SOUVENIR

Looky what I found clearing off some bookshelves the other day. Fat Freddy’s Cat was a spinoff from one of the most fabled underground comix of the ’70s, The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.

Why am I hanging on to this relic of hippie nostalgia? It's a souvenir of the day I met my future.

One day in the spring of 1977, I walked into a comic book store with a couple of friends and a stack of silk-screened posters we’d made for the recent Spring Fair. I didn’t know from comics, but we wanted to sell our leftover posters on consignment, and the recently-opened Atlantis Fantasyworld had posters on its walls.

I can’t remember what came of that transaction; my friend, the comic collector, was handling the business end of the deal with one of the owners, Joe. But I didn’t want to look like a deadbeat, so I wandered around the shop and picked up this copy of Fat Freddy’s Cat, which I bought from the other owner — Jim.

She sells silk screens at the Spring Fair

We chatted for a few minutes over my big purchase, and that was the end of that — or so I thought.

Little did I know that a couple of months later, the Star Wars juggernaut was about to hit Santa Cruz. My publisher at Good Times told me if I could find a photo, he’d run my review as a cover story.

(Back then, GT was only 12 pages long, so a cover story meant the text of the review was actually printed on the cover! Not buried on page 6 with the ads for The Broken Egg, Cymbaline’s and The Good Fruit Company.)

The photo was the catch. It’s not like we could just dial up iMDB. (This was long before computers were invented; we were practically chiseling the paper onto slate tablets, like The Flintstones.) But I had seen some movie stills on the wall at — you guessed it — Atlantis Fantasyworld.

Comics convert: me & my future

Joe was off at lunch the day I went back. But Jim was happy to stop filing comics for a few minutes to help me out. There was no one else in the store. We talked for an hour.

I never did get that still. (Turns out the only ones he had on the wall were from vintage ’50s monster movies.)

But I did get my cover story — my counterpart at the Sentinel took pity on a newbie and gave me one of his Star Wars stills — which gave me another excuse to visit Atlantis for another chat, the day the story was published, and then — well, you get the idea!

So when I happened upon Fat Freddy’s Cat, the discovery was bittersweet — but mostly sweet.

I notice it’s Book #1, and practically in mint condition (except for some fading on the spine), as it’s been mostly untouched by human hands all these yeas. I wonder if it’s worth anything — I’d have to ask Joe.

But it’s priceless to me.

HIS REIGN IN SPAIN

Banderas and Almodovar, team up for rapturous memoir, Pain And Glory

In Pain And Glory, Antonio Banderas plays a famous Spanish director working on a new film project. "Is it a comedy or a tragedy?" someone asks him. Banderas gazes back. "I don't know," he replies, with thoughtful sincerity.

You might as well ask the same question about life, and get the same answer — at least, life as portrayed in all its tenderness, irony, disappointments, and absurdity in this wonderful new movie from Pedro Almodovar. As the filmmaker onscreen looks back on his own life and work in this semi-autobiographical story, so does Almodovar, behind the camera, examine the people and events that shaped and inspired him as a creative artist — and as a human being.

Of course, a filmmaker tells a story about a filmmaker, and you think Fellini and 81/2. But Pain and Glory is less about what sparks artistic imagination than about the ways we find to get through life, day by day. Almodovar offers very little action, but plenty of talk and lingering close-ups, resonant with feeling.

It may not look like much, plot-wise, but the experience of watching this movie unfold onscreen is rapturous.

Etxiandia and Banderas: mellowed animosity

Bandera's stars as Salvador Mallow, a Spanish filmmaker with an international reputation. His most famous movie is being honored on the 30th anniversary of its release, and Salvador is invited to speak at a special screening in Madrid, along with the film's star, Alberto Cresco (Asier Etxeandia).

When Salvador visits Alberto to discuss it, he gets a cool reception, having publicly denounced Alberto's performance back in the day, but time has mellowed their animosity (if not Salvador's opinion), and they decide to do the appearance.

But time has been less benevolent to Salvador in other ways. His body is in decline from a variety of chronic ailments (laid out for the viewer in a series of jazzy graphics of human anatomy, spinal formation, blood vessels, and neuro pathways), to the point that he's in more constant pain than his daily cocktail of painkillers can relieve.

Cruz: salt of the earth

Something he's not yet tried is Alberto's favorite painkiller — heroin — and the few moments of pain-free bliss it provides quickly adds addiction to Salvador's list of maladies.

But this isn't a movie about drugs. Salvador's heroin reveries are another excuse for flashbacks to Salvador's childhood in the countryside with the salt-of-the-earth mother he adored, Jacinta (Penelope Cruz, marvelous, as always). Stoic and subdued by pain for so long that he's been unable to work, Salvador's memories finally uncork his creative drive and he starts writing again.


