Christopher Farnsworth's Blog, page 9

June 8, 2012

The Cremains of the Day

There is a company that will turn your cremated remains into vinyl LPs. That’s an especially strange and sobering thought for a Friday morning, so let’s move onto the shameless self-promotion before we get too deep into wondering what songs should be pressed onto those discs…

(“Don’t Fear the Reaper” seems a bit on the nose, doesn’t it? Of course, if you’re into 80s Wave, you have two versions of “Forever Young” to choose from, but that might be a little tasteless for some. “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode? “The Man Comes Around” by Johnny Cash? “Story of My Life” by Social Distortion?)

Right. This week’s RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD news:

Reading the adventures of Cade and Zach may cause some bleeding. You’ve been warned:

Thanks to Richard L. Powell, who sent the image of his blood-spattered copy of THE PRESIDENT’S VAMPIRE.

Bob Reiss has an awesome review of the audiobook version of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD up at his site, The Guilded Earlobe. Thanks, Bob. (Once again, I am very lucky to have Bronson Pinchot narrating.)

Clark Isaacs at the Kingman Daily Miner says RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD is a “five-star book for all, not just fans of the vampire occult.”

A great review and summary of BLOOD OATH, the first book in the series, at Examiner.com.

And in other news:

I got to see Weezer this week at the Roxy. It was for a fundraiser for my daughter’s preschool, but I’ll take my cool points where I can get them. Of course, when Rivers Cuomo ran into the audience and high-fived my wife, I almost missed it completely, because, like an asshole, I was tweeting.

Still, I stayed out late and heard some great music. I loved the covers of Tiffany and Poison, and heard a song Cuomo wrote in Japanese that sounded like the prom theme of a high school where the kids fight giant monsters. And above all else, the band was incredibly kind to donate the time and effort.

Here’s my grainy, photographic proof:

Last week, I also was lucky enough to be invited to speak at the UC Riverside MFA program, held in Palm Desert, by Tod Goldberg. (Goldberg is one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met, and — perhaps not coincidentally — his stories are amazingly heartbreaking. Check them out and you’ll see).

I’d known grad school could take place at a resort with its own Splashtopia water park, I would have stayed in academia. I got to geek out over meeting Steve Almond and Geoff Dyer and finally, in person, my agent-sibling Jillian Lauren. I sat and tried to be as smart and funny as the faculty (did not even come within 100 yards of any of them). And then gave a lecture on the proper care and feeding of a monster and met a lot of sharp writers. With any luck, I didn’t damage too many of the students with my advice, because I would sure as hell like to go back again.

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Published on June 08, 2012 10:39

June 7, 2012

Ray Bradbury, 1920-2012.

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True immortality.

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Published on June 07, 2012 09:44

May 15, 2012

May 11, 2012

And In Other News…

Here’s a bit of self-promotion to end the week:

Someone has started a Tumblr called “Fuck Yeah Nathaniel Cade.” I love this more than words can say.

New review from the Tattered Cover bookstore.

New preview from Vampire Librarian.

Many thanks to my friend, William Heisel, for the shout-out on his blog, which is usually reserved for far more serious matters.

And for everyone who asked, the Audible.com version of the book is now ready for download. Enjoy.

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Published on May 11, 2012 13:18

Weapons-Grade Nostalgia: the 70s

I didn’t like the 70s when I went through them the first time. True, I was only eight years old when they ended, but even then, I remember thinking on New Year’s Eve 1980, “Well, thank God that’s over.”

Part of it may have been my parents’ marriage starting to flatline. Or it might have been the dawning realization on the part of all Americans that the trajectory of the nation was no longer headed inevitably upward, that the flight-path toward American moon colonies and endless prosperity was running smack into the concrete walls of Watergate, the Oil Embargo and the Iran Hostage Crisis.

The 80s, by way of contrast, were a neon-colored, electronic synth, New Wave, Cold War Morning in America, with MTV and Japanese cartoons and movies that catered primarily to teenage boys, which was fortunate for me, since I was one. It was possible to be simultaneously frightened of the end of the world and still have an excellent time waiting for the nuclear holocaust.

Now the 70s are back, only bigger and meaner. We have a brand-new Me Generation, we’ve got skyrocketing gas prices, and we’ve got a housing crash and a recession, and a president looking at a possible war with Iran. Judging by fashion and hairstyles and music, it’s 1977 all over again. (Seriously, listen to this and tell me that’s not disco.)

This is why it’s a little baffling to me that I’m looking back on the 70s with ever-increasing fondness. Part of this is just the corrosive effect of megadoses of nostalgia. It’s worse than battery acid in the eyes if you want to see clearly. I don’t miss the ungodly amount of polyester everyone was wearing, or with the feathered hair or the faux-Afro perms.

