Maps Don't Do Much For Me, Friend - Western Stars (2019)

(2019)

Bryan: Well, a new Bruce album, so here I am with Bryant Burnette to resume our album-by-album exhaustive overview of Bruce's career. Welcome back, Bryant! This is a pretty easy-on-the-ears album, isn't it? The orchestrations, the arrangements, the general swaying-percussion vibe. You can picture old people driving to it. Bruce has been in such terrain before, of course - hell all the way back in Tunnel of Love - and it's a perfectly fine and reasonable place for anyone over the age of 40 to be, music-biz-wise. 

Some of the imagery, unexpectedly, reminded me of "Dolan's Cadillac." How great would it be if Bruce stealthily put out a concept album of "Dolan's Cadillac"? I wish I could stretch the interpretive window to make an actual case for this. I'll probably always remember this as the "Dolan's Cadillac" album, regardless. I apologize for my brain.

Bryant: King has been heavily influenced by Springsteen at times, so it'd be pretty dope if this really WAS a stealth concept album of that nature.  Glad you enjoyed it! Good album; not a classic or anything, but solid.

Bryan: The above was Bryant's first impression; will it survive the overview to come? Let's find out.

"Hitch Hikin'"

Bryan: 4 / 5 Great intro tune. I like the laundry-list of details Bruce gives us here overall. Easy to visualize hitch-hikin' along, out into the desert and beyond. 

Bryant: I love this song.  Great lyrics, great mood, great production quality (it's modern without sounding completely artificial); it arguably never quite resolves, but I don't really care about that too much.  Even if it doesn't resolve, it works as a fine prologue to the rest of the album.  I'll see your 4 and raise you 4.25/5.

Bryan: I might even have to add a .25 on to my score for this one. Hold the presses, damn the torpedoes, speed the plows. Great track.

"The Wayfarer"

Bryan: 3.25 / 5 Maybe some of the orchestration is a little swirling or spot-on in places. Some good atmosphere here as well. Not a bad track 2. The 2nd track of side 1 is perhaps an obsolete consideration, but it's one I always still make.  I had to check my scores for Tunnel of Love to remember where my "adult easy listening country Bruce" bars were. I'm using my 4/5 for "Tougher than the Rest" as my calibration, here. 

Bryant: I guess I could kind of live without some of the strings, which seem kind of phony to me, as if somebody'd taken a perfectly good song and then added a "string" section because they were afraid the record-buying public would think it was boring.  As a composition, it sounds like it could be a b-side from Darkness on the Edge of Town or The River.  So pretty good, and definitely Springsteen-ian.  3.75/5

"Tucson Train"

Bryan: 3 /5 Perfectly fine but a tad on schmaltzy side. It's one of those big earnest country tunes you can't fault for being a big earnest country tune. Broad but reliable. I like the middle 8 ("I carried that nothing for a long time"). One of Bruce's working-a-crane fantasies, out there on the county line. Somewhere that dude from "Glory Days" is still out there, punching a clock, moving a bunch of crap, burying gangsters in elaborate wile e.coyote deceptions. 

Bryant: I heard this before the album came out, thanks to a video being released online.  It did absolutely nothing for me; I just shrugged at it and said, okay, well here comes another Springsteen album I'll only listen to a time or two.  But every subsequent time I've heard this song, it's seemed better to me, to the point where I'm flat-out in love with it now.  I love the riff that follows the line "My baby's comin' in on the Tucson train."  But I love everything else, too.  I bet this one is going to kill live.  4.5/5

"Western Stars" 

Bryan: 2.75/5 Same as above. A little too broad for me, especially the ending orchestration.

Bryant: Coincidentally (I assume), Quentin Tarantino released his latest film about six weeks after this album came out.  Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is about a fading television star (Leonardo Di Caprio) and his past-his-prime stuntman (Brad Pitt).  This song could damn near be a theme song for either one of them.  Tarantino's movie ends up having a very different tone than this song does, but the tone of the song is very much present in much of the film -- melancholic, regretful, but possessed of an urge toward rejuvenation.  "Set me up and I'll tell it for you, friend."  Top-notch.  The production of this one is working for me big-time (I'm much more positive on the ending flourishes than you are); I think the feel here is what Brendan O'Brien was going for on all those overproduced albums he did for Bruce.  4.5/5

Bryan: Good point - we spent a lot of time on that O'Brien-produced approach. This is definitely an improvement/ better view of what he was trying to accomplish there.

