It's been kind of a rough week

There's very little more depressing than discovering that one's heroes are mortal after all.

Two people I've admired for years, and who are at the heart of many a good memory in a long and dark time for me, have died this week.

One is Christopher Lee. Seeing his movies when I was a kid made quite an impression on me, and led me down the path I've been following ever since. He awakened a love of horror in me, one that is still strong and healthy to this day. I didn't know until years later about the incredible life the man lived. Look it up, if you're unaware. You wouldn't believe me if I went into it here and if you hadn't heard already.

The other is Dusty Rhoades. Yes, that Dusty Rhoades, the pro wrestler, real name Virgil Runnels. Yes, there was a time when I was a devoted wrestling fan, and Dusty--aka The American Dream--was at the heart of a lot of fun memories I have from that time. I know people disparage wrestlers, but I have a lot of respect for the ones who reach the top of that game and stay there for a prolonged period. That requires a strange mixture of charisma, verbal skills, and athletic ability.

Granted, the Dream wasn't an impressive athlete, but he was a master at manipulating crowds. Give him a microphone and an audience and he'll have that audience doing whatever he wants them to do. If he'd ever gone into politics he'd be a force to be reckoned with. He had a way of connecting with ordinary people, a way of communicating that he understood the struggles the common people have to go through to live their lives.

And he was all too aware of how people perceived him, and used that for some of the funniest moments I've ever seen on TV.

Anyway, one of those men dying, followed quickly by the other, was a one-two punch that I wasn't ready for this week, and I've been kind of down in the dumps for a few days. Of course, there are other factors at play, too, but you don't care about those.

I've managed to keep banging away on the first draft of this novel, too. I may be onto something with it--there are aspects that I find very interesting. At this rate I should be done with the first draft by the end of the year. Maybe even sooner, if I get on a roll.

Yeah, I'm digging Netflix now

I've been binge watching a new show on Netflix--Sense8. From the minds of J. Michael Stryznski, and the Wachowskis--and if you don't know who those people are, search IMDB.com and come back afterwards.

It's a fairly new phenomenon--it's a show that's designed to be binge watched. There's no way something like this would work in a one-episode-a-week format. I'm not saying you need to sit and watch the entire thing in one sitting, but I do advise you do three or four episodes per session.

For a long time I resisted getting Netflix. I didn't think I'd ever watch it, and, to be honest, I don't as much as other people I know. But there are shows there that aren't available anywhere else, and there are vast wastelands of nothing on regular cable TV, so it helps.

Anyways, should you feel intrigued, one caveat--you need to watch this show. You can't just have it on and sort of check in on it every so often while you do something else. If you do that you'll be completely confused.

Also, there is this moment in episode four that is the epitome of excellence in scriptwriting. All I'll say is it involves the Four Non-Blondes song, "What's Going On?" It was perfection. It literally and figuratively hit all the right notes. If you haven't been paying attention you won't Get It.

I'm sorry, but stuff like that, artistic perfection, makes me giddy.

As far as my own work is concerned, I've decided to adapt a screenplay I wrote a while back into novel form. This was the very first screenplay I ever wrote and it never quite worked--now that it's sort of laid there in my subconscious for a while, marinating in my life experiences and hopes and nightmares, I'm hoping it now has aged into a certain piquancy. We shall see. I just started it so it'll be awhile before enough of it emerges so I can decide if I'm just wasting my time with it (again) or if I have something this time.

So, that's what's going on with me. You?

Remembering . . .

I've been seeing all sorts of remembrances here and there, observances and commemorations of those who died in service to their country. I've seen articles written by veterans, angry that people seem to use Memorial Day to mark the beginning of summer, and that's about it--a day to head to the beach or cook out. Here at my apartment complex they've opened the pool, which they do every Memorial Day weekend.

I'm not a veteran, and don't have any close friends or family who are veterans, but this day does strike a chord with me. Here's how I think we should honor those who died.

Remember what they died for. What they really died for. I'm not talking about the buzzwords the politicians use, like "freedom" and "security." Remember who was pounding the drums to go to the war in the first place, and how they've treated those who came back from it, and whose bank accounts have grown obscenely because of it.

