The Christmas light display known as "The Light Of Life" have been around for many years, but I had never been until this year. It was not what I was expecting and I mean that in a good way. In a time when holiday light displays are over the top, jammed with cell phone staring zombies and price gouging; this was a nice step back in time for me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
The experience had a retro feel like I was walking in a landscape from a 1980s music video. All I needed was Mannheim Steamroller's snazzy version of Deck The Halls playing to make it complete. The feeling it gave me had its charm and appeal. If you go with that mindset, you will not be disappointed. It is not the
Instagram influencer, glitzy scene and for that reason alone, it was
worth it to avoid those types.
December 2019. Photo my me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
The temperatures were in the thirties so the cold weather added to the night. It was fun to walk around at my own pace without feeling like cattle through the displays that are spread over a few acres of the Life University campus.
December 2019. Photo by me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
It was not busy, but not enough people were there to not make it seem dead. The smaller crowd made it easier to take my time and wander through the displays without feeling rushed. It was peaceful and relaxing compared to other light displays that attract the bigger crowds around North Georgia.
December 2019. Photo by me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
December 2019. Photo by me.
It is also reasonably priced at ten dollars per vehicle when many of the more extravagant displays *cough botanical gardens of Atlanta* charge between $30 and $50 per ticket and offer silly premium VIP packages to see Christmas lights, like it is some kind of spa/healing experience. A fool and his money, I say.
Thursdsay, I made the long and horrific drive from the city up to Kennesaw State University. It had been a couple of decades since I had been on the Kennesaw campus, but the art museum hosted a show to draw me back.
I went to see the Art AIDS America exhibit at the Zuckerman Museum of Art. I have been to too many shows to count, but never once have I cried until this one. Thankfully, the museum knows how devastating this exhibition is and has provided boxes of tissues on benches. By the end I was ready to run far and away. It is staggering the losses that took place in the 1980s and 90s. I remember that time well growing as a member of Generation X.
If you are looking for big names to see it contains work by Robert Mapplethorpe, Annie Liebovitz , Keith Haring and others.
The show closes on the 22nd, this Sunday. It's also free. This is the kind of show the High Museum would never have the courage to put on. The next stop on the tour is the Bronx Museum of Arts.
s a child The Changeling like The Shining terrified me. The scenes of the drowning boy under the water in the bathtub scared me enough to have me cover my eyes. I first saw the film in the early 1980s one summer evening on HBO after coming home from my brother's baseball game at the local ball field. Decades later this movie doesn't terrify me as an adult, but I do appreciate and like it more. This is a fine movie that has aged very well in today's age of fast editing gimmicks and over-used CGI cheap tricks employed to scare audiences. This stylish and interesting film has suspense, mystery and acting.
The Changeling is a 1980 Canadian film about a murdered boy who haunts a Victorian Seattle mansion of a classical music composer. The composer John Russell is played by legendary actor George C. Scott. When Scott discovers the haunting he finds more than a ghost and he sets out to uncover the mystery behind the haunting. The ghostly boy gives him clues that lead to a politician.
John Russell came to live in this mansion with ghosts from his own past. His wife and child were killed in front of him while on holiday on a snow covered road. John decided a change of scenery would help him move on with life. He leaves New York and moves to Seattle to teach music at a university and compose in his spare time. He settles in a rented Victorian mansion that had sat empty for twelve years. His arrival reawakens the haunting.
As John follows the clues from the ghost he is aided in his research by Claire Norman who leased him the house through the local historical society. Claire is played by the real life wife of George C. Scott, Trish Van Devere. Together they unravel the mystery of ghost through a seance, research in libraries and digging up an old well hidden beneath a house.
The drowning boy turned ghost in The Changeling.
The movie is your classic haunted house story involving a ghost, banging doors, and breaking glass. There are some wonderfully scary moments in the movie such as the red bouncing ball coming down the stairs, the burning staircase, the drowning boy in the bathtub and the wicked child-size wheelchair chasing after Claire.
This is an imperfect haunted house movie that is very good and almost great, but not to the level of greatness of say The Shining or The Exorcist. The Changeling filmed in 1978 and 1979, but not released until 1980 looks and feels more like a 70s movie than an 80s movie. It also was released the same year as the The Shining which again looks more like the 1970s than the 1980s. 1980 was a year of some good to great films that were produced at the end of the 1970s such as The Coal Miner's Daughter, The Elephant Man, Ordinary People, Raging Bull, Fame and Brubaker.
George C. Scott in front of the mansion from The Changeling.
The Changeling has the moody locale, the drab and dark interiors, the suspense, a couple of scary surprises, an interesting story, a fantastic soundtrack and some believable acting in it. George C. Scott seemed stiff in his acting as the movie begins, but as it unfolds and the tension and drama increases his acting seemed more relaxed. A couple of times his looks of disbelief at what is happening around him are realistically funny and stellar. It is no fault of Scott, but I do wish his role was written to convey more feelings of terror and fear at the ghost. The character of John is a bit cold and manages to stay too logical and rational given all the supernatural events - the screaming was saved for the role of Claire.
I do love this movie because I enjoy a good, suspenseful haunted house movie. I love movies set in old mansions that have been closed up for years and need to reclaimed and explored by humans. I can smell the old wood and the dust. Old houses have a certain smell about them and they remind me of my family's old rock house set out in the lonesome countryside of Tennessee overlooking the fields and the river. Once you smell that aged wood, dust and stale air you never forget it.
