|
Novellas County, where a man is less noted for his pedigree than his vote(s) in the last election and the best cats have six toes. Novellas County, where the bastard son of Ernest Hemingway can still shoulder the mast of the rag that keeps him in beer money, as long as it doesn't interfere with the televised NASCAR finals.
THE OLD MAN AND HIS SEED
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
I was wounded deeply by Electra's comments about me in the last edition of the Gazette, but after thinking on it for a while, I realized it had been some time since I'd written anything of significance. Not really looking to change all that, I wanted to set the record straight on a few things, not the least of which is the question of my parentage. Yes, it is true that I am a bastard, by birth if not by temperament. My father (the Ernest Hemingway) was a bastard, too, although his parents were at least married. I don't remember much about Papa other than the stories Mama told me. There were a few 'papas' over the years and I couldn't tell you much about any of them. I do seem to remember an old fart with a beard who came to visit her now and then who gave me a six toed kitten named DiMaggio. He once said to me, "Ernie, no matter what happens, take care of your mother. She'll argue that she doesn't need taking care of and, to be truthful, she's stronger than you and I will ever be. But try. She deserves that and more." It was Mama who struggled to put me through college doing I shudder to think what. It was Mama who encouraged me to write and who insisted I use Papa's name, though he never acknowledged me as his son. It was Mama who convinced me to apply for the job as copy boy at the Gazette where I've been ever since. Mama died of cancer in 1981, twenty years after Papa did himself in. I'm afraid I haven't lived up to the promise of either of them. Do I care? This edition of the Gazette is dedicated to the memory of DiMaggio - the greatest cat I ever knew.
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2001
Novellas County, where the conductors wear rubber coats and resistance is futile. Novellas County, where no decision is final - probably. Mostly.
HEMINGWAY ON HEMINGRAYS
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
After seeing David O. Selznick's remake of A Farewell to Arms in '57 Papa said "You write a book like that that you're fond of over the years, then you see that happen to it, it's like pissing in your father's beer."
Well, that's how I feel about most things that I do - how do you live up to a name like Hemingway? I've done lots of things, most of which I'm not proud of. Editing this paper was a chance to prove myself in a way that Papa would have been proud of - whether or not he ever acknowledged that he was my father, whether or not he lived to see me accomplish anything of note. But this editorial is not about me so much as living up to one's potential in general - exploring and choosing from the options presented to us in life. In this issue we have an article about writing a novel - certainly a worthy undertaking. The novel happens to be about twins who each take a different path - a clear illustration of how even with the same basic potential and environment, it all comes down to choices.
On the Gazette staff we have two star performers, brother and sister, who also live under the shadow of the Hemingway name. OK, so they're Hemingrays, not Hemingways - but I've seen each of them turn gator on the unlucky person who gets it wrong. Spencer and Electra are relatives of the Muncie, Indiana glass manufacturing Hemingrays - Spencer has a collection of their insulators on his window sill - not so much because of his name, but because he has a sense of humor - while he was going to college he worked part-time with his dad installing fiberglass insulation. Mr Resistivity, his friends called him: the last of the Hemingray insulators. Fortunately for the Gazette there isn't much call for insulation in Florida - Spencer was forced to take up a career more in keeping with the education his mom paid so much for in order to support his blacker habits.
His mother was the conductor of the Muncie, Indiana Light Orchestra. It never bothered Spencer to depend on her for his support, nor did it occur to him to follow her career in conducting. His father was an insulator, as was his father before him. Any one of them might have said "Changing professions would be like pissing in your father's beer." Though he didn't find much work, Spencer was by all accounts an effective insulator, resisting the flow at every opportunity.