Honor the dead by questioning the motives of those who want to start new wars. Look at who is in favor of it, and what their connections are to people who would benefit from a war--arms manufacturers and defense contractors. How are people who aren't so hawkish treated? During the whole Iraq fiasco I was shouted down constantly when I said that the people who seem to be so desperately in favor of the war would make tons of money off of it, and the evidence that Saddam was involved with al Quaeda was sketchy at best and I felt like we were being lied to. My patriotism was questioned and there are people who do not speak to me to this day because of that. Even though it's turned out I was right, and every day there's even more evidence that, if anything, I understated the case. It was much worse than I imagined, and I was imagining pretty bad.

Make sure, before you decide you support a war, that there is convincing--and I mean convincing--evidence that it's necessary, that we have definite goals in mind, and that we'll take care of the veterans who are wounded, psychologically as well as physically, when they come home. If the politicians and pundits say we can't afford to do that, then we can't afford to start the war in the first place, regardless of our motives.

In short, the best way to honor the dead, I think, it to make it harder for the politicians to start new wars to create more of them.

The suture removal story

I'm just going to leave this here so I can point people to it when I want to tell them this story. Because, while at the moment it's topical and amusing, it probably won't remain that way.

Okay, I had minor surgery a few weeks ago to remove a basal cell carcinoma from my scalp--see my previous posting about that little adventure. At the time, the doctor who performed the surgery told me that he had resigned from that practice, so when I came back to have the stitches removed it would be a different doctor.

Fine with me. Let's just get this over with.

So, three weeks later I return to keep my appointment to have the stitches removed. As I enter the office building where the dermatology practice was located I noticed that the doctor who had performed my surgery had his own practice in the same building. I figured, oh, that's why he resigned, to start his own practice.

I've worked in the health care industry for over a quarter century so I know that some doctors change practices as often as they change underwear. In short, no biggie.

I continue on to the other end of the building where my doctor's office was located. And they're closed.

Not closed for the day. Closed as in out of business.

So, I'm standing there, with these bloody damned stitches in my head, wondering how in the hell I'm going to get them removed. For a medical practice to just close without making arrangements for their patients or even letting them know is sort of the ultimate in uncool behavior.

I went back to the front of the building and dropped in on the doctor who had operated on me. He happened to be up front when I came in and he remembered me, and had his staff work me in. He also told me the other practice had closed a week earlier and they hadn't bothered to tell anybody. He was exceptionally nice about it. His nurse removed my stitches and he did an exam--no further signs of cancer, nothing to worry about--and we had a little chat about his former employers. He was as unhappy with them as I was.

So, I got extremely unlucky and got equally lucky right afterwards, which is sort of how things work for me.

So, if you came here because I mentioned the suture removal story and you wanted to know what it is, this is it.

Another hole in the head and randomocity

I think I mentioned a while back that I had this horrid mole on my scalp.

In case you missed it, remember that episode of Angel where these demons were implanting their larva into people, causing them to grow a third eye in the backs of their heads? It kind of looked like that, except I couldn't actually see through it. It caused the lady I get to shave my head to freak out.

So, I decided to go to a dermatologist to get it removed. Which they did, after telling me that it didn't look like a mole. Of course, they sent it off to have it biopsied and it came back as basal cell carcinoma.

I know a lot of people freak when they hear the "C" word. Fortunately for me I've spent years working in the health care industry so I was already pretty much aware of what BCC is so I was cool with it. Kind of.

Really, if you just have to pick a particular cancer diagnosis then that's the one you'd want. It's not all that aggressive and doesn't metasize like other cancers. It's slow growing.

So, I had to go back to the dermatologist to get what's called Moh's surgery, where they excise tissue from around where the carcinoma was, examine it under the microscope to see if they see any cancerous cells and if they do, they come back and take another, slightly larger section, until they get a section that is clear, or free of cancer.

Luckily for me they only had to take a couple of sections. Unfortunately they had to take enough tissue so make stitches necessary. The doctor said he had to go really deep, which means he probably got down near my skull.