"Sleepy Joe's Cafe" 

Bryan: 2.75/5 Same, Kind of a Jimmy Buffet vibe here. Or maybe the Wiggles. Change "Sleepy Joe" to "Wags the Dog" or "Henry the Octopus" and voila. A bit Bruce-by-numbers, a pretty overstuffed genre as it is with this guy's back catalog. One of the nursing home, but I like it fine enough.

Bryant: Can't you hear this being done by the E Street Band in a style just like half the tracks on The River?  I'd probably prefer that, but even then I think this would be no favorite.  It's not bad, but it reminds me of a conversation we've had recently about stories Stephen King wrote where he's clearly chasing some idea that makes sense only to him.  That's not necessarily a bad thing, but whether it is or isn't, I think that's what Bruce was doing here.  And actually, you know what?  I'm sparking to the song more on this listen than on any other.  3/5

"Drive Fast (The Stuntman)" 

Bryan: 2.75/5 I think we're in a bit of a harmless lull here, on the album. Passing through the valley. A sleepy valley. 

Bryant: If "Western Stars" was a Rick Dalton theme song, this is the Cliff Booth theme song.  It makes sense if you've seen Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.  I'll shut up about Tarantino now.  Probably.  Anyways, this song is harmless enough.  It reminds me of what Bruce was trying to do on both The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust, and it'd be a standout on either album.  That's more of a sleight toward those albums than it is a compliment toward this song, though.  I'll give it a 2/5.

Bryan: The Tarantino movie allusions intrigue me. I really have to see that one. I can't believe I'm saying such things about a new Tarantino film.

"Chasin' Wild Horses" 

Bryan: 3.15 /5 Picking up some. This one has some nice atmosphere. It's a kind of "man in a wheelchair looking out the window and seeing a slow motion montage of Marlboro men wrangling dogies before being wheeled back into the bingo room" atmosphere, but hey, that works too. I can see the video clearly as I type these words and listen to this one. There's a line in here about a storm of the mind and memories coming rolling through that made me think of big skies and thunderstorms. That's cool. This one has a bit of emotional heft to it that other tracks are lacking. 

Bryant: Bruce, what are orses?  Are they anything like horses?  Orses can also run wild?  Here's another one where the big cinematic flourish at the end works pretty well for me.  But overall, what this reminds me of is the majority of Bruce's songs this millennium: kind of forgettable, but inoffensive.  2/5  

Fades straight into...

"Sundown" 

Bryant: I remember reading before the album came out that it was intended to have a seventies-esque driving-through-the-California-sun vibe to it.  I don't really feel as if most of the album matches that description, but this song does.  If you told me it was a cover of an America song, I might believe you.  And I'd assume the America version was better, because it wasn't overproduced.  This one is.  But I like the song quite a bit nevertheless.  3.25/5

Bryan: 3.25/5 Same. If any song reminds you of driving through the desert with country music playing loud inside an air conditioned cab with reflective eyewear, it's this one. Extra points if there are orange barrels in the distance, or an ominous detour sign. Some of the orchestration gets a little too on-the-nose for me. 

That description of driving through California sunshine is... not right for me. I can sort of hear it, I guess, but California sunshine does not have this sort of desert-highway-air-conditioned-cab-slow-motion-bingo-parlor vibe for me, personally. But it's interesting: so much of Bruce's songwriting is filtered through his quasi-bipolar-worldview, as mitigated by meds, love, insight, poetry, etc. Not pigeonholing the guy, just observing like I've done before that there's a certain "shade" that comes over even his sunniest view out the window. Maybe this is what California sounds like to him. 

Bryant: Maybe.  I can't even recall where I saw it -- I think my Springsteen-fan friend Brian may even have told me about it, moreso than me having read it for myself -- but Bruce supposedly said the album had come out of a desire to capture that sound and for it to specifically be like Burt Bacharach songs of the period.  I don't hear that at ALL.  But fine by me; whatever gets the songs into the world, Bruce, you go ahead and call it that.

