Dark Shadows

“My dog bit me in the leg today

My cat clawed my eyes

Mom’s been thrown out the social circle

And dad has to hide.”

    “No More Mister Nice Guy,” Alice Cooper

While not especially scary nor suspenseful, “Dark Shadows” was fun and quirky, with Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter again proving their versatility.  What’s especially cool is that most of the action takes place in the year 1972.   Alice Cooper even makes a cameo appearance, singing “No More Mister Nice Guy.”  Unfamiliar with current pop culture, having been buried for 200 years, the vampire Barnabas (Depp) calls Alice the ugliest woman he’s ever seen.  Barnabas and the witch Angelique (Eva Green) have rough sex while Barry White’s “You’re the First, the Last, My Everything” is playing in the background.  The soundtrack includes Moody Blues and Iggy Pop numbers.

Up at 5 a.m. for a two-hour drive to catch Victoria’s soccer game, followed by Anthony’s (both wins, Anthony in green uniform below).  At Phil’s Diamond, decreasingly demonstrative in his old age, still greeted us affectionately, breathing heavily and smiling.  Miranda looked stunningly beautiful in a purple prom dress.  While the other adults went off for more prom photo opportunities, I took Anthony to his basketball game (Tori introduced me to parents of his teammates) and then we had dinner at Appleby’s. Tori and I posed for a funny Facebook photo and I showed her and Phil the “Spirit of Tamarack” video Aaron Pigors posted on YouTube featuring a shot of me with dark hair interviewing Jack Buhner, IUN’s first chancellor, in 1989.  Phil worked with Aaron at a FACET retreat and admires his work. As a kid Phil appeared in three summer musicals directed by Garrett Cope, who in the video says he has no idea what a tamarack is but likes the way the syllables roll off one’s tongue.  A type of tree that commonly grows in a bog, Tamarack is an apt description of the land that flooded over in 2008.

                                        

Phil and I watched the 76ers lose a heartbreaker to the Celtics.  Since nobody predicted them to win, it was fun seeing their young talent blossoming under shrewd coach Doug Collins, who starred for the Sixers during the 1970s.  Looking for reading material, I found Charlotte Brontë’s “Jane Eyre” in Miranda’s room.  In the introduction Erica Jong argues that the governess was a proto-feminist who refused to settle for anything less than independence and equality in her relationship with a mate.

Six of us had Sunday breakfast at the Cherie Inn Restaurant. It has been in business 84 years, longer than any eatery in Grand Rapids.  Several people had crepes stuffed with lobster meat; I had an omelet with homemade cinnamon bread.  Toni and Delia received pieces of cake for Mother’s Day. Alissa and Josh’s dog Jerry gave us an enthusiastic greeting.  A couple weeks ago, a neighbor let him get out of their apartment by mistake, and they searched the whole neighborhood in vain.  Miraculously Jerry showed up on their back porch.

Cubs salvaged the final game of their series with Milwaukee, led by pitcher Jeff Samardzija, a Valpo native who starred at Notre Dame as a football receiver as well as a pitcher. “The Shark” has long, flowing hair and is coming into his own after three mediocre seasons.  Other emerging stars are Bryan LaHair and Starlin Castro. On the whole the Cubbies are a likeable group and play hard under new manager Dale Sveum. 

Miranda had a great time at her prom with Derrick, her steady for more than a year now, and posted photos on Facebook.  I can’t even recall the name of the red-headed tenth grader I took to mine.  Why I didn’t ask a friend more my age, such as Pam Tucker, Alice Ottinger, LeeLee Minehart, Mary Delp or Judy Jenkins, is beyond me.  I suppose they had boyfriends of their own, but I could have tried.

The latest “Mad Men” episode, called, like the Johnny Depp movie, “Dark Shadows,” takes place around Thanksgiving of 1966, the year the original “Dark Shadows” soap opera series began.  Megan is helping a friend rehearse lines from the show and makes fun of its over-the-top dialogue. Later she warns Don not to open the window because of an air-pollution emergency.  In late November, 1966, smog settled over NYC, and the foul air was responsible for several hundred deaths and a harbinger of worse environmental disasters to come.  Other dark shadows that year were the escalation of the Vietnam War and the emergence of black political power.  With Malcolm X dead, due to FBI negligence, if not compliance, black radical leadership fell into more reckless hands.

Critic and diarist Edmund Wilson returned to America from Paris in May 1954 and noted the Cold War tensions: “Failure of [Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles at Geneva, the McCarthy investigation all over the papers and people getting it on radio and television.  All messy and hysterical; makes no sense.”  Our Gino’s waiter was great except for spilling a shrimp cocktail intended for the speaker.  Ken Anderson quipped that he was tempted to eat one that landed on the floor, prompting me to tell an anecdote about being in a Howard Johnson’s Restaurant when we were poop and noticing a kid next to me leaving virtually his entire fried clams meal untouched.  I slid it in front of me and proceeded to devour it.

Found out my PSA number is good, had a classic Arby’s for lunch, yogurt in the late afternoon, and then off to Gino’s, the Merrillville History Book Club’s new home, for Pam Kosenke’s presentation of Stacy Schiff’s “Cleopatra: A Life.”  A descendent of Alexander the great, Cleopatra hoped to keep a Hellenized eastern Mediterranean an equal partner of Rome.  Instead with Egyptian wealth so tempting, Octavian decided on a policy of conquest.  I invited Richard Maroc, who is speaking in July on Joyce Cooley’s 1941 historical novel “Wolves against the Moon,” about pioneer Calumet Region residents Joseph and Marie Bailly, to visit the Archives and I’d give him a copy of my Gary book, which contains information on them.  A young prosecutor mentioned that he’d read Edward Greer’s “Big Steel: Black Politics and Corporate Power in Gary, Indiana.”  I heard Greer speak to a mostly socialist audience in Miller and he lost some credibility when he referred to Marquette Park as Gleason Park.  He lived in Gary for a year or so when Mayor Richard Hatcher first took office and compared the city to a former colony that had just achieved independence.

Arrived home in time to watch the 76ers edge Boston 82-81 to tie the seven-game series 1-1, as they made six straight foul shots down the stretch.  Fellow Marylander Jack Wennersten thanked me for my latest Shavings, “Calumet Region Connections.  He noted: “It is a most unusual and intriguing thing.  As I began reading this work I hastily concluded that you were quite mad.  But then I began to see it as it truly is -- an historical and sociological valentine to a great region. The people I read about are quite familiar to me.  I grew up in the shadow of the great steel works on Neville Island in Pittsburgh.”  How nice.