When Alberto finds and performs a monologue Salvador has written about his youth, an old flame (possibly the love of his life), Federico (Leonardo Sbaraglia), arrives on his doorstep for a brief, bittersweet reunion. And there are some lovely scenes of the elderly Jacinta (longtime Almodovar stalwart Julieta Serrano), living in Salvador's posh flat toward the end of her life, gently confessing to her devoted son her disappointment over some of the choices he's made.

At the heart of it all is Antonio Banderas, whose best movies as a young actor were his Spanish-language collaborations with Almodovar, his mentor, before Hollywood tried to typecast him as a conventional "Latin lover." Reunited with Almodovar in the excellent The Skin I Live In in 2011, Banderas is riveting in every frame of Pain and Glory, not by doing anything showy or actorish, but in his profound and wistful quiet.

Whether he's making a sly, impish remark, or expressing in his eyes alone all that's left unsaid with his former lover or his aging mother, this movie belongs to Banderas. You can't take your eyes off him.

Comedy or tragedy? You can't possibly know from one day to the next while you're living it, Almodovar suggests. At least he has the grace — not to mention the nerve — to keep exploring the question.

JIMMY'S PILLOW

"Kitty Alarm Clock," by James Aschbacher

It traveled West across the Rockies like the pioneers.

Along with two cats, one girlfriend, his collection of classical music albums, and a few plaid flannel shirts, James arrived in Santa Cruz from his Midwestern roots with perhaps his most prized possession stashed in the back of his Ford Econoline van: his pillow. He he’d had it so long, he couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t have it. Certainly it dated back to his childhood as little Jimmy in Wilmette, Illinois.

By the time I came into his life, the beloved pillow had already worn through the original outer shell of fabric. We had to keep reinforcing it with several generations of zip-on covers to go under the pillow cases. There was nothing left to cover but a fluffy rectangle of naked cotton batting, slightly stained with age, and with a head-shaped depression in the middle.

But he loved that pillow. For years he would not travel anywhere overnight without it. Hotel pillows were guaranteed to be stuffed with sand in comparison. And musty guest pillows dragged out of the hall closet at his mom’s house? (Or mine?) Oh, please.

Hotel pillows just weren't the same.
But this Bern hotel had a Paul Klee print!

It was one thing to toss it in the back of the van (or the trunk, in subsequent vehicles) if we were driving somewhere, but for years he also managed to squish it into our luggage if we had to fly. This did nothing to protect its crumbling infrastructure, but he was always so relived to have that little piece of comfortable familiarity to cling to in a strange bed. (Well, besides me.)

It probably wasn’t until airports starting charging fees to check your baggage — and it proved impossible to stuff the thing into a standard carry-on bag, and still have room for, like, clothes — that he finally, with extreme reluctance, agreed to leave the pillow at home.

I still make up the bed every week with his pillow, and its mismatched partner, along with my two pillows. I tried banishing his to the (so-called) guest room closet, but the bed just seems too flat and empty without them. Besides, Bella the Cat likes to take a midday nap in that hollowed-out spot when it’s not sunny enough for her to go out on the deck. Pillow-snuggling used to be verboten to the kitties, since James was so allergic, but there have been a few changes around here since then.

On the night I came home from the ICU for the last time, I fell asleep with Bella snuggled up against my rib cage, as we had done for the previous two nights. When I woke up in the middle of the night, she wasn’t there. I saw that she had gone over to go curl up on his pillow, kind of a last goodbye.

Now there’s a new chapter in the lengthy saga of Jimmy’s Pillow. Lately, I’ve been using it as a kind of bolster between my knees in bed at night; it helps me relax if my leg is doing one of those internally buzzy MS nerve things. I have to admit, it’s a great comfort to curl up around its saggy familiarity.

Now I get it.

DRESS TO EXPRESS

Don’t put away that costume trunk yet, just because Halloween is over!

Suppose you were asked to dress up as your favorite literary character. Would you choose your actual favorite character? Or would you choose the one with the coolest outfit?

Alice or the Mad Hatter? Harry Potter or Bellatrix LeStrange? Fitz or the Fool?

You’ll get your chance to choose next week, when Bookshop Santa Cruz hosts A Literary Masquerade in honor of visiting author Erin Morgenstern. Highly acclaimed (and justly so) for her enchanting debut novel, The Night Circus, a few years ago, Morgenstern is coming to town with her brand new novel, The Starless Sea.

The BSC event page (featuring starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist . . . well, you get the idea) calls the new book “a timeless love story set in a secret underground world—a place of pirates, painters, lovers, liars, and ships that sail upon a starless sea.”

