MAINTAINING THE BUZZ

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Carmichael’s, the restaurant her family owns in my new novel, has me looking more closely at others.

Successful restaurants, or so I’ve read, can go downhill overnight. The public can be fickle, on one side, and the operation itself, on the other, can implode. Oh, the stories we could tell!

In my new novel, What’s Left, her parents’ generation takes bold steps to anticipate changes in American food tastes. They brazenly agree to slightly re-position their landmark burger-and-fries restaurant (now called Carmichael’s Indiana) and the bar (the Taverna) while adding two new venues, one upscale (Carmichael’s Starlight), the other vegetarian (Bliss).

~*~

Though I cut this from the final version, I still love the taste of it on me tongue:

And the new Carmichael’s Stardust usually offered something daring, for our neck of the woods, depending on how we were feeling and how adventurous our customers were responding. Lamb shanks, anyone? Artichokes? Cornish hens? Brussels sprouts? We were expanding their horizons.

~*~

Well, that would have been pretty daring for the mid-’70s! We’ve come a long way since, something I’ll assume the Stardust menu has pursued. Vegetarian, meanwhile, has become both stricter and more innovative through its vegan adherents. I’m not at all surprised to find how often our meals fall into its range, even without trying. As for a late-night gathering spot? The Taverna strikes me as a step up from a typical bar. Makes me think, in fact, of the late lamented Barley Pub here in town.

Think of your own tastes. Which of the restaurants would be your first choice?

TEN FAVORITE LIFEGUARDS

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

We’ve tried to keep them from getting bored as we swim laps. They’ve done the same. Come to think of it, I doubt that I’ve ever used any of these names in my fiction.

  1. Tynisha.
  2. Caleb.
  3. Hannah.
  4. Nate.
  5. Emilee.
  6. Lexi.
  7. Jess.
  8. Moriah.
  9. Matty.
  10. Alec (plus Alex, as a team).

~*~

Dustin Hoffman’s moonlighting job in Stranger Than Fiction almost made the list, but real life wins out on this one. Come to think of it, these could all be movie stars.

Well, how’s that for a prompt? Who do you know who’d you cast in a movie? Turn into a big celebrity, if you could?

Wisps of morning fog on the Damariscotta River, Maine. Tall masted clipper ships built just upstream once passed by here on their way to long trips on the oceans.

Of course, this is totally unrelated to the theme. Just another thing on my mind.

A WORKING MOTHER, ALL THE SAME

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Cassia gets her name from the flowering acacia tree. The honey locust is a related species.

Bella is a grandmother Cassia never meets in the flesh in my new novel, What’s Left, but she’s a vivid figure in the granddaughter’s life all the same.

Bella comes to be the colorful face of the family restaurant, Carmichael’s, a woman who seems to know everybody in town and brightens their lives as soon as they walk through the door.

She may be the mother of five children, but somehow she manages to juggle both work and family – perhaps thanks to the older generation’s active support.

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OH, THE FINALS WEEK ORGY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

Among the gifts I received at Christmas was a tablet laptop, with the expectation I’d be using especially for Kindle editions – including my own ebooks.

But so far what I’ve really appreciated is its ability to stream music.

For me, that’s meant Q2’s New Sounds and Operavore from WQXR in New York and WHRB from Harvard University in Cambridge.

With solid jazz from 5 a.m. till 1 p.m. and some adventurous classical continuing till 10 p.m., plus the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday afternoons and another opera on Sunday night, my listening is mostly on the Harvard station. Admittedly, the student announcers can be unintentionally amusing in their pronunciations and amateurish touches, but I usually find that more amusing than annoying.

This spring, though, I finally got to experience an amazing tradition on the station – the finals week Orgy, when the regular programming is set aside for in-depth presentations of specific composers or performers.

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TEN REASONS NOT TO WORRY ABOUT A ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE COMING YOUR WAY

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 5 Comments

Do I really have to define this? To be honest, until recently about all I knew about the topic came from overhearing someone who’s truly terrified about it, but then you have to realize he’s terrified by everything, including his own shadow. A little research, though, casts the possibility in a much calmer light. For instance:

  1. It’s essentially a suburban phenomenon, should it erupt, starting at the malls. You don’t go there, do you?
  2. That also means it’s afraid to venture into the ghetto – and anything close to center city.
  3. It self-selects for Trump country, something like the plagues of Egypt. By the way, there’s no harm in sprinkling your doorposts with sheep’s blood, just in case. (You may want to keep some on hand.)
  4. It also heads straight for Walmart. Think of the cockroach hotel ads, “They go in but they don’t come out.”
  5. It runs in terror at the slightest whiff of high culture – paintings, fine literature, jazz, classical music, opera (especially) ward it off. Keep a good supply of Shakespeare quotes at the tip of your tongue. They’re better than any arcane spell you could cast.
  6. There’s some debate about whether it’s spread by infected people or by an airborne virus. Here’s a hint: It has no sense of humor – it’s completely defenseless against laughter. Or really bad jokes. (“You hear the one about two zombies go in a bar?”)
  7. As people? Traditional slow zombies will get in the way of the newer mutant fast zombies. They’ll start tripping over each other, which will lead to biting their rivals. New research indicates their blood types won’t match and that will be that. End of the show.
  8. Or consider traffic gridlock. Major highways and bridges stop moving at a given volume – and many zombies will expire right there. You really didn’t expect them to be walking anywhere, did you?
  9. And as a virus? Simple. Stockpile your vitamin C. And take it faithfully.
  10. They won’t want your home-canned green beans. Or any other greens, for that matter. It’s too quiet where I live. Zombies would be looking for live action. I’m more worried about garden slugs.

