendment like any other form of retail. It has to stop, despite the sociological undercurrent of the American reality. Like Islamists, our disenfranchised utilize violence to settle disputes, and even as a form of conversation, a dialogue that uniquely ends in cessation and anti-climatic death tolls. The kill rate isn't really a good evolutionary check on the population, as it is not an efficient predatory cull. Wielding weaponry, through most of human history has been a privilege, not a form of radical equality, one on which the NRA seems to insist.