But I got a couple books recently that reminded me of what I do miss: the insane possibility of that time, the blind, throw-a-dart-while-blindfolded-see-what-it-hits style that permeated so much of the pop culture that I remember.

For instance, these were the Slurpee cups Marvel offered people one hot summer in the 70s. Yes, that is Stan Lee in a cape and tights. Because, honestly, why the hell not?

Nobody in the 70s seemed to have any idea what would actually work in the marketplace any more, so any number of completely batshit ideas made their way into the lives of millions of impressionable kids — and I’m grateful. I try to envision pitching some of the shows I watched as a kid to a network today (outside of Adult Swim) and it always ends with someone calling security.

For instance, a show where a dad and his kids go through a magic waterfall and end up being hunted by lizard-men and dinosaurs who want to eat them. A guy with magic powers runs a resort with his dwarf slave and occasionally fights the devil. A cruise ship is a floating orgy interrupted only by announcements about the Lido Deck. Three hot chicks fight crime by displaying lots of cleavage. An astronaut will be partially dismembered and rebuilt and will use his new parts to beat up spies.

Oh, and Bigfoot will guest-star on at least three of those shows.

Superheroes were resurgent then, too. The 1966 Batman show was far enough in the rearview that Marvel attempted to make “serious” adaptations of its characters, like Captain America, Spider-Man, and the Hulk.

Even at the movies, where so much important, groundbreaking drama was going on, George Lucas built a world where a guy would discover he had magic powers and a laser-sword before blowing up a planet-sized space station. And DC and Warner Brothers finally made a big-screen, major motion picture version of Superman.

I loved all of that. Really. That’s what I loved most about seeing The Avengers on the big screen: the willingness to commit to a story that is certifiably insane. And that’s why I was so happy to get Marvel Firsts: the 1970s Vol.1 and Vol. 2 when they showed up in the mail.

The 70s were what I’ve always thought of as Marvel’s true Golden Age. and I was glad to see it wasn’t just nostalgia that led me to believe that. The books are a collection of some of Marvel Comics’ key issues from the time when the company threw caution to the wind and chased whatever trend it felt like on a month-to-month basis. Monsters were big for a week? OK, let’s do a monster comic. Kung-fu movies are playing at the revival theaters? Super, let’s make a kung-fu hero. Or two or three. Marvel did superhero, horror, romance, kung-fu, jungle action, and sometimes mashed them all together. It turned a one-off threat from Fantastic Four into a Christ allegory. It made a duck run for president. It had Dracula fight Doctor Strange and the Silver Surfer. It created the world’s first — and, as far as I know, only — voodoo-powered super-hero.

The issues don’t always hold up — it’s mostly the attempts to be topical or relevant, as when Greer Nelson has a feminist awakening before she becomes a cat-powered super-hero — but even the most ham-fisted political statements come off no worse than bad Silver Age exposition. And most of the time, the sheer lunatic joy of the concepts barrels past any mere logical objections. For instance, in Ghost Rider, you might ask: Why does Satan have a motorcycle-riding daredevil collecting souls? And the answer is: Holy crap, that guy’s skull is on fire.

Even though comics have increased in price roughly 1500 percent since the 70s, we haven’t seen a corresponding increase in creativity or, sadly, flaming skulls. That’s probably the only thing I really miss about the 70s: the sense of possibility. This isn’t entirely the fault of the creators or the companies. The market has narrowed and the corporate bosses are more demanding. If something isn’t a guaranteed hit, it’s difficult to justify the expense of getting it in front of an audience. The Internet also makes it possible for any trend to be sucked dry in a matter of days, so that comics can’t mine the zeitgeist the way they used to. And judging by the sales numbers, many fans are in the grip of a different kind of nostalgia than mine: they want newer versions of the same stories with the same characters. So I understand the obstacles.

That said, my favorite book on the stands now is about a guy who gets psychic impressions from the things he eats, and I’d love to see that more of that sense of what-the-hell hit comics again. I’ve got money still unspent when I leave the comic book store these days, and I never thought that would happen in my lifetime.

Thank God Marvel Firsts: The 1970s Vol. 3 is going to be out soon. It’s got dinosaurs.

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Published on May 11, 2012 10:55

May 10, 2012

The Avengers

I imagine Joss Whedon is going to have a hard time picking up his comics at the local shop because of all the unsolicited hugs he’ll receive from the geek community. He pulled it off. He made a full-blown, unapologetic superhero movie. And he had the top opening weekend of any film, ever.

That means he’ll probably just send one of his Fembot Bodyguards to collect his comics while he stays home and counts his garbage bags full of money (and woe unto you if you try an unsolicited hug on one of those, fanboys). But still. He’s earned it.

There are many, many geeks out there giving their thoughts on the movie. I figured I’d join in. If you’re one of the last dozen people in the world who has not seen it, well, go to the multiplex. Everyone else, spoilers ahead.

