Posts Tagged ‘Stephen King’

One Day in Your Life: November 18, 1984

dayinyourlife

November 18, 1984, is a Sunday. By Congressional resolution, it’s the first day of National Family Week. The New York Times publishes several articles about Baby Fae, the anonymous child who died last Thursday after living 20 days with the transplanted heart of a baboon. The Talisman by Stephen King and Peter Straub tops the Times bestseller list for fiction; Iacocca: An Autobiography, by former Chrysler chairman Lee Iacocca ,leads the nonfiction list. Future Avenged Sevenfold bassist Johnny Christ is born, although his parents name him Jonathan Lewis Seward. The Chuck Norris film Missing in Action tops the weekend box office. The New York City Opera’s production of Sweeney Todd closes after 13 performances.

In the National Football League, the Miami Dolphins suffer their first loss of the season to San Diego, 34-28. The San Francisco 49ers are also 11-and-1 after a 24-17 win over Tampa Bay. Tim Lewis of the Green Bay Packers sets a team record with a 99-yard interception return for a touchdown in a 31-6 win over the Los Angeles Rams. Geoff Bodine wins the final NASCAR race of the season, but Terry Labonte wins the Winston Cup championship. (more…)

Soundtrack Saturday: “Christine”

I started reading Stephen King novels when I was about 11 years old. The first one I read was Carrie. I loved it. Soon after I finished it, I started grabbing his other books from the library. But the one that I wanted to read the most, Christine, was always checked out.

My mom told me she’d read it and loved it — which was surprising to me, because my mom was a Danielle Steele kind of reader — so I wanted to read it even more. But the bookmobile and my local library branch always failed me. In fact, I’m pretty sure they only had one copy and some douchebag had lost it long ago.

Eventually, I lost interest in reading Stephen King books and forgot about wanting to read Christine. In fact I’ve still never read it. I should probably rectify that.

But even though I’ve never read the book, I have seen the movie many times. (Both came out in 1983.) I’m sure the book is a hundred times better, but without having much of a comparison to make, I think the movie works pretty well on its own. Directed by horror veteran John Carpenter, the man behind Halloween (1978) and The Thing (1982), it stars Keith Gordon as Arnie Cunningham, a nerdy teenager who falls in love with a bright red 1958 Plymouth Fury known as Christine. Though she’s in bad shape when he first lays eyes on her — and despite the protests of his parents and his best friend, Dennis (John Stockwell) — he buys the car.

(more…)

The Most Disturbing Halloween EVER!: Jupiter Society

That’s right, folks — the most disturbing Halloween EVER! From now until Halloween, the Popdose staff are going to be thumbing through their record collections in search of the music that gives them the worst case of the heebie-jeebies. Up first is Dw. Dunphy, with Jupiter Society’s First Contact, Last Warning. —Anthony Hansen

Musical sound doesn’t frighten me anymore. It did once, when I was young. The sudden, jarring strangeness of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” once freaked me out to no end, a veritable boon to all who wanted to tease a chubby, overly sensitive child. Whenever she felt like being evil, my sister would turn to me and shout, “Mamma mia, mamma mia, let me go!” which would send me running out of the room in tears.

Wimp. Definition of a wimp. Today I recognize the utter campiness of the tune and have grown to love the better part of the Queen catalog. In fact music that once struck me as strange and dissonant has become more attractive, not more repulsive, in my adult years.

But lyrics still have the ability to get in my head and cause the spiders in there to revolt. I’m currently fascinated by — and a whole lotta disturbed by — a group called Jupiter Society. Their sound is prog metal, heavy on the synths, but the scenarios in their lyrics are all Stephen King in space.

(more…)

Book Review: Stephen King’s “The Stand: Captain Trips”

The Stand: Captain TripsYou won’t hear it from the literary highbrow among us, but Stephen King’s novel The Stand has all of the elements necessary to qualify as a (if not the) Great American Novel. If you’ve read King’s 1978 novel, you recognized themes of, in the words of editor Bill Rosemann, “faith, fear, violence, hope, religion, justice, sex, destiny, and redemption.” And if you’ve read the novel, your dreams were haunted while you were reading it, and even now some of the images from King’s story of civilization brought low by an escaped biological weapon remain fresh in your mind. You’ve probably even watched the fairly hokey mini-series that was made from the book. I watch it every time it’s on, often in all day Sunday marathons on the SyFy network.

It seems somehow inevitable that a story that evokes such strong images would attract graphic novelists interested in putting their own spin on it, and artists looking to make those images leap from the page with brush and pen. Marvel has answered the call, and is in the process of releasing a comic series based on The Stand. They have collected the first five issues and released them as the graphic novel The Stand: Captain Trips. The book takes us from the initial accidental release of the pathogen from a military research facility to the murder of people trying to get the word out via the media by military personnel. Of course looming over the whole tale is the presence of Captain Trips himself, The Walking Man. Many of the book’s other prominent characters, including Stu Redman, Frannie Goldsmith, and Larry Underwood are introduced along the way. (more…)