Don't Overlook the Monday Night OT

Feeling snowed in this past week (Central US), but at least I got to read* between shoveling and Costco trips. Double digits in the positive for the last few days, still below freezing but substantially warmer than the -10° about a week ago. Sneezing signals more snow to come.

The Shining, 1st ed., Dave Christensen, 1977. Warren Beatty is Jack, but who's Wendy? Lee Remick? Alice Krige? Is that Kelly Reno as Danny? A young Eugene Mirman?

there's a box within a box here I can't seem to get rid of. jeebus.

Force Majeure, dir. Ruben Östlund, 2014. It's a comedy! in case the US remake with Will Ferrell and Julia Louis-Dreyfus didn't make that clear. Before the extremely uncomfortable humor becomes overt, there's a smoking janitor (caretaker?) with a God's eye view of the hotel guests' peccadilloes, inter titles straight out of Kubrick's The Shining, the distant booming of controlled avalanches at night. Horror as the background for awkward and funny tableaux.

I read the book when I was eleven or twelve, and the edition above was the one I checked out from the library. "Jack Torrance thought, Officious little prick." is how it starts. Once I even tried chewing an aspirin like Jack did in the book. Yeah, it was awful. Read it right after sneaking the modified for TV version late at night.

Differences aside, both Steve and Stan seem to advise the same solution to writer's/director's/creator's blocks in their respective work, don't you think?

 Identical Twins, Roselle, New Jersey, Diane Arbus, 1967. Stanley the photog was an admirer.

It's clichéd creative advice, to be sure, but it bears repeating and following. Jack tries to do it literally though. This: 

KILL. 

YOUR. 

DARLINGS.

Don't be like Jack.

The Phantom Carriage, dir. Victor Sjöström, 1921

Anyway, what's up this Monday?

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* Terry Bisson's Bears Discover Fire and Other Stories. Bisson died on the 11th, and I'd never read him though his work was often anthologized in "Best of" collections. I regret having just discovered his writing. He's hilarious.

And Goddammit, Howard Waldrop just four days later. 77 years old. Off the top of my head I can think of one or two white guys that age who have contributed absolutely nothing positive to society. Dammit. One good, healthy "FUCK!" for the upcoming year of losses, and one more for the ones you wish had gone instead. 

UPDATE – someone stole my shovel from the backyard on the 18th. WTF, petty thieves? Shovels are not that expensive, but now I need to buy another. Younger suggested we put up passive-aggressive 'MISSING SHOVEL – raised from a litter of trowels, etc.' signs all around the block.