Review of “Dust to Dust” by Heather Graham

Last night I finished Heather Graham’s latest novel Dust to Dust. It is part of a series called The Prophecy, which deals with the Mayan prophecy that the world was going to end on December 21, 2012. Ms. Graham supposes that the world isn’t going to end in one big cataclysm, but rather by a series of minor events leading up until 12/21/12. In this first book, we are reintroduced to a group that calls themselves “The Alliance”. They have appeared in a few other of Ms. Graham’s (as well as her pseudonym Sharon Sala) books. If you have read any of these other books, then you know the big secret about The Alliance: most of them are vampires. Despite the fact that this group has been used in some of her other groups, the book is more than a third over before “the big reveal,” even though there are some rather pathetic hints dropped throughout the book. For example, “He frowned. There was a tiny trail of red at the corner of her lips (p121).” Melanie, the female protagonist, keeps “cherry soda” stocked in her refrigerator. One of the other characters supplied everyone with rosaries to wear around their necks. But yet, the male protagonist, Scott, has trouble believing what was right in front of him from the very beginning. However, he quickly gets over his disbelief and confesses his love for Melanie.

I did enjoy this book, but I have to say it is not one of my favorites by Heather Graham or even one of my favorite vampire books. Ms. Graham takes the vampire myth and turns it on its head. According to legend, vampires cannot touch a cross or be splashed by Holy Water, but according to Ms. Graham those things only work against evil vampires. I’ve got to say that this is something that they could have used on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and True Blood. Its a really good way to tell a good vampire from a bad one, but my question is what happens when a vampire starts out evil and becomes good? Does it suddenly become unaffected by sacred objects? Or what happens when a good vampire turns evil? Another problem that I had with this book is that she claims that crosses and Holy Water are only effective when a vampire believes that they will be; they need to have faith. Wouldn’t a smart vampire realize that as long as they believe that they won’t be hurt by these things that they can’t be? It just isn’t logical to believe that in all of history no evil vampires would have figured this out.

There were also times when it felt like I was reading a fanfiction written by a 13-year-old girl. For instance, our heroes have found out that the demon Bael is releasing evil mist from fissures caused by earthquakes all over the world, so members of the Alliance have set out to “exorcise” the fissures. They soon realize that they need to keep people away from the fissures because the mist will infect them with evil and they will immediately begin attacking other people, so they go to the San Francisco police department to talk to a cop about getting word to the governor (I wonder if it would be the Governator because he would probably try to save the world himself), the president, and every world leader across the globe. At this point, I began to wonder whether Ms. Graham has seen Is There a Woogy in the House episode of Charmed one too many times. I mean an evil, black mist that makes people turn against their friends and neighbors? Doesn’t that sound like the Woogyman? Why didn’t someone just start chanting:

“I am light, I am one too strong to fight. Return to dark where shadows dwell. You cannot take this Halliwell. Go away and leave my sight, and take with you this endless night.”

I’ll admit that this was always my favorite spell, but you can’t take everything from television. Plus, the description of Bael sounds awfully like Moloch from the Buffy episode I Robot, You Jane. There is just so far that I will suspend my belief in coincidence.

The final problem that I had was the love story between Melanie and Scott. They both seem to have instantly fallen in love with each other despite everything that is going on around them. True, this happens a lot in romance novels, but here it seems rather forced, as if someone told her that she needed to have a little romance in her book. Honestly, the background romance between Judy and Blake was much more believable than Scott and Melanie’s insta-love.

I do have one final question. Why is it that Ms. Graham believes that all Catholic School students (or former Catholic school students) know Latin? I went to Catholic school from 1st through 9th grades, and I was taught very little Latin, and the Latin that I was taught would not allow me to translate a block of text carved in stone, unless the text is the lyrics to Adeste Fidelis.

In my opinion this was a rather mediocre book, and it was not worth the money that I spent on it. If you want to read a good book about a vampire check out the last book in Nora Roberts’s Circle Trilogy.

Back from Boston

As I wrote in my last post, I went to Boston this past weekend to look for an apartment. This was my first trip to Boston, and other than the legions of Red Sox fans, who scared the crap out of my mom, I really liked the city. Unsurprisingly, Boston’s architecture was very British, and the street lights were actual lamps (or at least they look that way). In my mind, if Manhattan and San Francisco had a love child (and knowing San Francisco it just might), Boston would be that child. It was open and a little laid back like San Fran, and upscale like Manhattan (not that San Francisco isn’t upscale, but Boston had more of a Manhattan feel.)

The hotel was down the block from Fenway–there was even an exit out to the stadium–so to mom it was Yankee Hell. She wanted to go into the souvenir shop, but she couldn’t make herself go in, which made me think of a quote from Dante’s Inferno: “Abandon all hope, ye who enter,” which was written on the plaque outside the entrance to Hell.

On to the apartments.