The movie is based on an alleged true story by playwright Russell Hunter. Hunter lived in an old mansion in Denver in the late 1960s and claimed it was haunted by a the ghost of a young boy. The same as the movie, the ghost gave clues as to where to find a certain item buried underneath a house. I believe in ghosts, I have seen two in my life, but this story seems a little farfetched for reality, but not a movie.
The wonderful styling of Trish Van Devere in The Changeling.
Normally I do not comment on wardrobe, hair or makeup in a movie, but this time is an exception because it was so well done and stylish. The wardrobe, hair and makeup on Trish Van Devere are impeccable. She looks stunning throughout the movie. The clothes she wears in nearly every scene have her dressed to perfection and her hair looks so good whether they style it up or down. Her wardrobe is so chic and sophisticated that it was a pleasure to watch her. Also that timeless Burberry trench coat that George C. Scott wears in the film had me lusting for that too.
If you are hoping for a heart racing and frantic film then the pace of The Changeling will be too slow to keep your attention. The attention span of today's audience weened on news feeds, selfies, jump cuts, explosions and fake curated lives may however be bored by this movie. So if you like the action hero Hollywood crap of today this is not the movie for you. This movie is from a time when entertainment was a helluva lot more intelligent, sophisticated and elegant than the soul crushing junk of today.
The kitchens, woods and barns of small towns can hold as many and as lurid secrets as a city can cloak on its avenues and in the tall apartment towers. In a small mountain town in West Virginia is the love quadrilateral of Sidney, Brian, Gareth and Roy the mastermind pulling the strings of everyone.
Roy is known as "the renderer," which sounds so ominous like a serial killer or a grotesque monster. It also brings to mind religion with the phrase, "render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and render unto God the things that are God's," from Matthew 22:21. However, even though there are overtones of religion in this book the rendering refers to the act of rendering fat to make soap. Roy was the son of a renderer from the wrong side of the tracks in this small town. Roy as defined by the judgements and prejudices of others in this town was never going to be good enough for them and especially for Sidney therefore he would always be known as the renderer as a mark against him.
Roy would certainly like to have Sidney rendered unto him and therein is the plot of Narrow Rooms. Growing up Roy developed an obsession with Sidney and he never let that fade into his early adult life when this book takes place. Sidney was the football star of this town, from the right side of the tracks and held a secret that Roy would use to his advantage when he could in the form of sexual trysts with Sidney in cornfields and the showers. Despite the secretive trysts Sidney never humanizes Roy and so he publicly rebukes him at the end of high school. This event so deeply scars Roy that he spends the rest of his life planning his revenge on Sidney. He cultivates a long range plan involving other young gay men in this town to enact his revenge on Sidney and render him unto Roy. To achieve this goal there will be murder, arguments about class, the ascension of Roy to wealth and power and sex in this ever spinning love quadrilateral between Roy, Sidney, Gareth and Brian. This story could have quickly turned into a raunchy romp in the hills, barns and roadsides of rural America but Purdy keeps it from veering too far off into campy territory and he deserves respect and admiration for that.
aturday evening I sat down and cracked open a copy of Norman
Mailer's Why Are We In Vietnam? published in 1967 and finished reading it by Sunday morning. I was thoroughly engrossed by his novel about the male ego and how it got us deeper into the mess of the Vietnam War told through a hunting trip in Alaska.
Anytime I put up my feet and read now I always think of my teenage nephew who asked me a couple of months ago in all seriousness, "why read a book?" Without hesitation I replied, "to learn and maybe be entertained." Why Are We In Vietnam? managed to do both so by that measure I liked it, now if only I could get my nephew to read a book.
At first, I found the novel unapproachable as Mailer writes much of it in a slang/jive talk/stream of consciousness manner. I kept thinking what have I gotten myself into and what the hell is this but I was able to overcome my misgivings and the book settles down into a more proper use of the English language intermixed with the jive talk. The humor that comes with the jive talk is off-putting as it is crude and completely politically incorrect and inappropriate even by late 1960s standards but I did find some of it funny I admit. A famous author such as Mailer could not get a book published like this today and probably would not even attempt it because of the backlash it would receive over the language. That's a shame, because to focus on the language and offensiveness would be to lose the message of the book and censorship has no place in a civil society.
The plot of the book is narrated in flashback by an eighteen-year old from Dallas, Texas named DJ. He also has a split personality sharing the narration with a black kid from Harlem. You never know which personality is the real identity of the narrator or whether you are listening to playback of the entire story on God's great big tape recorder of life. Mailer goes on a bit of mind fuckery to make you think about perspectives.
DJ is the son of a wealthy businessman from Dallas. His father is the epitome of the corporate male ego concerned about status, wealth and his fragile male ego. The book told mostly in flashback takes place two years earlier when DJ is sixteen and involves a hunting trip to kill big game in the Alaskan bush.
DJ's close friend Tex is along on this trip along with two underlings of DJ's father. The male adults are all referred to as "assholes" and are respectively labeled to what degree of an asshole they are. The underlings are there so that DJ's father can assert his dominance in the wild and impress upon them that he is the man they should admire. Lots of chest thumping, dick measuring and gun worship takes place on the trip. Grizzly bears are the coveted kill, the trophies they seek and it is as a major focus of the trip.