~*~

So what potential global catastrophes are keeping you up nights? And how would you advise coping?

 

African violets in a cozy window.

Of course, this is totally unrelated to the theme. Just another thing on my mind.

 

BACK AMONG THE LIVING

~ Jnana Hodson ~ 4 Comments

First, my apologies for not being, well, as present and active as I would have liked over the past five months. When it comes to blogging, most of my material has flowed from what I scheduled before the end of last year. I haven’t added fresh dispatches or participation much at other sites, and it’s showing.

It’s not what I intended.

Let me explain.

Shortly after the release of the Advanced Reading Copy of my newest novel, What’s Left, back in the first week of January, I found myself in the emergency room for what I thought would be more inconclusive tests, but, well, my real-life plot thickened. We’d just had a big snow, and I was hoping to be out in it on my cross-country skis for the first time that winter. But I was having what I thought was a breathing problem, one that several buddies in the medical profession had informally thought might be a walking pneumonia arising in a bug that made the rounds last fall.

The previous week, though, I’d finally gone in to have my primary care physician check that out. The good news, he said, was that my lungs sounded clear. But he also ordered X-rays, scheduled a stress test, and then, instead of his usual droll humor, said very firmly if this happened again I was to go straight to the ER to have it checked out while the symptoms were still present.

Six days later – and two days before my scheduled stress test – we had that big snow. The symptoms were back. Despite my reluctance to go to the ER, my wife and elder daughter insisted otherwise, and since said daughter had just driven into town, her car was already cleared off and warm. She dropped me off at the hospital.

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JUST TRY TO PICTURE THEM

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

In the (still imaginary) movie version of my new novel, What’s Left, who would you cast as Cassia’s great-grandfather and his brother — our Aristotle and Pericles (Ari and Perry)?

~*~

The man behind the counter of this diner in West Frankfort, Illinois, is its proprietor, Gus Vardas. Photo from Kim Scarborough via Wikimedia Commons.

In my novel, the family restaurant could have been like this.

WHO CHALLENGES THE BOSS?

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment
Carmichael’s, the restaurant her family owns in my new novel, has me looking more closely at others.

In his prime, as his parents and their siblings recede from the business, Stavros is free to operate largely as an autocrat.

Is that really such a good thing? Or does his wife, Bella, keep him in line?

As my draft once explained:

He’s not only preserved Papou Ari’s concept of our own Mount Olympus, he’s expanded and upgraded its holdings. The once neglected in-town blocks are gaining new panache.

~*~

I doubt Stavros would have seen his position as nearly so liberated. He probably would have seen himself hedged in by suppliers, prices, customers’ expectations, health inspectors, taxes – oh, can’t you just hear him rattling off a long list?

Imagine yourself as the boss in your own dream job. What would that be? And what policies or practices would you do uniquely your own way?

TEN REASONS ‘CITIZEN KANE’ IS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER

~ Jnana Hodson ~ Leave a comment

While Orson Welles usually gets the genius kudos, much of the creative brilliance in this 1941 masterpiece arises in the seasoned experience of his collaborators Herman J. Mankiewicz and Gregg Toland.

  1. The nature of the story itself. It’s not exactly likeable. We want to befriend Kane but can’t. He starts out as charming but more and more becomes a sphinx. The newsmen themselves are nobodies. As for his wives and lovers? And yet there’s something gripping in the rise and fall of this spoiled rich boy turned tycoon and populist turned brutal cynic and failure, plus his times. (Sounds topical, considering the White House now, doesn’t it?) Pulling this off is much more difficult than it sounds, and yet we’re swept along throughout. In short, anything but a conventional screenplay.
  2. The soundtrack. Welles and Mankiewicz were grounded in radio drama, not filmmaking. And so they brought to Hollywood a revolutionary ear for not just dialogue but everyday detailing background sounds like footsteps and doors. Their radio perspective also meant they could envision a scene from the way it unfolded within a viewer’s head and not just how it might appear on a stage in front of us, the way directors and writers had framed movies before this.
  3. Cinamatographer Toland. In his work with Hollywood great John Ford, Toland had begun exploring a new technique called deep focus, which allows multiple things to be present within a single shot. In Kane, this comes to full fruition. Tons have been written about what’s happening in the background or how multiple items come together to make their own statement or put everything into a fresh comprehension. And it holds opportunities for emotional depth previously absent in cinema.
  4. Optical illusions. Again, give Toland credit. They serve as guideposts, according to film critic Roger Ebert in his lovefest to this film.
  5. Visible ceilings. You never saw these in a movie before. Sometimes it required cutting a hole in the floor. But it made for some much more dramatic visuals. Again, Ebert has much to say about this, for good reason. I think the ceilings are an emblem of many other similar breakthrough touches that advance this movie light years ahead of convention.
  6. The blending of drawings, real sets, and wipes. Welles was surprisingly economical in obtaining some of his spectacular impressions and moving the story across time.
  7. The witness. Always in a corner, observing or even commenting. A great storytelling device.
  8. Complete artistic control. RKO executives agreed to make no cuts in the footage. In addition to writing, directing, and taking the starring role, Welles had unprecedented complete artistic control. Amazing. The one compromise was forced by the film board, which nixed the brothel scene. Alas.
  9. Common misperception. Unlike the widespread tale, the story’s not even about William Randolph Hearst, whose opposition undermined of its chances for commercial success.
  10. Kane prompted Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel in homage. Not that I viewed them in chronological order.

Oh, yes, if you want to know about “rosebud,” you really do have to look up Ebert’s take. We do miss him.

~*~

What movie and its special effects have especially impressed you? These days we practically take them for granted.

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