Bryan: (channeling the Herlihy Boy) For God's sake, let Bruce call it what he wants! He said he'd change the sheets...

"Somewhere North of Nashville" 

Bryan: 3.25/5 Bruce is kinda going for a raspy nasally affectation here that is ill-advised or parodyable in spots. I like it though. It might even have been developed in a more single-oriented/ uptempo direction. Interesting to consider had that been the case. I wonder if the song is referencing anything specific.

Bryant: Here's Bruce pretending he's a country singer again.  Not my favorite mode of his.  But this is a decent song.  2.25/5

"Stones" 

Bryan: 2.75/5 Harmless rut time again. 

Bryant: "Those are only the lies you've told me" is a fine lyric, and it makes for a good refrain.  Bruce sings this one with a lot of conviction.  I'm not sure I understand what the song is about, exactly.  Does that matter?  Probably not.  3.25/5

"There Goes my Miracle" 

Bryan: 3/5 I'm back in that cab again or seeing the  Marlboro Men montage, or one with a Hallmark Movie epilogue. It's a catchy one, though, and the lyrics are not trite.

Bryant: A bit overproduced.  Maybe a lot overproduced.  Still, I fucking LOVE this song.  Great vocals; some of his best ever, or at least of the current millennium.  Can I get away with giving this song a 4.75/5?  I bet if I went back and looked at some of the other songs I'd scored 4.5 or so, I'd want to slap myself for getting the score so wrong on this one.  So let's assume I ought not go over 4.5/5 and call that my final answer.  

"Hello Sunshine" 

Bryan: 4/5 Here's my 2nd favorite track. "Hello sunshine won't you stay" was another contender for title-lyric. "You can get a little foo fond of the blues." "You walk too far you walk away." Hard won observations, as they always are from this side of Bruce's brain.

Bryant: A very fine song, this one.  Another one that kind of sounds like America to me.  I say that as though I'm some fucking America expert or something.  I basically just mean it reminds of "Ventura Highway."  Which, while we're here, is a 6/5 for me.  "Hello Sunshine" isn't, but it's a 4.25/5, so it's not THAT far off the mark.  I love the slide guitar, and the strings work well on this one.

Bryan: Funny you mention America as I just listened to a whole bunch of their stuff. "You Can Do Magic" is a forgotten gem. That "yacht rock" vibe sounds better and better as either I get older or the world turns to hell, or both. I could've used a bit more of an America vibe on this whole Bruce album for me; George Martin produced those guys and Bruce could've used a George Martin here (there and everywhere). 

Bryant: I don't know all that much by America.  Just a handful of their big hits.  I love those, though, so I should check out more of their stuff one of these days.

Bryan: I agree by the way - "Ventura Highway" is just beautiful. What scores like 6/5 were made for. It might even be too low. "Aw come on, Joe, you could always change your name / thanks a lot, son, just the same."

"Moonlight Motel" 

Bryan: 4.25/5 Strong finish to the album. I really like this one. 

Bryant: Excellent lyrics on this one; this is a very fine album-closer, and it's a VERY fine closer for this particular album.  Reminds me a bit of "Valentine's Day," one of my favorite Bruce album-closers.  4.25/5, which might actually be a bit too low.  I'll stick with it, though.

Bryan: Agreed on "Valentine's Day" This one has a bit of a "Summer Thunder" (by King) vibe to it, as well; these guys are getting up there, mortality's on their mind, saying their goodbyes without saying goodbyes. But let's put a cork in such thoughts: we do not inhabit a Bruce-or-King-less universe and let's just enjoy that fact.

~

Bryan: With an average score of 3.24, not a bad album at all, definitely in the upper 40% of his vast catalog.

Bryant: Me, a total of 45.75, and an average of 3.52 So among my rankings that puts Western Stars just ahead of Live In NYC and just behind The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.  On the one hand, that feels overranked to me.  But on the other hand, I like every song on it, and love either six or seven of them; plus, my knee-jerk reaction on first listen was that it was the best album of new material he'd put out since The Rising, if not Tunnel of Love.  And the scores reflect that, so maybe I'm not as far off as I think.
  
