Famous Monsters

For our 4th anniverary last month, Nikki presented me with tickets to a Misfits show at the Corner Hotel Bar in Melbourne. She'd been searching the papers the last four and a half years, checking all the concert venues in the city, waiting patiently for the Misfits to arrive.

Last night was the show. Third time I've seen them, and it was by far the best.

The line-up was missing Doyle, but included Robo and Dez, both formerly of Black Flag, but Robo an "Earth A.D." era Misfit. The show opened with John Carpenter's Halloween theme (brilliant) and segued into the Misfits own "Halloween". Barely a second lapsed - long enough for a "one-two-three-four" countdown - between songs, and since Misfits songs are usually no longer than two minutes (three minutes is an epic on scale with "Inna Gadda Da Vida" for these guys), the show lasted only over an hour. Mostly classic Misfits, but they did play "Kong at the Gates/Forbidden Zone" (gotta love a song about Planet of the Apes) and "Helena" from the newer albums. I was particularly happy to hear "Walk Among Us", which is not only a reference to a classic Misfits album, but a musical retelling of Night of the Creeps.

When the show ended, Jerry announced that he'd be hanging around to sign "whatever you got". I was wearing my Crimson Ghost shirt. (And I'm happy, now, to be the guy who wears the shirt of the band he's seeing, thank you very much.) Realizing I'd probably never have this chance again - and if I did it wouldn't be for a loooong time - I said to Nikki, "I have to go." Then I was diving into the crowd, many of whom were leaving, pushing my way through to the front like a salmon.

So I'm up there, waiting for Jerry to get around to our side of the stage, and I saw a kid holding tickets. "What the fuck?" I said. "They kept our tickets." "No," he goes, "They're on the table right up at the box office, you can collect 'em afterwards."

Hmm... So after Jerry signs my shirt (now retired), I dash back to the box office, grab two tickets, chuck my shirt to Nikki, and fight my way back through to the front of the stage. Jerry signs these two tickets and I told him I saw him at the Chamelon (a club in Lancaster, PA), which impressed him a bit.

That is a gift that cannot be beat. The sad bit is, we didn't take a camera because we reckoned they wouldn't allow them in the place. Kicking myself, now, because every third person had a digital camera or a cell phone. But what are you gonna do?

Cell [2]

So I finished Cell.

The less said, the better, I think.

I mean, it's not the worst book he's ever written (he says, ignoring his last statement entirely), but it may be his most mediocre. His last couple books, King has started to repeat himself, and Cell is certainly no exception. He lifted themes -- entire scenes, in some cases -- from The Stand, The Tommyknockers, even the final pages felt like the lead-up to the lame ending of It, and tried to string them together into something that felt like a story. Not a bad story, surely -- just a variation on the Zombie plot that Romero snaked from Richard Matheson. But... it felt like he was just making it all up as he went along, with no clear thought put into anything that happened. Which makes sense, really, because he's the guy who has said that he "uncovers" the story, like an archeologist uncovers the bones of an ancient king.

Riiiiight.

I used to subscribe to that theory, or something like it, anyway -- that the story already exists somewhere in the ether, and the writer acts as a medium, channelling the story through himself, his keyboard becoming a Ouija board. But I have to call "bullshit" on that. That kind of thinking, the "archeological dig" thing, takes the author's talent (or lack thereof) right off the board, dunnit? I mean, you can say -- in keeping with the archeology metaphor -- that if you don't dig carefully, you'll ruin the find. Which is to say, if you force your story, if you push it, rather than let it flow, you're going to fuck it up.

(*cough* Dark Tower *cough*)

Cell feels less like a great archeological find than, perhaps, that poor animal that Barnum and Baily tried to pass of as a unicorn some years back; it's a sham. It's familiar which you're being asked to accept as something not only new and exciting, but fascinating as well. In Cell, King sees a unicorn, where I see a goat with a broomstick shoved in its skull.

Cell

So, I-don't-know-how-long after swearing off Stephen King forever (lousy Dark Tower series, topple my idol), I'm reading his new book. Rather, his next book, because I didn't even hold out long enough to give one amiss.

It's called Cell, and while it's too early to tell whether it sucks or not, I'm 65 pages into it and he hasn't fucked it up yet. Granted, it's a King book, so we still got a loooong way to go...

The premise is kind of cheeky -- at 3:03 in the afternoon of October 1st, anyone talking on a cell phone goes stark raving mad. We follow a small band of survivors trying to get from Boston to some small town in Maine, as they make their way through the wasteland that was America.

Hmm. Wait on -- that last part sounds vaguely familiar. King's The Stand leaps to mind. So does The Mist, even. Richard Matheson's I Am Legend and Romero's Night of the Living Dead aren't far behind, either. (The book is dedicated to Matheson and Romero, so at least King knows which side his bread is buttered on, huh?)

So why go back to King? After Dreamcatcher, From a Buick 8, the bland stories in Everything's Eventual, and the fucking awful ending to the Dark Tower? (And by "ending", I'm talking about the last four books in the seven book series.) Why even bother?

Eh. I guess I'm a sucker for Apocalyptic settings.