For the past week, I have been in Southern California, mostly in Anaheim and then in Beverly Hills. When I arrived at LAX on Monday, Hertz didn’t have any cars available even though we’d made reservations (anyone remember the Seinfeld episode about this! 🙂 ) Anyhow, but when we finally got a car, it came aith an unexpected extra. As I opened the trunk to put in my bags I immediately noticed a unit mounted in the trunk which said “Magellan” – GPS! Made it waiting for the car all worth it.

So for the past week, I’ve driven over 250 miles up and down SoCal from LA to Anaheim, to Hollywood, to Santa Monica, to Beverly Hills, Bel Air and to Venice Beach. And in *every* case – all I did was punch in my destination without thinking… the Magellan GPS system did the rest. Finding restaurants, hotels and pretty much any services… all a breeze. GPS truly rocks. A huge thumbs up!

Had I seen Dante’s Peak prior to September 11th, 2001, my reaction to it would have been notably different. But when I picked up the DVD earlier this weekend at the Carnegie Library, it was not because I genuinely wanted to see the movie, but more so because I wanted to try and get the DVD player on my notebook working and so I just needed a DVD to test it with.

The storyline of the movie is predictable, but then again, so was the storyline of the Titanic right? We all knew what happened. So though the dramatization of the handsome geologist (having a Volcanologist that looks like Pierce Brosnan is about as believable as having a geek that looks like Sandra Bullock 🙂 ) out to save the town didn’t have as profound an impact on me, what did was the special effects that were captured in the movie. As I watched the ash from the volacano engulf the small town at its base as it bellowed lava up into the sky with smoke and debris all around it, what I thought of was the twin towers at the WTC – because I still cannot imagine 2 x 110 stories coming crashing down in the middle of Manhattan.

This was meant to be a review, but it turned into more of a diatribe. Will Hollywood try to capture the events of September 11th? I’m sure they will someday – because the very thing that keeps the world ticking is enterprise and capitalism – and while to some extent, the stories that our cast in the form of books and movies based on these events will evoke memories of the horrendous event, it will also generate lots of revenue for the publishers and the producers who capitalize on it.

Dante’s Peak as a movie is just a little above average, (I’ll give it a partial thumbs up) but seeing it now and linking it with the devastation of September 11th, gives it a different significance. The difference is one event was natural, and there was little that could be done to control it and the other was the nadir of humanity.

Before I get into the meat of this entry, I would like to acknowledge the The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh which offers an amazing collection of books, audiobooks and DVDs to everyone for free. If you’re in Pittsburgh and not using the Carnegie Library, then you are missing something.

This entry is about movies and books that have haunted me as a child – literally. These are stories of danger and courage which got embedded so deep when I saw them or read them that the very thought of them used to invoke the feeling of fear. In fact one of these movies had me petrified for long time as a child… for no rational reason – which I can recognize only now. As I write about the things which hanuted me, I realize that they were and some possibly still are numerous. For most of these I remembered the name, I remembered the story, and remembered the parts that haunted me. For others, I even forgot why they scared me so much and remembered only the fact that they had a profound impact on me.

So what were they? Well, the one that tops the list is the 1978 Charleston Heston movie – Gray Lady Down. I have no idea how old I was when I saw this movie or where I saw it. My guess is that I was probably four or five years old and I do remember that I saw it in a cinema hall. In the movie a nuclear submarine is incapacitated by a collission and lands up several hundred feet under water resting on a precarious incline. The movie depicts the rescue of the few who survived the collisions and the courageous men who traveled to the depths of the ocean to literally try to get humpty-dumpty back up again.

It took me over a decade to come to terms with Gray Lady down and nearly two before I was able to seek it out and watch it again in order to re-assure myself that though it is a chilling story, my reaction to it was more than extreme. I’ve since watched Gray Lady Down twice. It still gives me the chills, but I think I’m finally over it. But as a movie, it told an amazing story and it hit home.

The next item on the list of things which haunted me was a book – The Poseidon Adventure (sorry for the lack of a link, but neither Amazon not Barnes and Noble had this one…). Now, I am guessing that this was the bok, because in this case, I remember the story, in fact I remember distinct parts of the story, but did not remember the name of the book. But this past weekend, while at the Carnegie Library, the DVD for The Poseidon Adventure – the movie, caught my attention and I just had to see it if it was what I remembered.

The thing about the posiedon adventure which has me mesmerized till today, is trying to imagine the world upside down… our whole perception of how we see things is based on a certain orientation. And a change of orientation can really throught things for a loop. In The Poseidon Adventure, the survivors of that disaster, had to climb up to the bottom of the ship that had been complete flipped over by a tsunami caused by an undersea earthquake. The ship was completely inverted… floating…. no sinking as they clammered to reach the bottom — now the top of the ship with hopes of somehow penetrating its steel hull to escape.

There are several other books and movies and stories that have left their mark and I am sure there are several more that will. But to each that has the ability to cause such a long lasting effect I have to give them all a thumbs up.

Honestly, I really don’t remember seeing the movie based on this book, that is why I picked it up. Figured it would be good to listen to the book in it’s original form. But it turned out that I must have seen the movie at some point or seen a similar movie as the beginning of the book sounded very familiar and the descriptions and even the names of the characters sounded familiar. I guess I’d have to see the movie again to really recall if I’d seen it before!

Anyhow, on to the book… Susanna Kaysen’s description of her time spent in a mental hospital is definitely intriguing. Her description makes one question the line between sanity and insanity. Between reality and psychosis. The descriptions of the characters at the hospital is first class. Their behavior, their qirks, their likes and dislikes as seen through the author’s eyes exemplifies the flailings of the mind. The experience of the author and her fellow “patients” at the “hospital” really makes one question the virtues of psychotherapy.

Her dissection of her diagnosis of having a borderline personality disorder as defines in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) published by the American Psychiatric Association really makes one wonder as to whether there is any merit what to ever to psychiatry and especially to getting a “diagnosis” based on statistics and perceptions of the person’s behavior. To some extent the lines the author quoted from the DSM diagnosis did not seem to far of from the open-ended horoscopes or reading of the shamans, astrologers and psychics which are always open to interpretation with very little objectivity.

My biggest complaint with the book was that it lacked continuity. I guess my bias for structure and flow impeded my ability to simply go with the flow of the authors words. I tried to tie the ends together and bridge the when sometimes it’s better not to even attempt it. Though I liked the book, unfortunately, it didn’t move me as deeply as I would have expected. My expectations were probably too high. So the most I can give this book is a partial thumbs up.

I’ve always liked Robin Cook’s books. I guess it is because I always seem to learn something from them. I like books that I learn things from, yet they are not completely bone-dry and academic in nature. A book which makes you learn without you realizing it is definitely up my alley. Robin Cook’s style seems to lend itself to that since he is a medical doctor by training that is writing fiction, but based on real life events and real life science and medicine.

In Vector, Robin Cook does an excellent job of depicting the dangers of bio-terrorism. I already wrote about this is the writings section of the site. Though the story is somewhat predictable, the author has done a great job of providing vivid descriptions in the book which truly make it come to life. The one pitfall was that too many things seemed to just fall into place in order to help the protagonist get to the bottom of the investigation. It was borderline unrealisic how the coincidences played out, but everything is still possible.

Overall, the book made for a enertaining and thought-provoking story which deserves a thumbs up since I pretty much listened to all 11 CDs (over 800 minutes) in a single marathon session!