Near the end of trip in Alaska DJ and Tex take off on their own adventure into the wild to prove to themselves that they are greater and stronger than the wild Alaska nature they are in. You might think of soldiers in Vietnam going AWOL into Cambodia. During their bonding in the wild alone the two boys have an inmate moment in which DJ grabs Tex's cock as they cuddle close to stay warm. Yet, Mailer cannot seem to get these two characters who are in some sort of love to copulate. His words will not take these two characters there and instead he has them burst forth with violence and wanting to kill, kill, kill. Perhaps this was a comment by Mailer about the violence caused by the repressed desire of male on male sex.
None of the book takes place in Vietnam and it is not even mentioned until the very last sentence of the book. Vietnam is only the subtext of the novel to which this romp in the Alaskan bush is set. This book is about how the male ego, hyper-masculinity, a drive to kill, to conquer rather than to admit the mistake that was Vietnam. The male ego does not handle failure very well so rather than retreat the machismo leads you deeper into a violent conflict that was a mistake from the beginning because we needed to save face and win a trophy called Vietnam. The book is as relevant today as it was in 1967.
This week I opened up some of my storage boxes in an upstairs closet looking for hints, clues and help to understanding parts of my youth. There are answers I need and I am lucky to still have some portions of my younger life packed away in boxes that have moved around with me. It is a collection of documents, keepsakes, and other odds and ends that have survived moves to other states, a flooded basement and time.
I knew I had a manila folder packed away of all my poetry that I had written by hand in the early and middle 1990s. I had not seen or read these poems in twenty years.
I did not want to read them, I could not read them because of what they contained was pain, immense pain. I had dared not to open those wounds for what it might unleash on me, but at this point in my effort to better understand where I was and who I was so that I might finish this book they had to be read and looked at with my now more mature eyes.
Reading my words dating back to 1993 in these poems I am surprised that I made it through that. There are many lines written that contain imagery and references to death and some form of romance I had with it then. They were not dramatic references to death, but quite accepting of the idea instead. Plenty of nature references are in there which for me is very true to the person that I am - the nature lover. Some of what I wrote was of course undeniably bad and thankfully never saw the light of day. I did realize that my mind was more open to new ideas in my early twenties which is a characteristic of youth, but some of the humor that I possessed even in my darkest words made me laugh.
Last night looking for a film to watch, I decided on Junebug. I was in the mood for a low-budget independent movie that was good and Junebug fits that description. I had seen the film only once, in 2005 at Lefont theatre in the Atlanta suburb of Sandy Springs. I had picked the movie at random that day as I was looking to kill some time and Junebug turned out to be a fine way to do it. I enjoyed the film the first time and enjoyed it more in a second viewing fourteen years later.
The plot of the movie could have easily been a cliched take on big city people from up north visit a small southern town and point a finger at how backwards these hicks are but this film isn't that. The disparities are obvious between the two lifestyles and there are peculiarities noted but they never originate in the need for cheap laughs.
You have the character of George and his wife Madeleine visiting North Carolina from Chicago when the air is ripe with humidity, the lawns are deep green and the crepe myrtles are blooming. Madeleine is an art gallery owner and she is interested in obtaining the rights to exhibit and represent the folk art of a southern eccentric character named David Wark (think Howard Finster from Georgia). It so happens that this artist lives near the family of George and so he and Madeleine visit and stay with his family that he only sees every so many years.
Madeleine and George
George, a business man of some sort as the film never explains, is cautious about how his family will react to his sophisticated wife and how his wife will react to them. He seems more concerned that his wife will pass judgement on him based on his family and from where he comes.
Living with George's parents are his under-achieving younger brother and his pregnant wife. George and Madeleine are still newlyweds, note none of his family were invited to the wedding, and this will be the first time everyone meets. The film is very much a character driven movie with some wonderful acting in rich characters.
Madeleine for her part does her best to reach out to George's family and not to pander to them. She has a genuine interest in who these people are but finds them hesitant to return that interest other than George's sister in law. Later in the movie, she does struggle with balancing her business interest in the folk artist and maintaining interest in her husband's family and a choice of which comes first must be made.
George and his mother.
George's father is a man of few words, almost detached from the world in a borderline state of dementia it seems, and is obsessed with woodworking. He enjoys building wooden birdhouses and birds and has built a cradle for the grandchild on the way.
His mother is played by Celia Weston. This character is the chain smoking, strong-willed southern woman that likes a very tidy house and she dominates everything that goes on inside it. Celia Weston's acting is incredible in this role and she made the most of every scene that she was given.
The movie only cost a $1 million to make and was a sleeper that did turn a modest profit at the box office. Large sums of money does not mean quality as you can see from almost every movie produced in Hollywood with ridiculous budgets. A film such as Junebug again proves that independent film-making on a small budget doesn't mean poor quality. Though released in 2005 this almost feels like the independent films of the 1990s that I love. It could just be that cell phones rarely appear in this movie and social media does not exist yet.
The film would garner a Oscar nomination of Best Supporting Actress for Amy Adams who plays the pregnant sister in law of George. Adams was excellent in the character that talks incessantly and is eternally optimistic and curious about life. Her performance steals the movie though I think Celia Weston as the mother might have been better but her character is not as likeable.
Some might think that the accent of Frank Hoyt Taylor, playing the role of the eccentric artist, is overdone and is a horrible imitation of the southern accent. However, there are many varieties of the southern accent as I have mentioned before. His accent in the movie is one you would hear in the mountains of the Appalachians. I would hear this accent fairly often where I grew up in the foothills of the mountains in Georgia. The actor playing the character was born in southwestern Virginia so I would say he would know how this accent correctly sounds. Another example of this accent is how Levon Helm sounds in the role of Loretta Lynn's father in the film The Coal Miner's Daughter set in the mountains of eastern Kentucky.