I am so there! No, I haven’t read the new book yet, but I adored The Night Circus beyond all reason.

Among many other aspects, I loved Morgenstern’s canny use of Tarot cards to enhance the story. (You know how I feel about Tarot cards!)  When I found out she had designed her own set, based on fanciful images from her book, I was delighted; even more so when she generously granted me permission to post a couple of them on my blog when I posted my review. 

The BSC event unfolds next Tuesday, November 12, at the DNA Comedy Lab (formerly the Riverfront Cinema, 155 S. River Street, downtown Santa Cruz). Festivities begin at 6 pm, with the Masquerade, for which participants are invited to dress up to express their favorite literary character, for dancing, refreshments, and other activities. 

At 7 pm, Morgenstern will take the stage in conversation with Michael Chemers, Professor of Dramatic Literature in the Department of Theater Arts at UC Santa Cruz. Admission is $37, which includes a copy of The Starless Sea, a number for the book-signing line, an unassigned seat for the book talk, and access to all activities. Visit the BSC website for tickets and other info.

Why are you still sitting there? Get to work on that costume!

REALLY TRUE GRIT

American anti-slavery heroine gets her due in Harriet

She didn't wear spandex tights or bullet-repelling bracelets. But Harriet Tubman was a real-life superhero in every sense, fighting for justice and winning major victories against impossible odds in her lifelong battle to end slavery in the American South.

An escaped slave herself, she made many perilous trips back below the Mason-Dixon Line to lead other enslaved people to freedom in the North, via the Underground Railroad, armed with little more than raw courage, relentless determination, and the occasional flintlock pistol.

Although her name has become a footnote in American History books, it seems incredible that such an inspirational story has never been made into a movie — until now. In Harriet, filmmaker Kasi Lemmons (Eve's Bayou; Talk To Me) examines the woman behind the footnote, exploring the outrage, grit, and fervor that shaped her, in a tribute that feels long overdue.

Maybe now that we're all so woke, the times have finally caught up to the amazing life of Harriet Tubman.

Erivo as Harriet: Perilous crossing

The story, co-written by Lemmons and Gregory Allen Howard, begins in 1849 with the slave woman, Minty (Cynthia Erivo), who lives with her parents and siblings on the Ross family farm in Maryland.

After their master tears up their legal petition to free the family in honor of his late mother's will, Minty prays for his death, overheard by the master's odious son, Gideon (Joe Alwyn). When he plans to sell her off, she runs away; pursued by men and dogs and nearly drowned, she makes it all the way to Philadelphia.

There, she's taken in by William Still (Leslie Odom Jr.), a dapper abolitionist, and Marie (Janelle Monáe), who runs a refuge for single women and finds her paid employment working in a hotel. Marie teaches Minty to shoot a pistol. William encourages her to give up her slave name; she chooses her mother's given name with the surname of the husband she's had to leave behind — Harriet Tubman.

Erivo and Odom: Conductors

Her new friends are horrified when Harriet risks recapture to return south and bring back her family. But once she's made the journey a couple of times, bringing out strangers as well as family, William introduces her to the Undeground Railroad, a covert network of operators and vehicles by which runaway slaves are spirited north to freedom — of which the fearless Harriet becomes one of the most intrepid "conductors."

Ervio as Tubman: Reel life

Erivo plays Harriet with bristly moral conviction; it's unthinkable to sit idly by, protecting her own freedom, when others are still enslaved.

The real-life Tubman was prone to seizures, which she claimed were visions from God guiding her on her journeys, and which Lemmons recreates in sepia glimpses.

These, along with the fact that she never loses one of her "passengers"— despite fierce pursuit — adds to her mythos among slaves, abolitionists, and slaveowners.

Harriet Tubman; Real life

Evocative music also plays a key role. Spirituals underline the slaves' fervent faith in a better life ahead, but when sung by slaves in the field, they also allow them to communicate with each other in a kind of code, under the overseer's notice. Many are delivered with wistful, calibrated emotion by Erivo, a Tony-winning musical theater actress.

Erivo also sings the powerful anthem, "Stand Up," over the closing credits, a song she wrote with Joshuah Campbell that sends the viewer off on a stirring note.

And a brief glimpse of foot-stompin' revival music in the slaves' little church on the farm is delivered by a boisterous Vondie Curtis-Hall as the preacher. If my grandfather, the Methodist minister, had held services like that, maybe I would have become a churchgoer.

Lemmons' melodramatic flourishes can be overdone. Gideon is written as dastardly, insinuating evil incarnate, without any shading, and the orchestral soundtrack tends to swell and crest to emphasize emotion. But Harriet's story is so important, it rises in triumph over all obstacles — like the woman herself.