First things first: I understand the objections, aesthetic and moral, to throwing more money at Marvel and Disney. I don’t agree with them, obviously, but that’s a debate for another post.

And I’m not going to engage in one of my favorite sports, complaining about the stuff they got wrong.* That is a luxury for younger fans, who didn’t grow up with this version of Captain America:

As far as I’m concerned, this is about as faithful an adaptation as we’re going to get of a story that includes a Norse God, a man wearing robot armor, and an unfrozen super-soldier who punched Hitler in the face, who all get together to fight crime. And I’m okay with that.

This is just going to be about what I liked.

And there was a lot of it. There was an amazing amount of material to cram into the movie, and as a friend of mine said, it’s impressive first of all as a feat of engineering. Just dividing up the lines and character moments around probably required a spreadsheet and a protractor. But none of it feels mechanical. It’s a testament to the director and the strengths of the actors that they’re able to nail what’s essential about each character in a very short amount of time.

Whedon’s one-liners — always funny and great — also reveal something each time they’re used. Cap, a man out of time: “It appears to run on some sort of electricity.” Thor, trying hard to tamp down his native arrogance: “He’s adopted.” Iron Man, the smartest guy in any room: “Actually, I’m planning to threaten you.”

The Hulk became a strong presence in the movie, despite relatively little screen time and maybe two lines. I think it was a very smart move to have him stay as Banner most of the time. Having the Hulk is like John Belushi in Animal House: you only unleash him when you want to wreck the joint, and too much of him would burn out the audience.

But the real breakout star was Black Widow. Because she was often relegated to the interstitial moments — the bits of plot bridging the big set pieces — Scarlett Johansson got a lot of key scenes. (She brought in the Hulk; outwitted Loki; fought aliens on the ground; shut down the Tesseract. You could argue she’s the biggest hero in the whole thing.) It’s the first time I’ve ever really cared about a character that’s more or less a cipher in the actual comics, and I think that’s another testament to the choices of the actor and the directors.

Best of all, however, was the fact that this was nothing but a super-hero story. There was humor and action and drama, but zero camp. Nobody was winking at the audience, or playing it for half-measures, as if to say, “I am above this source material.” The best way I can describe it is Cesar Romero’s mustache. In the 1966 Batman TV series, Romero played the Joker but refused to shave his signature mustache. Because, after all, it’s just a send-up of a crappy kid’s comic, right? Who really cares?

Nobody in The Avengers treated their job like that. They took it as seriously as the material allows, and I think the response — $744 million opening weekend worldwide — shows that you get an equally serious return on investment.

From a storytelling perspective, it got exactly right what was great and revolutionary about Marvel Comics when they first appeared on the stands in the 60s. The books presented a world where heroes’ victories were not certain, where they came at a cost, and not everything was wrapped up neatly by the final panel. Moving their heroes slightly (and only slightly) into the real world enabled Lee and Kirby and Ditko to reintroduce the elements of actual drama into the stories.

The movie captured that sense perfectly. Even though we all go into a comic book or a superhero movie knowing the good guys are going to win, it’s that uncertainty that makes it interesting. We need to know how the good guys will overcome their obstacles, and we need to see them bleed a little on the way. Otherwise, we don’t have the cathartic release at the end, because the victory that’s never in doubt doesn’t really cost anything.

This is why Marvel has always been able to make its heroes more accessible than DC’s. DC’s heroes fly above us, and only touch the earth when they need to solve problems. (Even Batman, their pantheon’s “realistic” hero is a billionaire genius martial arts expert detective inventor. Who swoops down from above to stomp on crime.) They are not just heroes, they are gods, and they look somewhat ridiculous when we try to whittle them down to our size.

Marvel heroes are ground-level heroes. They have been earthbound from the start. Even the perspectives in the art have been different. Marvel’s artists have always emphasized the use of forced perspective (a big part of the Kirby style) when illustrating its heroes as they travel above the rooftops. There is always a reminder, in the form of a building or an onlooker or a bridge that the world is still there. Whereas DC’s heroes often glide effortlessly against the empty blue or black of the air.

Superman flies like he’s going for a stroll. He’s born to the sky. When Spider-Man or Daredevil or even Iron Man soar above the skyline of New York, it’s a triumph over gravity. There’s always a sense of height, of ascension, with the concomitant truth just beneath every panel: the world is always waiting to tug them back down. Marvel’s heroes have to fight for every inch, and they are well aware of all that nothing between them and the ground.

Take a look at how the Avengers fight, even in their cosmic wars. It’s man-to-man, street-level combat. The Avengers won the Kree-Skull War by going behind enemy lines; they took out the two biggest and most powerful empires in the galaxy with a handful of people. The Fantastic Four travel through interstellar space and parallel dimensions, but they do it like a family on a long roadtrip, with lots of bickering.