Either way, I think this is rather a triumph; maybe just a low-key one, but when you've had a career like the career this dude has had, that's saying something.

Bryan: Hear, hear. I made myself a little Bruce mix and added in some of these new songs. I love when that happens; new angles on old songs, old context for the new songs, etc. A fun process. The tracks from Lucky Town/ Human Touch sound a lot better when surrounded by the tracks from more recent albums. And some of these new ones fit right in with "Wrecking Ball" and so many others. What a catalog. Always a thing to tip my cap to.

Bryant: Creating playlists does tend to reveal things, doesn't it?  The glory days of the mixtape may be gone, but mixing lives on.

FINAL RANKINGS

Bryan:

Lucky Town 2.15

Greetings from Asbury Park 2.19

Magic 2.27

The Ghost of Tom Joad 2.44 

American Beauty 2.56 

Working on a Dream 2.71

Chapter and Verse 2.75

In Concert / MTV Plugged 2.82

Tracks 2.83

Chimes of Freedom 2.86

Wrecking Ball 2.86

Blood Brothers 2.88

Human Touch 2.9

The Promise 3.08

Book of Dreams 3.1

Hammersmith Odeon, London 3.1

Western Stars 3.26

The Rising 3.3

Devils and Dust 3.36

High Hopes 3.39

The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle 3.43

Live in New York City 3.5

Loose Ends 3.63

Greatest Hits (New Tracks Only) 3.65

We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions 3.67

The River 3.71

Tunnel of Love 3.8

Darkness on the Edge of Town 3.82

Live ’75 - ‘85 4

Live in Dublin 4.11

Born to Run 4.41

Nebraska 4.5

Born in the USA 5.4

Bryant:

Human Touch 1.7

American Beauty 2.00

Hammersmith Odeon, London '75 2.04

Lucky Town 2.15 

Chapter and Verse 2.15 

Working on a Dream 2.23

The Ghost of Tom Joad 2.46

Magic 2.46

Devils and Dust 2.48

Book of Dreams 2.58

The River outtakes 2.66

Chimes of Freedom 2.69

In Concert / Mtv Plugged 2.75

Greetings from Asbury Park 2.75

Wrecking Ball 2.77

Tracks 2.81

High Hopes 2.83

Blood Brothers 2.9

The Promise 2.99

The Rising 3.1

Live in Dublin 3.22

Tunnel of Love 3.35

We Shall Overcome: The Pete Seeger Sessions 3.37

Greatest Hits (New Tracks Only) 3.38

The River 3.39

Live in New York City 3.48

Western Stars 3.52

The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle 3.68

Live ’75 - ‘85 3.7

Loose Ends 3.92

Born to Run 4.35

Darkness on the Edge of Town 4.4

Nebraska 4.63 

Born in the USA 4.88

Ghost of the Killer Skies - Detective Comics #404

About 5 years ago, I was watching Witchboard with my wife when my phone started blowing up.

"Who keeps calling?" she asked.

It was two people who never called me: my best friend Aharon "AJ" Klum's soon-to-be-ex-wife, and another of our mutual friends. After each call came the texts: PLEASE CALL ME AS SOON AS YOU CAN.

"Aren't you going to answer?"

Neither the ex or Chris ever really called me all that often, or ever. "If they're calling this much, something bad happened," I said. "Whatever it is will still be bad when the movie's over, and I can't do anything about it from Chicago. Let's just finish the movie."

At this time, our firstborn was about a year-and-a-half, and our second was two months old. No one was sleeping much, but that Sunday, both of them were asleep, allowing Dawn and I the chance to watch the Witchboard DVD we'd had from Netflix for forever. These moments were few and far between and I was absolutely adamant: we were gonna do this. Had nothing to do with the movie or anything (Witchboard is hardly a do-not-disturb-upon-pain-of-death affair), just the window of opportunity was damn well not going to be compromised.

So I turned my phone off and staved off learning the inevitable for another hour or so. On October 19, 2014, the mysterious Mr. Klum breathed his last in this world. Caught the last train out, bought the farm, went to the clearing at the end of the path, swept out with the tide however you want to put it. He who was my companion through adventure and hardship was gone forever. 