I saw much of what I had seen or experienced as a southerner from a small town, turned big city inhabitant represented in this movie. Present in the film is the influence of small town religion, the complicated parental relationships, sibling rivalry, the detachment from one's roots where you harbor some inadequacy that exists in direct conflict and with a duality of a pride in where you come from and where you've escaped to as an adult and this film manages to confront these issues without mockery.
This is one of the better films that relies on the juxtaposing of city and rural people and their differences. It doesn't fall into the traps of mockery, exploitation or pandering that most television shows and films seem to lazily follow like a bad recipe. The writer of the film Angus MacLachlan, from North Carolina, displays a respect for his characters and the lives they lead whether they work in a warehouse like George's brother or are Chicago gallery owners. So forget all the nonsense horseshit of blue-state versus red-state and watch this intelligent film full of nuance.
When the films ends, you realize that a person might sometimes miss their hometown and might find a need or reason to visit but you are reminded in the end why you left to begin with though some part of you will never leave it. As George and Madeleine drive way to return to Chicago, George shakes his head in amazement and says, "I'm so fucking glad we're outta here."
Two albums that came out in 1991 from British bands were outliers in what I liked that year. This was a year when popular rock music was in transition from hair bands to grunge. Grunge bands though being played in medium rotation on college radio was bubbling under the surface of the American rock scene but would not break through until later in the year. Hair bands were still touring, popular on commercial radio and MTV and releasing new albums but their influence and dominance was about to come to an abrupt end.
In between the the two camps of rock music being hair bands and what would come to be grunge there was room for these hybrid bands such as EMF and Jesus Jones that made their way onto MTV, commercial radio and into my own then eighteen-year old music rotation at home and in my car in the spring and early summer of 1991.
At the outset of 1991 the hair bands were in firm control of rock music but by the late summer momentum was turning towards the new sound of grunge bands and by fall it was down to a full out battle between the old and new sounds.
The rock music landscape in what would be a pivotal year for the genre was in a tug of war between the hair bands and the upstart bands that would become the faces of grunge. Skid Row released their sophomore album, Slave To The Grind, in June which debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 indicating that there was still plenty of enthusiasm for their music. Metallica's "black album" came out in August and it also reached number one on the Billboard 200 that year too. I was never a Metallica fan so I never even noticed it. Instead it would be another album by another band that came out that same month that caught my attention.
The Revolution In Rock Music Was On
Pearl Jam released their landmark album Ten in August and had their first commercial hit with the song Alive. One month later Nirvana released Smells Like Teen Spirit and the monumental album Nevermind in September. Rock audiences began to snap up these two albums and explore them deeper and everyone was being bombarded by Smells Like Teen Spirit on MTV. The world of rock was changing.
But the hair bands were not to go so quietly as Gun N' Roses would see the peak of their success and excess by releasing two albums in September, Use Your Illusion I & II. 1991 was the year they released grossly epic music videos that were more like self indulgent short films. November Rain was ridiculous in every way. They were a band drunk on themselves but audiences still bought up both albums but I had no interest in them whatsoever. Use Your Illusion II would reach number one on the charts and Use Your Illusion I would see number two. Despite their success Gun N' Roses was on the way down from here after their masturbatory albums of excess left them blind to what they should have seen from the corners of their eyes.
September was also the month that Alice In Chains' 1990 album Facelift went gold. If you had to pinpoint when the rock music landscape changed from glam and leather to flannel among teenagers it would be either August or September of 1991. The success of Gun N' Roses' two albums might have been the apex of the glam and leather fever but their excess was what helped to break it thankfully.
Bands such as Bon Jovi that had ruled the charts in the 1980s couldn't transition to the new sound of the 1990s. By 1991 it had been three years since their last album and even though I had loved them and went to see them in concert on their New Jersey tour in 1989 their sound was so out of touch to what I craved that I never listened to them again. Other bands like Motley Crue put out a greatest hits album and Poison released a concert album in the fall but both bands couldn't sound more stale by 1991.
The future of rock's new sound continued to evolve as Soundgarden's album Badmotorfinger came out in October.
I might have been mesmerized by Nevermind and Ten but I did take notice when U2's Achtung Baby came out in November that year. Established bands like R.E.M. which had a number one album with Out Of Time in 1991 and U2 would adapt their sound and be able to remain popular in the alternative 90s.
Meanwhile, EMF and Jesus Jones managed to find success in the middle of the two rock camps with a sound influenced by the beats of dance music. The rock guitar was still there but less so than their American counterparts. These were two bands listened to for a good time and to dance along with, not bang your head but yet it was still rock.
In the U.S. in 1991 there was not much current British rock on American radio other than the Cure who had had phenomenal success with Disintegration in 1989 so there was a void of British rock bands at the time. The success of EMF and Jesus Jones in 1991 might have helped pave the way for Oasis (Definitely Maybe) and Blur (Parklife) to be successful stateside in 1994.
These were not great albums from beginning to end but they did have catchy songs that were able to find a place with American audiences and my ears. EMF had their number one hit with Unbelievable and Jesus Jones' album Doubt would have two top five hits in the United States with Right Here, Right Now and Real, Real, Real.
Screen cap from EMF's Unbelievable music video.