(Digression here: this is one reason Marvel has always failed to cram a Superman-like figure into its own mythology. Yes, I’m looking at you, Sentry. But it also sometimes applies to Thor, Hyperion, and even Captain Marvel after he was revamped by Starlin. That kind of power in tights and cape is just too big. It throws off the usual balance, and violates many of the unwritten rules of the Marvel Universe. Ultron, the Mole Man, and Fin Fang Foom are all less threatening if someone can just throw them into the sun.)

The movie, for me, was summed up beautifully by that final end credits scene of the Avengers in a falafel shop. They were exhausted, hungry, and empty-eyed. They’d won. But they were tired. And after all that fighting, they just wanted to sit down together and get something to eat.

I left the theater grinning ear-to-ear.

Oh, and one more thing: Thanos.

He was the villain in my favorite Avengers story ever, so yeah, I’m pretty psyched for the sequel.

*Well, mostly. I am never a huge fan of any plot that hinges on mind control. And comics have a long and rich history of beating that particular horse to death. But in context, I think it gave Hawkeye a smart role to play as an antagonist that was true to the character in both the comics and as he’s portrayed in the movies – and made it clear just how dangerous even the least powerful of the Avengers could be on the wrong side.

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Published on May 10, 2012 12:01

May 8, 2012

Happy Thomas Pynchon Day

Today is the birthday of Thomas Pynchon. In the photo, he’s the one in the back giving the peace sign. If you’re in Atwater Village today, you can get free coffee at Trystero Coffee as part of the celebration.

Vineland remains my favorite of his novels.

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Published on May 08, 2012 09:56

May 7, 2012

Going Viral

Despite the best efforts of a mutant virus and Alaska Airlines, I have returned home. For those of you not following the updates on Twitter, I was forced to cancel my book tour halfway through due to my intestines leaping up and trying to throttle my brain to death. Or at least, that’s what it felt like. In my adult life, I have walked off car accidents, pneumonia, and alcohol poisoning. If I could have done the same this time, I would have. But this was as sick as I have ever been.

So I want to apologize to everyone who came out and found a CANCELLED sign where they should have seen my smiling face. And I want to apologize to the great people at Tattered Cover, Barnes & Noble Boise, Third Place Books, and Mysterious Galaxy San Diego. I hope there’s some way I can make it up to you in the future.

For those people I did get to see at Mysterious Galaxy Redondo Beach, Murder By The Book, Borderlands, Poisoned Pen, and Powell’s, thank you again for coming out and for making the events so great. I enjoyed myself, and I hope everyone likes their hats.

Now, to answer the mail that’s been piling up on the virtual doorstep while I’ve been traveling, retching and recovering.

First, the Audible.com/iTunes edition of RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD. I’ve heard from a lot of people that they’d love to buy the audio version of the book, but they can’t find it. I’ve asked the publisher about this. Apparently, there was a glitch in the file sent to Audible.com, but the actual disks have been sent over now, and the audio version should be up in a week or so. My apologies for the delay.

And yes, this one will be narrated again by my pal, the inimitable Bronson Pinchot, who has gone viral in his own way. He’s now the subject of his own video game, as well as the star of his reality series on DIY. You should really check both of those things out.

Next, the hats. I’ve gotten everyone’s photos and addresses, and I’m working on getting them in the mail. They should go out in a week or so as well. I’ll make an announcement once they’re off. Thanks for all the great pics.

News coverage: here’s an interview in the Phoenix New Times, coverage in the Houston Press, and new reviews from Lit Fest Magazine and Bookgasm.

And finally, thanks. Thanks to everyone who’s bought the book and recommended it. It’s been a great first week of sales, and I am truly lucky to have so many great readers. I’m even luckier that there are more of you every day.

Stay bloodthirsty,

CDF

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Published on May 07, 2012 11:27

April 26, 2012

CADE 2012: This Is The Day

People have been wishing me “Happy Release Day” all morning. Although that might sound like a special form of massage or what you hear when you get out of prison, it actually means that today is the day you can buy RED, WHITE, AND BLOOD at your friendly neighborhood bookseller.

So if you’ve been coming to this blog and somehow missed my relentless self-promotion, here’s a little more.

My old paper, Boise Weekly, has a very flattering profile by Josh Gross, that answers some questions about Cade and the twisted pathways in what I laughingly refer to as my writing process.
Carol Thomas at the Examiner has a great review of the book, if you need more convincing to read it.

Once more, here’s a stalker-friendly list of places I’ll be signing the book.

And remember, snap a pic of yourself with the book (or the screen of your e-reader) and you can get a free hat. Details here.

And thank you all, once again, for supporting and reading my weird books. I really do appreciate it.

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Published on April 26, 2012 09:17