I hate stitches. And, while they had numbed my scalp so that I didn't even feel it when the doctor removed a good-sized hunk of meat from it, I did feel it when he put that first stitch in. Yow! It wasn't so much that it hurt--though it did, a little---but the really odd feeling I got when it tightened the skin on my face slightly. Unpleasant. Extremely so.

But the carcinoma is all gone and I go back in a couple of weeks to get the stitches removed. I can't keep a bandage on them because they're in my hair--no way a bandage will stay there. If I'd been thinking I would have gotten my head shaved before the surgery. Anyways, I'm keeping the stitches soaked with antibacterial ointment, and drying them off when I step out of the shower, and so far no problems.

And I've ordered a couple of really stylish hats I'm going to start wearing. Fishing hats, I've always called them, though I've never owned one before. These are designed to protect from the sun, and since they have a brim that goes all the way around so it'll protect the skin on the back of my neck, too.

I guess the lesson from all this is: if you have a mole that is particularly ugly, or that bleeds and scabs over and then bleeds again, get to a dermatologist to have it looked at. And protect yourself from prolonged exposure to the sun.

So, I'm going to live. And, in a couple of weeks--though it seems like a hundred years--I'll have these damned stitches out of my scalp!

Sometimes you just need to dive right in . . .

I try to be one of those writers who meticulously plans, outlines, plots out, etc., a story before I start writing. I really do. And I admire those who work that way. It's got to be a lot less nerve-wracking to already have the road mapped out before you get into the car.

I've tried. Oh, lord have mercy, I tried. I can usually get about half-way before I just decide, to hell with it, and turn that key.

So, I started a screenplay for a movie version of my idea, Harvester of Faces.

And, so far, it's coming along surprisingly well. As I'm writing things occur to me, characters, story situations, and the like, as if my subconscious has already plotted out a lot of it before I even get started. Which may actually be the case--in my experience it usually works that way.

Will I manage to finish this thing? Who knows? So far I'm pretty happy with what I have. Hopefully, the momentum I've established will be enough to propel me all the way to the end.

For the record, though, I did sit down and plot some things up. A lot of the back story had to be sorted out so I could have the motivations for all of the characters. That really helped, too. Stuff that I thought was superfluous but would be nice to have is now essential. I thought I was going to need to eliminate on of the central characters but it turns out that she's essential to the story, which is good, as she's the reason I'm writing this in the first place.

Anyway, so far, so good. I got bogged down on this thing when I tried it as a novel. Hopefully, as a screenplay, it'll lose enough fat to be more manageable.

As I say so often, we'll see.

How Hannibal restores my faith in the future . . .

For those of you who don't know, the TV show Hannibal is based on the novel Red Dragon, which is book before The Silence of the Lambs in Thomas Harris's Hannibal Lecter series.

As you can imagine, the subject matter is on occasion gruesome and hard to watch. However, when I was chatting with a friend the other day I mentioned how this show makes me hopeful for our survival as a species. My friend--being very perceptive--knew exactly what I was talking about, but I thought maybe I should expand on that idea here.

Each episode of the show is intense, well written, and exceedingly well directed and acted. Every frame is lit beautifully, even the scenes of unbelievable cruelty. Every aspect of the medium in which the story is told is used effectively and entertainingly--not just the images on the screen, but the sounds. I imagine writing an episode of this show must be exhausting because so much care is invested in every line, every single shot.

The ratings haven't been great and the show was on the bubble for a third season renewal, but apparently someone at the network that airs it believes that it should get at least one more season and it was renewed a few months ago. Season three begins airing this summer.

This was after it survived the same situation at the end of season one.

This is what gives me hope for the future--the show was renewed mostly because of its artistic merits. How often does that happen these days?

It's even more delicious if you have read the books--and if you haven't, I highly recommend that you do.

Anyway, it does show, on occasion, that quality does mean something in this world. Still. Not very often, but every now and then.

Look it up on Amazon Prime if you haven't seen it, or even, like me, if you have. I'm rewatching it now and enjoying it as much the second time around as I did the first.

You owe it to yourself.