Not all parts of the city were very nice. The first apartment I went to see was in a town called Roxbury, which was one of the towns recommended by NU. Mom and I took a cab there, because it was too far from the hotel by the T. First, the cabbie couldn’t find the neighborhood on his GPS, then after we got further into the town we realized that it was not a good neighborhood at all. It was the worst place I had ever been, and calling it a ghetto would insult all other ghettos of the world. (When N– first started at her school, it was located deep into Far Rockaway. At the time, I thought that that area was bad, but compared to Roxbury it was Heaven.) At one point, there was this woman screaming at the top of her lungs on a microphone about God and the immortal soul. Creepy. When we finally got to the apartment, Mom and I didn’t even get out of the cab. The apartment, which was really a house, looked like it was just shy of being condemned. Added to the neighborhood, it was in, the shape of the place was the ;ast straw. We got out of there as fast as we could.

The second place was much nicer. This one was in Brighton, and comes with a few other roommates, and it isn’t too far from Campus. The girls that I met were really nice, and they both go to NU. They were showing the room to a couple of people yesterday, and they said that they would make their decision sometime this week, and then they would let me know. I hope I get it.

The third place was also nice. It was a 3 bedroom in Dorchester, but it was way too far from campus. Since all of my classes are at night, I don’t want to be traveling over an hour at night, so that place is out.

Since the second place isn’t a guarantee, I am still looking for places, although not on the facebook marketplace–which is where i found the first apartment–anymore. I left a message for a girl who posted a message on the NU off-campus website about needing a grad student to live with them, and now i am waiting for her to call me back. All I know is that classes start in just under a month, and I need to find a place to stay.

L

Boston…

I’ll be in Boston this weekend, and not for the reason that other New Yorkers will be in Boston this weekend. I get to go apartment hunting. Yay! lol. Classes start in just over a month, so i need to find a place now. I have been searching for a few months now (ever since i got Waitlisted for housing in May). Hopefully, by Saturday night I will have a place to live. I just placed a new post on the NEU off campus website, looking for roommates, since most of the listings are around $1500 a month.

Mom and I will be leaving NY at 7:30 Saturday morning, so I have to go to bed at 10:00 tomorrow night–must tape Psych!!! We’re taking the bus up there, so we’re looking at a 4-5 hour ride. Thank God for books and my Ipod!

I can’t wait to see Boston. I’ve never been there before. When I was younger, we visited my aunt in Springfield, but we never got to go to Boston. I know I have lived in NYC my entire life, but I have never really considered it to be an historic city the way that I have thought about Boston. I mean it was the birth of the Revolution! Nativity used to take their Senior class to Boston, but stopped a few years before my class would have been able to go. I always loved Miss. D–’s story about how one year her class decided to recreate the Boston Massacre by pelting snowballs at her. I remember feeling cheated when I got to 8th grade when we should have gone to Boston. I have a feeling I would have had more fun there than at 6 Flags (More Flags. More Fun!–NOT).

I should go to bed now, so I can get up at 8 AM tomorrow that way I won’t have trouble falling asleep tomorrow night.
L

40 Years Later, and Songs Still Resonate

This month marks the 40th anniversary of the Woodstock Festival, which was held in the rural town of Woodstock, New York. Many of America’s youth turned out for the concert in which artists such as Credence Clearwater Revival and Country Joe and the Fish performed their anti-war music. Although protest music had been around for years–Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit and Woody Guthrie’s This Land is My Land are examples of Pre-Vietnam Era protest songs (This Land is My Land depicts the inequality rampant in America at the time)–, Woodstock ushered in a new era of anti-war protest music.

In January of 1965, LBJ unofficially declared war on Vietnam (although we had been involved in their civil war since 1954). A year after that event the first Anti-Vietnam protest songs began to appear on the Billboard Charts, the first of which was Simon and Garfunkle’s The Sounds of Silence, which technically isn’t classified as a protest song, but it evokes the feeling of helplessness that pervaded the American youth. The song, which opened The Graduate, is about the feeling that nobody was listening to the younger generation. This is apparent in the lyrics:

“And in the naked light I saw/ten thousand people,
maybe more/people talking without speaking/
people hearing without listening/people writing songs
that voices never shared/and no one dared/ disturb
the sound of silence”

The years following the success of The Sounds of Silence saw the release of many more songs protesting the war effort–even classical music depicted the dreary Vietnamese battlefields. George Crumb’s Black Angels was very popular, as was William Mayers’s Letters Home and Dai Keong Lee’s Canticle of the Pacific. These pictures used dissonant sounds to represent the sounds of war.

Many themes were represented in protest songs. Country Joe and the Fish used their song The I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die-Rag to place the blame for the war (or Police Action) on the US government and the greedy Wall Street Capitalists. They also hit upon the notion that the American boys were supposed to be eager to fight because their country told them to do so. Their sardonic delivery of lyrics such as:

“And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die”

is what makes this song work.