Obviously one never gets completely over these things, and much more could be said. But let me skip over everything from that moment until just yesterday when a package arrived for me from AJ's mom. "Saw this, thought of you" was the note. The book:

Now I'm never unhappy to receive anything like this in the mail. (Would that every day had the unsolicited but warmly appreciated arrival of an Archive Edition of fantastic Kubert art.) But I was slightly perplexed. And then it all came back to me: I got AJ this! For some Christmas or birthday of yesteryear. He was over at my place sometime around 2000 or 2001, whenever it was, and I had a copy of Enemy Ace: War in Heaven (the one set in WW2) and he read it and liked it. So, always eager to expand my buddy's comic-book horizons or at least spruce up his bookshelves a little bit with some McMolo-approved reading material, I got him this edition. And here it was, showing up at my place, all these years later. 

Did he ever read it? I don't know. I doubt it, actually, but who knows? I know for sure he read the War in Heaven one, as I watched him do it and he referenced it a few times over the years as a movie he wanted to make. To the day he died Klum was talking about the movies he was going to make. No one chooses when, as Martin Blank once said, and things are left unfinished. That's life and death for you. 

So all of the above was going through my head and heart when I cracked this one open. Enemy Ace was never a comic I actively read, but I think Joe Kubert is one of the all time greats, and I like pretty much any WW1 dogfight story anyone is going to put in front of me. 

I knew the broad strokes already but had never read the actual stories (outside of the aforementioned War in Heaven by Garth Ennis and Chris Weston.) Here's how the wiki puts it:

"Enemy Ace centered around the adventures of a skilled but troubled German anti-hero and flying ace in World War I and World War II, Hans von Hammer, known to the world as "The Hammer of Hell". It featured detailed and accurate depictions of WWI air combat, as told from the German POV. Hans von Hammer was a man of honor and chivalry, a flying knight in his Fokker Dr.I, but he was haunted by his duties and the constant death surrounding him."

More details: Von Hammer does not fraternize with his fellow pilots. He never speaks to his orderly, who is forever adding medals and dogfight cups to his mantelpiece and commenting on how easily Von Hammer falls asleep after a day of killing in the skies. His only friend is a wolf in the Black Forest, a fellow loner and killing machine. (Later he gets a dog.) Almost every pilot he shoots down salutes him from his doomed aircraft before plummeting to earth. (You can expect at least one of these - usually all of them - to happen in a single issue.) 

Good stuff, right? It would make a great movie or series or something, especially if it ended with him in WW2 telling der fuhrer to go fornicate with himself like in War In Heaven. (Although ideally, he'd be killed by his long-time nemesis, The Hangman, a French fighter pilot in WW1, and not in WW2.) The whole thing is about grace in defeat, honor in death. No one chooses when. Kudos to Joe Kubert and Robert Kanigher for coming up with the character way back when. 

Long before I knew who Kanigher, Klum or Joe Kubert was, (although I guess I had some inkling of Kubert, though no direct familiarity with his work) I came across the Hammer of Hell in: 

as collected in The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told. As mentioned elsewhere in these pages, that and its companion volume (The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told) altered my bat-trajectory altogether. I shan't retread that ground, though, but I broke the story out again and man is it wonderful. I just felt like putting up a few panels and talking about it a bit. 

Bruce Wayne is producing a movie in Spain about the life of, you guessed it, Hans Von Hammer. Not only is he fascinated by the tales of the Baron, but he believes in the project and "the things it can say to audiences about the nature - and the folly - of war." 

It's unclear why he's in his Batman duds at this point.

Someone is sabotaging the production, and people keep dying. As Bruce talks the situation over with the director, the film's technical expert, Heinrich Franz, enters.

If you're thinking we just met the saboteur, you're absolutely correct. And after a few more deaths and misdirections, Batman comes face to face with the self-styled "Ghost of Von Hammer." Why is he doing this?

So this is about control of the legacy/ competing narrative frames. Naturally, it all ends with a duel in the sky.