EMF's Unbelievable from Schubert Dip was the more dance oriented of the hit songs of these two bands. It had a raucous beat, a prominent base line in the mix, samples and keyboards pushing an uptempo song. The song is relentless in its tempo but it does have some hard breaks and even a guitar solo in it. The music video was like watching a rave with the band members dancing on stage, the swirling lights and the crowd dancing to the song. This song was a complete left turn from anything else on commercial rock radio at the time. The song was one big good time.
Unfortunately the rest of Schubert Dip was a let down. Only the song Lies was of half-interest to me. So EMF caught lightning in a bottle with Unbelievable and they had no staying power in the American rock scene. The album released in May 1991 would reach number twelve on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart and they would never achieve that success again.
Jesus Jones' album Doubt also recorded in 1990 like Schubert Dip and released in 1991. It would climb to number twenty-seven on the U.S. Billboard 200 chart but it would produce more than one hit song. Of the two albums Doubt was the better one as it featured more skillful songwriting and had a more cohesive sound. Of the two bands Jesus Jones would have seemed to be a more sustainable band but like EMF they never managed to have prolonged success in the United States. The window that had quickly opened for them while rock was transitioning in 1991 would just as quickly close as grunge took over.
Right Here, Right Now was a song that was perfectly timed at the beginning of the new decade. It captured the sentiment of the time that was about hope and a sense of change that was flowering in the air. After the revolutions in Eastern Europe, the fall of the Berlin Wall, and the failures of communism at the end of the 1980s hope for a brighter future was evident. The song opens with the line, "A woman on the radio talks about a revolution, when it's already passed her by." That line is quite funny because it speaks to differences of how some (the media, the older generation, the powers that be) are finally catching on after the revolution has already happened and the new generation is taking control. Rock music was ready to take that cue too and it would happen in 1991.
This song is a celebration and makes a wise observation of that change in the world with lines such as, "I saw the decade end, when it seemed the world could change at the blink of an eye and if anything, then there's your sign of the times." I felt that way, I felt that the world was changing and mostly for the better. The Cold War was over and it no longer captured our imaginations in a slurry of fear. Anything was possible and many of us in the United States were getting ready to put our faith into a candidate from Hope, Arkansas in October 1991 named Bill Clinton.
Screen cap from the video for Right Here, Right Now.
Right Here, Right Now touched on the mood of so many of us that year that it hit number one of the modern rock chart and number two on the Billboard Hot 100. The music video for the song was just made for the MTV generation as it employs clips of actual news events projected onto a wall while the lead singer sits on a sofa watching the world change. MTV played that video so often you could not avoid seeing it several times a day that spring and summer.
EMF and Jesus Jones would never achieve the level of success as they did in 1991 but they did leave us with a few hits that are still worthy of listening to today.
The brief success and my liking of these two bands prove that I and other teenagers were ready for something other than glam and leather rock. Little did I know that while I was enjoying EMF and Jesus Jones, a band I had never heard of called Nirvana was in the studio that spring recording Nevermind. As much as I loved rock music I never could get into Skid Row or Metallica and I was tired of Bon Jovi, Poison and Motley Crue. Lord knows my friends were pushing Skid Row on me since 1989 but I never liked them. Thankfully bands such Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains were there to take the reigns of rock if only for a brief few years. It was an exciting time in rock music and one I wish we could experience at least one more time in my life.
Last week I was in the mood for a 90's film so I chose Kids. This is a movie I have seen perhaps four times but not since the 1990s so it was almost like watching a new film. I had forgotten some of the details over the last twenty-odd years.
The first time I saw Kids was when it was released in theatres in July 1995 and I was twenty-two years old. I watched it at the Tara Cinema at the corner of Cheshire Bridge Road and Lavista. This movie was so controversial at the time and still is even today that the Tara was the only theatre in all of metro Atlanta brave enough to screen it. This was common in most cities around the country that if you were lucky enough and your city was big enough then could find only one theatre in your city willing to show this film. The subsequent times that I saw the movie was by renting it on VHS at the long forgotten video rental place in Little Five Points that was named very simply, The Movie Store.
fter reading The Executioner's Song about the execution of Gary Gilmore I learned that his younger brother Mikal had published a book in 1994, Shot In The Heart, that was about the history of the Gilmore family. What a sordid history it was.
I give Mikal plenty of credit for his willingness to lay bare the history of his family for the world to read and judge. It is a history that involved plenty of crime including murder, incest, drug and alcohol abuse and most any terrible thing you could imagine.
The author, Mikal, was the youngest of the four brothers born to his family. He was a stranger in own family it seemed having not been a part of the early years of the family that saw them living as vagabonds moving all over the American west. His childhood began once the family had settled in the outlying neighborhoods of Portland, Oregon. Growing up he still was isolated from his siblings by his father who often took him for months at time to Seattle while on extended business. He readily admits that he did not know his own family very well and that writing this book was a way to learn about his own family.
The book goes deep into the family history from the beginning to when his parents met, through their deaths up until when the book was published in the early 1990s. By the early 1990s, both of his parents were dead and so were two of his brothers including Gary Gilmore.
My motivations for reading the book were to learn more about Gary and see what might have not been written about in The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer. Through the stories that Mikal relates about his family and Gary you come away getting a fuller picture of who Gary Gilmore was but perhaps not a better idea as to what was wrong with him and why he became a murderer. The reason he became a murderer will never be answered of course. His childhood was littered with abuse and abandonment but that doesn't make a person a criminal. Perhaps it contributed? Yes.