His sister, Electra, while blessed with her mother's musical genius, was, at best, only a semi-conductor. She would never admit that she shared her mother's talent and was jealous of the attention always given to Spencer by their father. She would have gladly pissed in her father's beer, but he was a natural at resisting her. (The therapy bills in that family nearly bankrupted Mr and Mrs Hemingray.) Before coming to the Gazette, Electra played for a short time with the Novellas County Philharmonic. Her specialty was the Ondes Martinot, an instrument in which the performer manipulated a string attached to a finger ring, using her own body's capacitance to control the sound characteristics. She gave it up when the device was later incorporated as a fingerboard strip above the keyboard. Besides, it was hard to carry on the bus.
Well, enough of this rambling - go read the paper.
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2001
BODICE RIPPERS
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway (with Wanda Le Sabre)
Bodice Rippers! That's the last time I ditch a programming meeting so I can go fishing — who the hell would want to dedicate a whole issue of this rag to that seamy underbelly of literature, the romance novel?
"Coffee, Mr H?"
"Thanks, Wanda. I'm struggling with this editorial. I've got no time at all for this genre — the force fed pap of feeble-minded, frustrated female readers."
"Feeble minded, frustrated female readers? Are you buckin' to wear this coffee, Junior?"
"Give me literature like The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls. OK, so Papa may have been the ultimate in machismo — the adventurer's adventurer, but no one can deny that what he wrote transcended gender."
"Crap. No way I'll ever trade in my damsels in distress for bullfighters and war heroes. Are you saying we should only read to satisfy intellectual needs? That's SO mental! You mean you never get off vicariously from the written word? I've seen your cabinet full of Hooters and Honkers."
"That magazine has received a bad rap — I buy it for the articles. And, the pictures — the cars, of course."
"Yeah, right, Junior. Give me a good love story over a war saga any day, even 'real literature' as you put it — Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights, for example."
"Oh, puh-lease. Let's leave those withered old Bronte prunes buried. I'm talking about authors who wrote quality literary fiction that didn't capitalize on sexual frustration. Nabokov, D H Lawrence, uh, well maybe not the best examples. Let me see what I've got on my shelf — ahh, Ulysses by James Joyce, an adventure based on Homer's Odyssey. Now here's a man's book:
The whir of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop. Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one and both. But stun myself too in the blow. Shatter me you who can. Bawd and butcher, were the words. I say! Not yet awhile. A look around.
"Classic — and manly".
"Have you actually read this, Mr H?"
"Well, no. I found it on the seat next to me at a bar once. I discovered that if I carried it around with me I was attracting more interesting women. Funny, none of them ever stayed long."
"I can't imagine that. Hand me that book for a second. Thanks. Now listen to this passage from your manly adventure book — hmm, where is the beginning of this sentence? No matter. And in honor of your dad, we even have the sea and Spain:
...O that awful deepdown torrent O and the sea the sea crimson sometimes like fire and the glorious sunsets and the figtrees in the Alameda gardens yes and all the queer little streets and pink and blue and yellow houses and the rosegardens and the jessamine and geraniums and cactuses and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusion girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.
"Beautiful. Say, Wanda, you were hardly looking at the page — have you read this before?"
"Several times, Junior — I left my copy in a bar somewhere. I think I'd better let you get back to your editorial — this issue's already late and I have a date with a hot bath and a Harlequin. See you tomorrow."
As I was saying, Bodice Rippers — now there's a genre with an inexplicable mystique. Readership? Market share? Enough to make one stand up and pay attention. Literature? I guess we need to let each written work find its own level in the test of time. If a million monkeys were turned loose on a million typewriters, in time one of them might manage a work such as Joyce's Ulysses. All the rest would be making a healthy living writing romance novels! That's all I have to say on the subject — you're on your own.
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2002
BLOOD MOUSTACHE
EDITORIAL
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
Give me a bloody mary with extra hemaglobin - make it a double. What is it with our fixation on vampires, the walking undead and other bloody things that go bump in the night?
It is not unusual to find a Halloween theme for October editions, but I have to say I was a bit concerned when one of our contributors suggested an all-vampire issue. Yeah, right - we'll be lucky if we have one or two submissions, let alone enough good stuff to fill the pages. I hate admitting I am wrong, but as the need rarely comes up, I guess I can be big about it this time.
