Now Playing: Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos--"Barfight revolution, power violence"
One of my least favorite things to do in the world is to seek employment. As the only jobs I seem to be able to find are restaurant jobs, the situation grows doubly depressing. There are, however, a number of factors that lighten my load in this instance. 1. I don't really need the job; I already have one, and I'm hardly starving or anything. 2. I'm having a fairly good life otherwise: I hang out with friends every now and again, I've been writing my ass off, I've been published, and it's relatively likely that I'll be so again either at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. 3. While filling out this particular application, I realize that all three of the places I worked previous to my present "posting" no longer exist, which I find grimly amusing. I am become death, etc. etc.
Because of point 1, I was able to relax a little while filling out the application, as it's hardly a matter of life or death. I suspect some cultural anthropologist wil one day bust a gut (if they haven't already) at our employment applications. I remember a Sunday morning conversation at the Fleetwood some time back in which Kathy and Aviva discussed the hilarious "why do you want to work here?" question (usually begging the answer "because I need a fucking job" rather than "I expect to find great spiritual and material fulfillment scrubbing pots or scraping the gum off parking lots"). Sadly, on this present specimen, it's been left off somehow. There's also the "what is your greatest strength/weakness?" question. The expected answer (and the one I suspect practically everyone else puts, as do I) is "I get along well with people and am a good worker, but I'm also kind of a perfectionist and am too hard on myself." All right, I didn't put that second part on there. Once I get another one of those, and if I don't need the job, I've composed an alternate response: "well, over the years, I've come to hate people to the point where I've grown into a borderline sociopath, but at the same time, I'm pathologically lazy, so there's not really a whole lot I can do about it--one way or the other." Not really true, but it has a certain contrapuntal charm in this case, and maybe someone'll get a good laugh out of it.
Fortunately, there's always the cinema.
Deathdream (1972): Also--blasphemously--known as Dead of Night, but only shares an alternate title with that British horror classic. I as intrigued to learn that the movie was written by Alan Ormsby, who wrote and starred in the contemporaneous Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, already discussed in this forum. Andy (Richard Backus), reported killed in Vietnam, returns home to his surprised family, who begin to fear that something is wrong once people and animals turn up horribly killed in the vicinity. Light years ahead of Children (which had its own goofy charm), Deathdream was somewhat groundbreaking, as it portrayed the effect of the Vietnam War on the homefront in a compellingly sensitive and poignant way for what's basically a combination vampire and zombie movie. Backus is excellent as the moribund Andy (he would play another returned veteran, this time of the First World War, in the PBS American Short Stories production of Hemingway's "Soldier's Home", with Nancy Marchand, four years later), and John Marley (the horse's-head guy in The Godfather) and Lynn Carlin (Cassavetes' Faces, also with Marley) play his parents in a way that suggests Andy's problems began well before he enlisted (Carlin in particular; her creepy possessive feelings for her son drive a lot of the tension). A few Children alums show up: Jane Daly (Terri) is charmingly annoying as ever as Andy's loopy girlfriend Joanne, and I was delighted to see Anya Ormsby (Anya) as Andy's sweet, knowing sister Cathy. The quality chasm between Deathdream and Children piques my curiosity to see Ormsby's Deranged, about serial killer Ed Gein. Maybe one of these days...