Just as naturally, Batman may be receiving a little help from the Great Beyond.

God that last page is so great. And - I realize now but didn't then - a wonderfully Kubert-ian composition. All the kudoses and all the chapeaus to Messrs O'Neil and Adams. I was going to say it would all make a terrific movie. And it would, I'm sure, but it'd make an even better two-hour Special TV Event if they ever end up doing another Batman TV show. (And they should.) This'd be the episode they'd talk about all summer long and for all summers after.

Two last things: I never tire of stuff like this:

"El Hombre Murcielago!" Or, as he helpfully repeats in English below, "Man of the Bats."

And (2) may all the ghosts of our own killer skies, circling above, one day glide to a peaceful landing. Failing that, may they all guide our hands in aviating death-duels with the enemy. Amen and amen. 

King's Short Fiction reread, pt. 3: Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993)

(1993)

Is that a great cover or what? I'm not sure if someone planted a scarecrow in the middle of the road or if the damn thing is out for a midnight unicycling run. Either would be freaky to find yourself face-to-face with on some moonlit stretch of road.

Arguably and unfortunately none of the stories within Nightmares and Dreamscapes live up to the awesomeness of the cover. A couple get close or are iconic in their own way. What it is is a pretty good collection of B-sides, and that makes it more fun than it otherwise would be. (Arguably - and only if you get a kick out of B-sides, I guess, which I do.) 

The author mentions in his introductory remarks that this was it as far as his "old stuff" was concerned; if a story he'd published wasn't here or in Night Shift or Skeleton Crew, it wasn't getting collected. With the exception of "The Cat From Hell" in Just After Sunset, I think he's stuck to that. 

My ten favorites are below; the rest I'm kind of indifferent to. There are only two stories I officially dislike: "Dedication" (I'm still struck by the central unreality of the idea, plus how gross it is) and "The Moving Finger" (was this some kind of reaction on the author's part to the rectal exams of one's 40s?) 

"Umney's Last Case" probably deserves a mention as it's a fun little story. That might be my eleventh entry/ honorable mention. And then there's "My Pretty Pony."

This didn't make my top ten, but there's an awful lot round the edges here: (1) According to King in his afternotes, this one broke a spell of writer's block, so he has real affection for it. He also mentions how "some things that had really been working well for me" weren't anymore. This is interesting King bio-stuff, considering the year it was written.  (2) It's (presumably) all that remains of a discarded Bachman novel. (3) Jerry Garcia reads the audiobook for it. And (4) it was originally part of a Whitney Museum of American Art writer-and-artist series as the textual accompaniment to a collaboration with Barbara Kruger, "an oversized fine press slip-cased book with stainless steel cover, digital clock, nine lithographs, eight screenprints, and one lithograph with screenprint." 

That is an awful lot of covering fire for a perfectly harmless but relatively slight bit of prose from America's Schlockmeister. (This would be the contemporaneous 1989 assessment, trust me.) It may even lend the story more mystique than it can live up to. Mostly, though, I just don't think anyone ever counted off seconds with a "pretty pony" between them, as the title alludes to. (i.e. one-pretty-pony, two-pretty-pony, etc.) We all know "Mississippi" and "one-thousand" but I just think he made this one up. Why? What a dumb thing to make up. It's like coming up with an alternate name for "Tuesday" and then pretending there are people out there who use it. Why? Anyone who says "Oh, sure I've heard that before" is a damn liar. If he or she even exists. 

Okay, justice dispensed. Let's dive in. You're on your own for plot recaps. First up is a tie:

10. 

"Dolan's Cadillac" / "End of the whole Mess"

"Dolan's" is a strange one. So's "End of the Whole Mess" too, actually, but let's start with "Dolan's." Is it just a "simple" little revenge tale? Just a "Cask of Amontillado" homage? A metaphor of some kind? (If so, what for?) Or is it a confessional about this guy King got rid of in the desert one time, and all the hardcore highway department research that led up to it? All of the above?

The movie seems to be adapting some other story entirely. I can't see how Dolan is even trapped in this thing, for one. Full confession: I've never been able to finish this one. Is it good? Bad? A reasonable adaptation? An unreasonable piece of turd-dipped baloney? You be the judge. Fair review of the film here.