When I first considered the topic as it relates to literature, I thought of the obvious examples of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's popular (but, at least for me, impossible to read) vampire classics. It wasn't until Minnie started showing me some of the links she was compiling that I realized there were so many vampire films - some of them, in my opinion, quite memorable. I'm not that fond of vampires for subject matter - just can't take it too seriously. In fact, I'm generally not crazy about the horror end of the spectrum. Still, in going through the lists, I came upon a few of my favorites. I like dark humor so it's no surprise that Polanski's Dance of the Vampires (you may recognize it as The Fearless Vampire Killers, or, Pardon Me, but Your Teeth are In My Neck) is first on my list, followed closely by the very different Andy Warhol's Dracula (with a cameo by Polanski) in which the Count is off to Italy in a quest for 'wirgin' blood.
I wasn't that impressed by Coppola's Dracula, but I enjoyed this quote found in one of the linked sites, "In making Dracula, Coppola is working out of the back row of his Crayola box; his palette is as fantastic as it is obscure, with colors almost recognizable, but simultaneously foreign, richer and more intense than in memory." Damn, I wish I had written that, even if it doesn't exactly ring true.
Lost Boys is an excellent film and I enjoyed the recently made Shadow of the Vampire, a lesser film, perhaps, but worth watching if only for the scene in which Willem Dafoe as the real vampire (posing as actor, Shrek) chats with one of the cast/crew. Excellent.
OK, so I occasionally watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel on TV - both entertaining if not entirely literary in their appeal. It's all good fun and nobody believes it's real, right? You'd be surprised how many people take this stuff seriously. Check out Minnie's links - it's bloody ridiculous how far some people push the envelope!
Most of the stories in this issue are on the light side of dark. I'm sure you'll enjoy them all. Skol!
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2002
INNOCENTS ABROAD
A MOVEABLE FEAST
(A Hogmanay pub crawl through Glasgow, Scotland)
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
For reasons sufficient to the writer, many places, people, observations and impressions have been left out of this editorial. Some were secrets and some were known by everyone and everyone has written about them and will doubtless write more.
You may recognize the previous paragraph, virtually lifted from the preface of the interminably soporific tome, A Moveable Feast, posthumously published under the name of my father. I doubt there will be much risk, but should any one of you uncover a similar work in my own estate, I hope you will have the decency to delete it post haste.
OK, so maybe I never got past the preface, but I have labored through enough of Papa's later works to know that stealing his title is probably as far as I'd want to go. Not a bad title for my purposes, at that.
We have called this issue INNOCENTS ABROAD, a tribute to those guileless adventurers anywhere and everywhere who find themselves coping with the culture shock of life away from what they know as home. Like 'fish out of water' all humans experience this phenomenon when they leave the culture to which they have become accustomed which, if given enough time, will work its way through five stages. During the first few days we are excited by the new experiences - sights, sounds, smells and tastes. This is the honeymoon phase.
Unfortunately, the honeymoon ends all too soon and we are forced to cope with the problems of negotiating a foreign language, diet and currency in unfamiliar turf. We begin to feel misunderstood and disliked by our hosts during the rejection phase. We begin to see all differences as bad and become homesick for the comfort we have left behind.
This is followed by a period of regression: we spend as much time as possible speaking our own language, watching videos from home, eating only food we are familiar with and complaining endlessly about the host culture.
During the recovery phase, we may become more familiar and comfortable with the language, food and customs of the host country, beginning to appreciate that no one place is better or worse.
While not everyone experiences all of these phases, or in the same order, it is likely that long term visitors will at some point experience the last phase: reverse culture shock. We have become so at ease with our new lifestyle that we are no longer completely comfortable in our home country when we go back.