It was surprising to learn that Gary Gilmore had a living son. In The Executioner's Song the story is told that Gilmore had a child that did not live but the real story is that his child was born and it was a boy. He fathered the boy in Portland. The child was the result of Gary Gilmore's rape of a fourteen year old girl in 1958. Gilmore was arrested and indicted for the crime but through pressure the girl dropped the charges and had the baby and Gary was never told. He got away with the rape and somewhere out there today his son is alive.
Gary also robbed a grocery story at gunpoint wearing a stocking over his face in the 1950s as a teenager near the family home on Woodstock Boulevard (page 167). His brother writes that he netted $18,000 from the store's vault. He was never arrested for the crime and was never even a suspect. Now for some reason I have a hard time believing this story. I really do not think that a grocery store in 1956 when the crime allegedly occurred would have $18,000 in cash inside the store's vault. The average yearly income for a family was only $4,783 (Source PDF: U.S. Census) in 1956 so why would a grocery store have $18,000 cash on hand inside the store? Mikal also writes that the money, remember $18,000 now, "held him over for a while." A while??? If Gary Gilmore got away with $18,000 in cash in 1956 then he could have been set for years and years living like a king and just how would he have hidden a crime like that? Either the $18,000 is a misprint or this story holds no water.
The book also relates stories of Gary and his friends hanging out in gay bars in Portland in the 1950s (page 166). According to a man using only the name "John" that was interviewed for the book he knew Gary intimately. John says that Gary was seen to be kissing men and allowing himself to be fondled. The tale continues that Gary would turn tricks including giving oral sex to John and his friends in exchange for a place to party and hide stolen goods. It would not surprise me that Gary was sexually confused given his time in an all-boys reformatory school and his sexual experiences then, also the story I mentioned from The Executioner's Song of Gary admitting his sexual attraction to a young thirteen year old boy when he was in his 20s and his sexual encounters with an underage teenage girl during his last release from prison when he was living in Utah. I definitely think that Gary was sexually attracted to young girls and boys given what he admitted to and what has been written about him.
Then on page 302 is the curious story of a young man named Barry Black. Barry was a fellow inmate that was rumored to be Gary's prison boyfriend. Mikal even writes, "Gary in one form or another loved Barry Black." Gary even had plans to break Barry Black out of a prison hospital and escape.
I cannot even begin to relate all of the crazy stories of this family. My own family is far, far from perfect and we've had our own scandals but they are garden variety compared to the Gilmore family. I have never known people that lived like this family did and I do not intend that in a snobbish manner. Some of the stories are appalling like Gary being abandoned at an orphanage by his father as a young child in Iowa because the father was arrested for writing bad checks. The father was also a career criminal that had numerous aliases, children with different women scattered around the country and falsely believed he was the illegitimate son of Harry Houdini. The mother was not any better at being a parent because she had a child a with her stepson, tried to smother her youngest son with a pillow when he was an infant and she believed she was haunted by evil spirits. These people were just bizarre.
Even after reading more about the early years of Gary Gilmore I still do not understand him. He was a violent criminal from an early age, raised under terrible circumstances and yet he got away with more crimes than he was ever punished for in his life. I look at the timeline of events and think maybe if he had been locked up sooner and for longer for his crimes like the rape of a fourteen year old then maybe those two men in Utah would never have been murdered. It baffles me how he got away with how much he did get away with before being executed.
Shot In The Heart is an entertaining book that is jaw dropping at times even if I am not sure all of the stories are accurately told but even if half are true then that is one scary family. If you have read The Executioner's Song then this book is a good companion to it.
Within nine months time Gary Gilmore had been paroled fromprison, murdered two men, committed various other crimes, fallen in love, shot four times in the heart and his cremated remains scattered from a plastic bread bag by a plane over Provo, Utah - such is the story of The Executioner's Song.
The book by Norman Mailer transcends the story of Gary Gilmore, who by all accounts did not lead the most interesting life. Gilmore was a lifelong criminal mostly of a petty crimes who spent the majority of his life in prison. Even when he murdered two men in Utah his life story or criminal history did not make for that much of an extraordinary story. The only reason the public paid any mind to the story of Gary Gilmore was because he would become the first man to be executed in the United States in ten years in 1977. He also advocated for his own death by firing squad, waiving his appeals to his sentence of death rather than spend the remainder of his life in prison. In some ways Gary Gilmore was a coward and an uninteresting one at that.
Yet from this rather ordinary person author Norman Mailer crafted an extraordinary book around his life story. The book which comes in over a thousand pages in length offers several indictments of society. The book exposes the flaws and failures in the American criminal justice system, the prison system, the entertainment industry, journalism, the Mormon religion, the political system, the mental health system and the human condition.
Going into this book I knew next to nothing about Gilmore. I had only seen the movie version of this book with the same name that was made for television in 1982. I had watched it a few times as a child back then and mostly all I remembered was the fine performance of actor Tommy Lee Jones in the role of Gary Gilmore.
The book goes much more into detail than the movie about Gilmore's life from childhood to his execution. Gilmore was born in Texas while his parents were traveling so he only lived there for six weeks. His parents eventually settled in Oregon where he would spend the majority of his youth and his formative years. In interviews that are published in the book Gilmore is reluctant to discuss his childhood in terms of his relationships with his parents. He more often than not relishes in the glories of his past crimes. Gary never seemed capable of feeling any genuine remorse for any of his crimes during his life. His main priority in life was self satisfaction and self preservation without any impulse control and that is a very bad combination of personality traits to have.