It's not perfect - the imagined dialogue(s) with his dead wife could've been eliminated, I think. Or perhaps the reader could only "hear" Robinson's side of it. That would have been my advice, as an advance reader. (Cut to headline: "Thanks a lot, jerk" says Famous Author.) It's pretty easy to visualize it all, even the somewhat elaborate arc of descent type stuff.  I like stuff set in the desert, I think; it might be as simple as that. 

Is it weird that there are two stories (this and "The Doctor's Case") that have this kind of visual-trick/ Coyote-painted-tunnel sort of trick as their twist? Maybe it's not weird but awesome. It's too bad King never fleshed out a Magic Eye murder-at-the-mall mystery to make it a thematic trilogy.

"End of the Whole Mess" is a fun one for me, or as fun as dystopian fatalism masquerading as utopian what-if-ing (a genre for which I am admittedly an apologist) can be, I guess. I love that King asks himself these questions and imagines this whole admirably-constructed set of answers for them, (see "The Jaunt" and so many other places), and then introduces the whole EC/ Twilight Zone twist of it all, with the "Ah, but Alzheimer's!" aspect. (And that this is forecast with the mayor of the Alzheimers town always doing the Rodney Dangerfield bit at the coffee shop is a nice touch.) Does it work? YMMV. Is it too EC-y? Not for me. (Few things are too EC-y to me, truth be told.) 

The episode of the N and D mini-series isn't bad. Actually, it probably is bad; that whole mini-series hasn't aged well. But it's an odd slice of TV, and I like the oddness of it. And the ending is effectively sad. It reminds me of a lost episode of The Ray Bradbury Theater actually, more than anything.

"I didn't need to turn on cable news (what a friend of mine had taken to calling The Organ Grinder of Doom) to know what Bobby was talking about. (...) People had taken to calling the Tijuana crossing point in California Little Berlin on account of the wall."

Prescient as ever, Sai King!

9.  
"The Ten O Clock People"

Previously I felt this story seemed like a good beginning to something more than a good completed something. This time around I guess I still feel that way, but not as acutely. I like it either way. Not much to say, really.

8. 

"Sneakers" 

King has some stories where for my money he chases after something he doesn't quite reach (“Blind Willie” from Hearts in Atlantis) or perhaps it’s that the objective of the chase is simply too oblique (“The Things They Left Behind” from Just After Sunset, or "Blind Willie" again). “Sneakers” probably fits either of those descriptions: I don’t know what he’s getting at here, and his endnotes don’t really help. But it’s got atmosphere. 

Also: another puzzling check for the “Stories Featuring Taking a Dump as Plot Points” column.

7. 

Head Down

I can see why anyone not into baseball might skip it, but it’s a nice slice-of-life story. King returns to his one of his first writing gigs – when he was a sports reporter in high school – for this tale of a 1989 Little League team on its way to becoming Maine State Champions. 

On the team? Future major leaguer Matt Kinney, as well as future author Owen King.

6. 

"Suffer the Little Children"

Here’s an early riff (1972) on a theme King returns to (“Bad Little Kid”, “A Death" "Sometimes They Come Back", The Dead Zone, etc.) more than a few times in his career: the ol' looks-like-the-protagonist-is-doing-a-bad-thing-but-we-the-reader-know-differently business. I like it. 

Described as both an effective chiller and as something “with no redeeming social merit whatsoever” by the author himself, I agree and disagree, respectively. (I see plenty of redeeming social merit and real-world-relevance in this one.)

5. 

"It Grows on You"

King excels in bringing small town Maine to life, replete with rich backstories for all involved, and his Castle Rock collected work is like some reverse-image version of Lake Wobegon. The two fictional townships have more in common than one might think, actually. Someone should do a side by side story. I’d do it, but we’d all be in the grave waiting for me to finish such a thing. I’d like to read it, though. (And I'd especially like to read some Alan Moore LXG mash-up of the two. Damn it! Too late now.) 