In December I decided to reward the Gazette crew for their hard work through 2002 by chartering a flight to Glasgow, Scotland to celebrate Hogmanay. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), we were unable to get our hands on any of the ticketed formal events of the traditional Scottish New Year's eve celebration, so we improvised with a comprehensive pub crawl from the waterfront to George Square hitting Fat Boab's, Clutha Vaults, the Bay Horse (where we stuffed ourselves with pies and beans) and Babbity Bowster with a few healthy belts from our pocket flasks along the way. Music of every stripe filled the air and people pushed and shoved their way through the streets like the bulls in Pamplona. Most of this pales in memory to the granda of all communal hangovers we shared somewhere East of 2003. At one point during the evening, however, I do remember resting at the base of the Wellington statue in front of the Gallery of Modern Art. Before losing consciousness for an indeterminate period, I penned the following on the back of a racing form
It was Hogmanay, almost time for the bells. So this is how it is, this is how it always happens at the bells. Bugger your bells. With my last 20 pounds I purchased some true and honest single malt scotch; I took a pull from the bottle. It was good. It burned my mouth and felt good and warm going down my esophagus and into my stomach. From there it went to my kidneys and my bladder, and was good. I remembered then when I last saw Iain Banks who was still a damn fine writer. It was in Glasgow and we looked out the windows at George Square and drank single malt scotch for the bells. It was midnight and had been midnight for some time.
There's no point going any further - go read the paper.
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2003
ONE-EYED JACKS
POKER FACES
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
As a card-carrying fool, I have been parted from a good many dollars, pounds, marks, francs and yen, hard-earned and otherwise, on poker tables around the world. According to Frank Wallace, author of Poker, A Guaranteed Income for Life, poker is not so much a card game, but a game of deception, manipulation, and money management. Cards are merely the tools for manipulating opponents and money. From the smallest penny-ante game to the largest table stake game, all money eventually goes to the good player. His key weapons are his mind and a license to use unlimited deception.
I suppose there is some truth in that. I've never been able to lie well enough to win, but the game has been a pleasant way to dispose of excess funds while lubricating myself into oblivion. The colorful faces and pips have entertained me since before I knew their names. As a boy, I learned to play the game with my pals, losing pretzels, matchsticks or pennies. It never occurred to me that I might someday win – the game was the thing, and part of that game was the soul-dampening humiliation of being beaten by every opponent I ever faced. Mathematics was never my thing and the odds against getting that rarity of rarities, a royal flush, meant absolutely nothing to me. It never occurred to me that throwing wildcards into play would take the edge off the importance of such a hand. I only dreamed of being the last person left holding cards and to scrape that elusive kitty into my own pocket just once in my life.
In college I dated a girl who begged me to teach her how to play. She claimed to know nothing about the game and I trusted her, for in my heart I knew it was truth she spoke. But her mind was fully armed and she was high queen of the art of deception. I lost in more ways than one to that poker face. She quickly learned my weaknesses and beat me to the ground with them - when it came her turn to deal, she calmly called the game: Whores, Fours and One-Eyed Jacks - seven card stud with all queens, fours and one-eyed jacks being wild.
At the Gazette we like to have a wildcard edition now and again in which the luck of the draw brings its own particular synergy. I couldn t have asked for a better hand than I was dealt for this issue: one of the stories was the winner of a Joker Is Wild competition, and we have small kings, an ace and three queens, a very full house indeed.
The game is 5 card draw – one-eyed jacks, 'stachie queens and suicide kings are wild, deuces or better to open, trips to win.
Now, let's ante up.
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway 2003
THE DAWN Of SOMETHING
by Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
I had a lot of fun putting together Gator Springs Gazette's first graphic flash, The Dawn of Something. Of course the best way to enjoy it is to turn the crisp paper pages of Alligator Chorus. If you are reading this, however, you now have the chance to view a pullout version graphic flash in pdf form.
Download:
THE DAWN OF SOMETHING
© Ernie "Junior" Hemingway
© Carrie Berry 2008 | morpheus arms | fandango virtual
| 