Gogol is Good!

I'm several stories into the Russian stories book and I am really taken so far by Nikolai Gogol.His story"Viy" was the first in the book and so far the only one that could be called horror.The others I have read two by Tolstoy have dealt with the human emotions,greed,facing death and they all have been very good so far.There are a few more Gogol stories to come in the book and I shall look for more.I love the way he sets mood especially in dealing with outdoors.I think the two masters of setting are Hemingway and Mishima especially with color.Mishima blew me away with his use of color in settings when I read his four novel set in college especially in"Spring Snow"I'm trying to think of the three other titles in it."Runaway Horses",one with Temple of the Golden Dawn? and the other I'm drawing a blank.I also was amused to see Gogol wrote the novel Tarus Bulba(sp) as it was a favorite movie as a youngster.I first saw it on the late show on Sat night when I was like ten sleeping over at my Aunt and Uncles.Since I slept on a sofa bed in their living room I got to watch TV till I fell asleep while they played cards with friends in the kitchen.Tony Curtis and Yul Brynner in a great early 60's costume drama.Sort of a Romeo and Juliet of the Ukraine and Poland .Come to think of it Tony Curtis and Kirk Douglas did"The Vikings" also another late night movie of my lost youth.

Lakeside Slumming

The two pics I put up down below tonight are two of the places I should be spending some time at when I go back to Rochester in a month or so.The Canandaigua Lake pic is looking towrds the South where a few friends have places.The cottages are generally more spread out and secluded towards the south end.Where this pic was taken is on the east side of the lake around the area where some friends and I rented a cottage one fall with the great idea of going to Finger Lakes Community College while living lakeside.In theory it was great but in reality it turned into mostly party time at the cottage with many late night runs in my 75 Vega Wagon to purloin car loads of fire wood from vacant summer cottages.We had a lot of fires and a lot of parties.My dear late friend Ann'S parents cottage was down on the west side way south where our gang spent a lot of time and after she was going out with my friend Russ who became her husband Ann's parent's bought this large modern house above their lakeside property and gave it to her and her two brothers.It was on a hill above the lake and had floor to ceiling windows in the huge living area overlooking the lake for miles.We basically furnished it with mattresses and chairs from our local bar Thirstys in Pittsford,N.Y. which would get tossed out the backdoor of Thirstys in the right before closing time and somehow wind up at the lake.The downstairs master bedroom also had a Bidet which none of us guys had ever seen before.A lot of Toga Parties at that place. The best thing though was the upstairs bathroom had wallpaper with ducks on it and the Kinks had a song at the time "Ducks on the Wall" Well that and the allnight charades games wearing Togas at least most of the time.The second pic is on the East side of Port Bay(The Wild Side) from the looks of the dance.Port Bay is a small bay off Lake Ontario about an hour east of Rochester where another friend has a cottage.It has one bar/restaurant that closes about ten at night but Port Bay is great becuse it's very rural and much more blue collar than Canandaigua Lake has become.I like this pic from the RV park on the other side of the Bay from my friend cause that's about as exciting as it gets there.Well that and the naked lady fountain up the road a few miles in the middle of the village of Wolcott.Also looking at the pic it's obvious the dude on the left chugging from a can of beer with a few other cans and a bottle around him is out looking for trouble.You can bet before the Lawrence Welk tape runs out he's going to be hitting on one of the ladies on the dance floor and fists will fly.Probably get banned from Bingo nights because of it.I still recall being at my friends Port Bay cottage several years ago in October and I was sleeping on the living room couch when around dawn I come awake to shotguns going off and from years of living in L.A. I hit the floor and as I do I realise where I am and it turns out to be Duck Hunters on the first weekend of the season.

The Wild Side of Port Bay N.Y.

Canandaigua Lake Looking South

New Book in the Pile

After finishing "A Good Man in Africa" last night I was going through my unreads and pulled out"Stories That Scared Even Stalin"I've had it for about a year and figure with fall coming on it's a good time to have a horror book of sorts bedside.I think I've pretty much gone through the Victorian,Edwardian collections I love so much though a re-read is about due but I'll take a crack at the Russians though I know they will be quite different stories.Many longer in fact the last in this book"The Double" by Dostoevsky is a novella at well over 100 pages.There are other stories some more than one by Tolstoy,Puskin,Chekhov,Turgenev,Sologub and Gogol whose opening story"Viy" several folks have told me is excellent.In the rest of the pile I have like 20 pages left in"Lewis and Clark through Indian Eyes" about 40 pages left in"The Discovery of France" and about 25 pages left in"Portrait of a Lady"All three have been in that state for some time.I have a thing of late that when I get to the end of a book I like I hate to finish it though James took awhile to get into.Any suggestions on another Henry James written in that style before he really got long winded would be appreciated.The Bostonians?,The Ambassadors? though if I recall that's a later book when he took a page to say three words.

Sword of Damocles

Last night an online friends blog mentioned half frog men and I had to pull out my collection of H.P. Lovecraft stories.Then I had to start rereading and so I had some wonderful dreams.Today I went over to Trader Joes and while waiting for the bus I sat down on the steps of St.Timothy's Catholic church.I was thinking about Lovecraft and all of a sudden a little cloud came by in Sunny L.A. and I felt a large shadow behind me.As I'm thinking about the shadow I hear this odd droning sound and look up to see what looks like a sideways hummingbird coming at me.It wasn't a bird though it was some very large winged insect and it was coming low and then swerved right over my head towards the church.By now I'm talking out loud* and laughing a bit at the strangeness of it all.I glance across the street at the carwash and see two of my carwash buddies looking at me.I wave and hope they don't think I'm off my rocker.As for the insect I'm not sure what it was,maybe three dragonflys trying to save gas money flying sideways together or doing kinky dragonfly sex things but whatever it was it was big and droning.So tonight I put the Lovecraft back on the shelf and tonight I'll get back to my regular reading. *I do tend to talk out loud to myself.My neighbors have made mention and one sister in law once said I talk to myself almost as much as a street person off his/her meds.That was some years ago, today with those earplug cell phone attachments you don't know what the person is coming at you talking loudly.It ruins the old addage I knew as a kid that "Only crazy people talk to themselves"

X-Mass gift idea