The excerpts from his letters that he wrote to his girlfriend were revealing to his completely bonkers way of thinking and lack of impulse control. He often talked of sex, his obsession with his girlfriend and how he did not want her sleeping with other men for the rest of her life even after he was dead and he regularly attempted to manipulate her into killing herself so that they could meet together in death on the other side. It is revealed in the book that on a tape Gary left his girlfriend to listen to after his execution that he wanted her to kill herself. Even in death Gary Gilmore was a selfish manipulator.
Gilmore did attempt suicide twice while awaiting his execution. He also convinced his teenage girlfriend Nicole to attempt it. They both survived the attempts; hers was nearly fatal but she was found in time by a neighbor and recovered in the intensive care unit in the hospital.
In addition to his murderous and manipulative ways Gilmore also had an attraction to teenage girls and boys that were well below the age of consent. Before committing the murders that he would ultimately be convicted of he and his girlfriend would often have sex with a teenage neighbor girl.
He did not appear to be a pedophile but instead his attraction to young adolescent boys and girls would classify him as suffering from hebephilia.
In one letter published in the book to his girlfriend he relates the story of when he was in Oregon State Hospital and how he was sexually attracted to a thirteen year old boy:
"this 13-year-old boy came in 'cause he couldn't get along at home. He was really pretty, like a girl, but I never gave him much thought until it became apparent that he really liked me. I was 23 then. I'd be sitting down and he would come up and sit beside me and put his around me. It was just natural to him, a show of friendship. One time he came up in the locker room and asked if he could read this Playboy I had. I said sure, for a kiss. Man he was dumbfounded! His eyes got big a silver dollars and his mouth dropped wide open. He said no and it was really pretty, and I fell in love on the spot. He thought it was over then and he decided he wanted to read that magazine pretty bad, 'cause he gave me, or rather let me take, a very tender little kiss on the lips. I used to watch him down at the swimming pool. He was one of the most beautiful people I've ever seen, and I don't think I've ever seen a prettier butt. Anyhow, I would kiss him now and then and we got to be pretty good friends. I was just struck by his youth, beauty and naivete."
Now as Gary told the story the boy pursued him and he admitted to being attracted to the boy and kissing him. It would not surprise me if this not entire story and that he had sex with the boy as he did admit to having sex with other men while in custody.
Gary Gilmore was also a racist. He claimed to have had ties to the Aryan Brotherhood, a white supremacist group. He regularly used racist language and claims to have nearly killed a black inmate over sexual advances on a fellow white inmate. In one of the interviews published in the book Gilmore's words to the NAACP, who were fighting to stop his execution, were vile calling them "Brillo Pad heads."
The book tries to elevate Gary Gilmore into more than just a simple criminal by mentioning that he was an avid reader and that many considered him well-read. In none of the conversations that are printed in the book does Gary seem to be more than a man with a high opinion of himself and his own thoughts. His intelligence came across to me a veneer that lacked any deep understanding of issues that would mark him as an intelligent man. Reading without discernment is simply a superficial exercise.
The one talent, aside from lying, that Gilmore may have had was his ability to sketch. The few examples, though none are in the book, of his work that I have seen do show that he was a capable sketch artist. The book mentions that in 1972 Gary had the opportunity to attend an art school in Eugene, Oregon. That opportunity may have been a chance for him to turn his life around and use that talent at drawing for good. He of course never used that opportunity and committed an armed robbery that sent him off to prison.
There is one quotable line that I found worth remembering. In a book that uses short sentences and has a matter of fact way of writing there are not many beautiful uses of the language. Mailer is not known for possessing a florid style of writing so this is to be expected. However, I did like this line about pain that never goes away, "pain was a boring conversationalist who never stopped, just found new topics."
Though a fascinating book and well-written this is a depressing story. It would be difficult to find any hope in it other than that Gilmore's girlfriend did not kill herself in the end. The writing of Gilmore's execution down to the smallest detail is difficult to read no matter how one feels about capital punishment. There are no heroes in this story and perhaps we might consider after reading it is that we all live in a moral gray area faced with daily challenges but thankfully most of us do not cross over the fragile line of horror to become murderers.
Early yesterday as the sun rose on a frosty winter morning I was on the road. I melted the thick ice off my car windows and began driving from my home in Atlanta to my brother's house in northeastern Alabama. I am writing a book and our monthly
meetings are informal interviews in front a fireplace, with cups of
coffee and college football going in the background. I need his
memories and his confirmations of mine.
I have made this two hour drive so many times in the last fifteen years since he moved there that I could do it in my sleep. Bored by the drive, I sometimes switch the route just to break up the monotony of the landscapes. I go one way and I avoid where I grew up in Paulding County, Georgia by driving around it. Of my choices of roads this is the preferred way.
I dislike the first parts of the drive as it leaves the city through the northwest suburbs of Atlanta and up to Cartersville, Georgia. Interstate 75 is a swollen mess of lanes, always in a hurry to get nowhere drivers and ugly scenery through Cobb County. The only beauty is the crossing of the Chattahoochee River caught in a brief glimpse as a stranger caught from the corner of an eye in a crowd.
My route from home to my brother's area.
After Cobb, the landscape changes from buildings, billboards and sprawl by the time I reach Lake Allatoona and Red Top Mountain in Bartow County to something more pleasing. Allatoona is where I swam, played with my plastic boats and loved the 1970s as a small child.