All the worlds hinted at in Joe Newell’s origins and musings, here, are compelling. And this story contains some of King’s most memorable prose of Nightmares. To wit:

"In January of 1921 Cora gave birth to a monster with no arms and it was said a tiny clutch of perfect fingers sticking out of one eyesocket. It died less than six hours after mindless contractions had pushed its red and senseless face into the light."

Eeesh. Or how about:

"She was a grainbag of a woman, incredibly wide across the hips, incredibly full in the butt, yet almost flatchested as a boy and possessed of an absurd little pipestem neck upon which her oversized head nodded like a strange pale sunflower. Her cheeks hung like dough, her lips like strips of liver, her face was as silent as a full moon on a winter night. She sweated huge dark patches around the armholes of her dresses even in February." *

This description of Cora goes against the role she plays in the protagonists’ reverie, where she’s more of like a Castle Rock Gogonzola figure (from Fellini's 8 1/2 and elsewhere.) A very interesting work and an underrated rate for my money.

* Tell me you can't hear Garrison Keillor reading this. He narrates this whole story for me, and I wish we could arrange for him to read the entire Castle Rock collection as some kind of overpriced audio exclusive. 

4. 

"The Night Flier"

A pretty novel(la) take on the classic vampire story: the vampire as an aviating serial killer, with Dees and by extension the whole bloodsucking tabloid media as Renfield. 

I go back and forth on the movie. When I first saw it, it was a punching-above-its-paygrade resounding success with me. Next time I saw it, it was a decent but amateurish effort. Third time, I was back to wow.

There was a fourth and fifth time but I'll spare you the play-by-play. I think my official take is "Better than it had to be, not as good as it could have been." No shame there. I applaud Mark Pavia's ambition and am basically rooting for everything he does from here on out. 

3. 

"Rainy Season" 

"She threw it as hard as she could. It cartwheeled in the air and then splattered against the wall just opposite the kitchen door. It did not fall but stuck in the glue of its own guts."

Yep.

A great little "time passer," as Grady Hendrix referred to it over at Tor (whose King / Dark Tower re-reads, it must be said, were underwhelming.) Nothing earth-shattering here, but it's a fun, familiar story, well-told. Same for:

2. 

"Home Delivery"

Although this may be a bit less by-the-numbers than "Rainy Season," (if indeed "by the numbers" is even an accurate way to describe "Rainy Season." Whatever the case, they're numbers I like and admire, so no disrespect intended. 

More small town supernatural stuff. Does it relate to Storm of the Century? Obviously not I guess, given the plot and lack of worldwide zombie mayhem in Storm. Although I wonder if there isn't an allusion or two I missed. I'm always looking for an excuse to watch Storm again, so maybe I'll cue it up. 

Similar to "The Reach" a bit, from Skeleton Crew. I like that one quite a bit; I love this one. 

And finally:

1. 

"Chattery Teeth"

When I sat down to re-read Nightmares and Dreamscapes, I thought my favorite would probably be "The Night Flier." I was surprised how positively I responded to "Chattery Teeth." It struck me as one of those "If all other King was gone and this was all that remained, you'd get a good sense of the writer he was" sort of stories. "Home Delivery," too, for sure, perhaps all the stories mentioned above, but this one has that goofy-thing that shouldn't work (sentient-chattery-teeth-doing-their-thing) -

that does, and the reason is just how King writes it: the details he chooses, the people he populates it with, the motivations and thoughts and observations he gives them, all the scenery and context and weather. It's just a perfect little story, and so here it is, atop my personal pile of favorites this time around. 

He doesn't say so in his end of book notes, but I wonder if this one came about from baby boomer rage at too much Bryan Adams and Def Leppard on the radio. Both artists come up organically, just part of the scenery I'm talking about above, but I like to speculate on such things. Did King turn on the radio one day in the 80s and fly into a mental rage at hearing either of them one too many times, or produce a mental image of a man menaced by a pair of chattery teeth? It'd be a fun angle/ origin story. He should pretend it's the case if he's ever asked about either. (Cut to headline: "'I said everything I had to say about Bryan Adams in 'Chattery Teeth'' says Author.")

I do wish he'd come up with a name for the Chattery Teeth, though. It got a bit much to read that over and over. But not so much.

~

See you next time for some Everything's Eventual action.