Dogs and Monsters

Saturday I somehow struggled out of bed and drove up to Berkeley to visit my friend Rob.

As I've mentioned before, Rob and I are old friends, dating back to junior high school. Of course, I haven't mentioned this in a long time, since we haven't seen each other in about a year. Since then, he and his wife have moved to a new house (which is huge!) and had a baby.

Today it turns out that Rob's wife and son are on the other coast making a tour of the relatives, so Rob has been (sort of) living the life of the bachelor (which mainly seems to involve not picking up around the house and eating out a lot). (Hmm, this may be the last time Rob invites me up for a while, if I continue in this vein. Truthfully, I'm exaggerating a bit.)

I found his house without much trouble, although parking was a bit tricky. Their house is actually quite nice, for all that it needs some work. They've basically reaped the benefits of getting lucky with buying their first house when they did, and it's certainly more motivation for me to get into the housing market. If nothing else, it should pay off down the road.

Rob and I headed into a downtown area near his home and had some pretty good Mexican for lunch. We also browsed the nearby bookstores, and I found a "quasi-memoir" by fringe cartoonist John Callahan entitled With The Real John Callahan Please Stand Up? I overdosed on his cartoons some years ago, but I so loved his autobiography, Don't Worry, He Won't Get Far On Foot! that I decided to snap this up to read later. I didn't even know it existed!

After lunch Rob and I took Otto, one of his German shepherds (the other being Hannah) for a walk in Tilden Park in Berkeley. Once we found a dog-friendly trail, we had a fine time: We hiked along a lovely stream in the woods, and passed a great many people and dogs and children along the way.

At one point, Rob said to me, "How do you think we'll know when we get there?"

"There?" asked I.

"Wherever we're going on this trail."

"I imagine we'll know we're there when we're unable to walk any further out of sheer exhaustion." Pause. "That might not be the end of the trail, but it will be for us!"

Rob said, "I hope we turn around well before then."

As it turned out, we walked a mile and a half, then hiked up a moderate hill, and emerged at a decent-sized lake, with a path running all around it, a beach to one side, and sunlight streaming down! It was great! We walked the circumference of the lake, and at one point Rob asked if I wanted to keep walking around the lake, or take a path off to one side.

"Let's keep around the lake," said I. "I kind of figured that this is the 'there' we were going to. I mean, there isn't really a greater epiphany for a hike than coming over a hill and seeing an expanse of water."

Can't argue with that.

It also came out that Rob is a pretty prolific journal-reader. (Yes, egocentric old me though I was pretty much the only one he wrote.) Like, it seems, everyone else, he really misses Diane Patterson's journal (on unannounced hiatus for several months now).

Otto accepted me on this walk. He'd barked and barked at me at the house, but out here he decided I was okay, and he'd periodically turn around (from dragging Rob forward) and walk back to touch his nose to my stomach and look me in the eye. Rob says he's herding me, making sure that I'm not straying too far behind the pack. Silly beast!

I think we hiked about four miles in two hours. Not a bad pace, considering we stopped to chat with several people along the way (and clambered over a number of rocks).

During the hike Rob said he hoped to see a movie tonight, and tacitly invited me along. I suggested Shadow of the Vampire, and Rob enthusiastically agreed. We got to the theatre just in time and caught the movie.

The film is a fictional portrayal of the making of the great silent vampire film Nosferatu (1922) (which I've never seen). The premise is that the director, F.W. Murnau (John Malkovich) found a real vampire (Willem Dafoe) to play the title role, and that "Max Schreck" never existed. The vampire has been offered the life of the film's female star, Greta Schroeder (Catherine McCormick), although he is unable to resist a few other aperitifs available in the film crew.

The film's essential conflict is between Murnau trying to make his great movie, and Schreck disrupting his plans. Malkovich does fine in what's a pretty one-dimensional role. Dafoe steals the film with his appropriately over-the-top portrayal of Schreck, giving him an otherworldly quality while also giving a nod to the eccentric monsters of yesteryear. The film also gives us a glimpse (the reality of which I can't speak to) of how silent films were made, with a single camera, a small crew, a lot of ad-hoc staging, and the director talking the actors through their parts.

The situation of having a vampire playing an actor playing a vampire makes for many tense scenes and funny lines, and yet Shadow is essentially an empty film. Murnau is an obsessed nutcase, Schreck is clearly insane, and the motivations of several key supporting characters go south midway through the film, leaving the whole thing a rather confused mess. The only moment of true pathos in the film comes in the middle when Schreck briefly socializes with two of the crew and provides his reaction to Bram Stoker's Dracula. The script and the premise are both fascinating, but it's not a great film.

After the film we headed off to a Chinese restaurant where I had something close to the best fried wontons I've ever had. Mmmboy were they good! We also ordered some good Chinese Curried Chicken (lots of chicken in the dish) and some deep fried pork in cherry sauce, which was (as Rob noted) not as sweet as expected, and indeed I had just about finished my portion of the dish before ODing on the sauce, so it must have been about right.

I also received the following fortune:

I had a great time visiting with Rob. I think I've said before that it always seems like very little time has passed since high school whenever I get together with him. I don't have many old friends I'm still in touch with, and it's neat that Rob and I are still in touch and live near each other.