In Cartersville I exit the interstate and head north on old U.S. Highway 41, the road immortalized in the song Ramblin' Man by the Allman Brothers. Highway 41 was the precursor to Interstate 75 and was decades ago the main north/south route for northerners from the Upper Midwest headed to the sunny beaches of Florida. In my mind there is no other road that I identify more with the old Georgia that I used to know. Today it is a mostly commercial highway through metro Atlanta filled with endless traffic lights, fast food restaurants and shopping centers that could be outside any city in the country. 41 is an ugly scar.
I am on Highway 41 only a few miles before merging onto U.S. Highway 411 north of Cartersville. This is the road that will take me north and to the west close to where I am headed in Alabama. This road is a lonely road of woods on rolling hills, the cold flowing Etowah River and pastures. I hope it stays that way and never changes. Miles onward, it skirts the city of Rome, Georgia in Floyd County and breaks south and west through Cave Spring, Georgia and scurries away into Alabama. The stretch of two lane road from Rome to Cave Spring is the highlight of this drive and the prettiest.
Northwest Georgia is known for its low topped ridges and valleys that are the final tails of North America's oldest mountains, the Appalachians. These are not the big mountains of the chain like those found in north central and northeast Georgia, but are more like grooves in the geological record. Having grown up in Northwest Georgia in what was then a rural area I feel very much at home passing through.
Topographical map of Vans Valley.
Vans Valley along Highway 411 between the community of Six Mile and the town Cave Spring is the most scenic stretch of the drive. It is a wide valley with grazing and crop land on the floor enclosed by two of those low topped ridges.
I have also seen this particular area spelled as "Vann's Valley" which I believe to be the correct spelling. The name is said to come from David Vann who lived here. Vann was a sub-Chief of the Cherokee Nation and was treasurer between 1839 through 1851. Vann was killed by Union supporting Pin Indians during the American Civil War in 1863.
Highway 411 follows the same road through the valley as it did when the Cherokees were forcibly removed from their land during The Trail Of Tears.
Photo by me, January 2019.
The road along the floor of the valley hugs the southeastern side. The area reminds me of the area in Tennessee where my father's family lived and farmed in the mid 1800s up to now. A picturesque world of bottom land and hills that pop up out of everywhere and nowhere.
Photo by me, January 2019.
The eastern side of the valley and the ridges that enclose it.
Photo by me, January 2019.
Photo by me, January 2019.
A large estate can be seen looking to the western side of the valley. There are many nice homes through here and into the town of Cave Spring.
Leaving Vans Valley I enter Cave Spring. It is a town known for a cave, spring water, the Georgia School For The Deaf, antique stores and it is a speed trap if there ever was one. The cops aggressively enforce the ridiculously low speed limits that stretch too far. A person could walk through Cave Spring faster than they could drive through it.
Cave Spring is the last town in Georgia on my drive. U.S. Highway 411 veers due west from here and in a few miles crosses the state of Alabama line in the direction of Centre.
Photo by me, January 2019.
An old barn sits in another valley in Alabama. The scenery on my brother's road is the same as Northwest Georgia a few miles away. The ridges and valleys do not recognize the state line that divides them. Humans can put labels and can draw boundaries but the land does not give a damn.
"Down the way the road's divided
Paint me the places you have seen
Those who know what I don't know
Refer to the yellow, red, and green"
R.E.M. - Maps and Legends
Out wandering around the far northeastern tip of Georgia in Rabun County I went to see a waterfall on a late summer day. There was no hiking through a forest or up a mountain, this was a waterfall for a lazy walk. Mud Creek Falls, sometimes referred to as Little Estatoah Falls, was the perfect waterfall for the moment.
X marks the spot.
The waterfall is located in what was Sky Valley Ski Resort, the only snow ski resort in the state. Fifteen years ago it became Sky Valley Resort dropping the snow skiing altogether, apparently a snow ski resort in Georgia was not profitable enough. It was a place I remember hearing about as a kid and seeing on the evening news when the local Atlanta television stations went looking for a "snow in Georgia" type story.
September 2018. Photo by me.
Out of the 57,513 square miles of land that Georgia has, Sky Valley is one of my favorite scenic places in the state.
On the far reaches of the resort on Tahoe Road and behind Spring Lake is where you will find the waterfall. It is open to the general public, there is no fee to visit and there is no entrance gate to hassle you.
After you park on the rather steep and narrow parking area there is Mud Creek. To your left is the 100 foot waterfall, which you will hear before you see it. If you are so inclined and not concerned with your safety, you can climb all over it. I do not recommend climbing on slippery large rocks with water pummeling you from above, but some people will do it anyway.
If you wish you may also hike to the falls. I would like to return and do that one day. There is a hiking trail that begins on Highway
246. It is roughly a two mile hike one-way that approaches the waterfall
from the northwest and parallels Mud Creek. The trailhead is located on
the right side of the road just beyond the Sky Valley overlook. There is a small pull off
area for parking. The trail may at times have a closed gate, but you can
disregard that and walk around it without worry.
September 2018. Photo by me.
The dull name, Mud Creek, does not do it justice.
September 2018. Photo by me.
A closer look at the top of the waterfall. It has a nice misty spray for those hot days.
September 2018. Photo by me.
September 2018. Photo by me.
September 2018. Photo by me.
It is a green, cool and shady spot around the waterfall in the summertime. There are ferns growing among the rocks of the waterfall and the creek. This is what I believe to be an eastern hay-scented fern in the second photo above. I am not positive on the identification, but these are common ferns in this type of environment next to a Georgia mountain stream. The UGA Extension service is a wonderful resource for identifying plants and trees in Georgia has a list for identifying ferns here.