In the song Fortunate Son, CCR protest the fact that the wealthy were able to avoid the draft. They sing:

“Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, “How much should we give?”
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yoh,
It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no military son, son.
It ain’t me, it ain’t me; I ain’t no fortunate one, one.”

Another popular protest song was Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction in which McGuire sings about the fact that the soldiers were old enough to carry guns and kill for their country but they weren’t old enough to have a say in that government.

These protest songs have made it possible for today’s protest songs to even exist. If it weren’t for artists such as Barry McGuire, CCR, Simon and Garfunkle, and Country Joe and the Fish many of today’s artists would not have been able to have the successes that they have had with protest songs. Without them, we may never have had Green Day’s American Idiot or P!nk’s Dear Mr. President. While these songs have not defined my generation as it did for the Hippy generation, they were an important addition to the modern anti-war movement. It is a shame that there is no 40th Anniversary concert planned this year because of the startling similarities to the time of the original concert. Like then we are involved in a war (actually a non-war because the war supposedly ended shortly after it began, but nobody told that to the Bush Administration), and we are involved in another era of greedy (or greedier at least) Wall Street Robbor Barons like Bernie Madoff and AIG FP (and all those involved should rot in prison for the rest of their Natural live–after that they could go to the deepest, darkest circle of Hell reserved for men like Cassius and Brutus).

So Happy Anniversary Woodstock Music Festival, and hopefully we will have another of its ilk sometime in the near future.

What is wrong with people?

Ten years ago, in a small Colorado town called Littleton, a couple of students went on a rampage, killing their classmates and teachers because their victims had been mean to them, and they saw no better way to deal with their pain and anger but to kill them. At that time, it was really a new thing for teenagers to bring a gun to school to settle their problems. No one understood why–was it video games, the movies, or maybe their parents didn’t love them enough. Whatever the reasons, it was a huge tragedy. I remember watching the news reports, and the footage of the one student, covered in blood, crawling out of a window is forever imprinted on my mind. That massacre was a turning point for the American education system. All of a sudden, there were metal detectors in schools (because of course that would help keep everyone safe, especially when “random scanning” became easily predictable).

I was in 7th grade when the Columbine school shooting happened. I remember being appalled at the actions of a couple of people only a few years older than me. The next time I went to school, my class had one of those “I can’t believe the stupidity of people” discussions with our teacher. We gave into many of those cliched arguments, blaming the parents or Marilyn Manson music. One of my classmates, while he admitted to being a fan, condemned those that worshiped him as a “Rock God”–they were the original Emo kids before they discovered Criss Angel Mindfreak. We never really could agree on one reason why anyone could do something like Columbine, and it scared us because in less than 2 years we would be in high school. It didn’t matter to us that most people don’t tend to settle their issues with a gun.

Ten years later Columbine is no longer the benchmark for school violence. The Virginia Tech Massacre of April 2007 took that title. That isn’t the point really. Today, I received an e-mail from a discount Broadway website trying to sell me tickets to a new play called, The Columbine Project. My first thought was: please let this be about a flower. Of course I was disappointed. According to the e-mail:

The Columbine Project is a revealing new play about the murderous rampage that took place ten years ago in Littleton, Colorado. Playwright Paul Storiale examines what went through the mind of the killers, their families, and victims. This gripping and detailed drama respectfully lures the audience into stories never told

I will admit that I don’t know anything about this play, but I believe that it is ridiculous that someone has decided to write a play about the murders of innocent people. It is one thing to study the minds of Eric Harris and Dylan Clebold–or any of the people who choose violence–but it is another to try to make money off of a tragedy such as the Columbine Massacre. How can anyone believe that this is a good idea? Why can’t they let grieving families get on with their lives?

Happy Canada Day…and some early 4th of July Wishes

Happy Canada Day

To start out this post, I want to say Happy Canada Day to my neighbors to the North. I hope that it is a much nicer day there than it is here, and that all of your celebrations go the way you want them to.

God Bless America

I know that it is a few days early, but I want to wish all of my fellow Americans a Happy Independence Day, and maybe over the next year we will finally become a true democracy in all senses of the word. Maybe the new government will see fit to truly enfranchise the nation and do away with the Electoral College, for if it wasn’t for them we would probably be in a better place than we are today if they were not given the opportunity to overrule the popular vote in 2000. We would have the respect of the rest of the world–the respect that we had before Bush stole the election–and the respect of all Americans because we would deserve it. Maybe we will finally give equal rights to all citizens: men, women, gay, straight, black, white, yellow, purple…whatever and whoever we are. Someday the Declaration of Independence will mean the same thing to everyone:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

While those truths are self-evident, they are not nationally-evident. The people–the enlightened people–may know that everyone is equal, but until the government recognizes this fact we are not nor will we ever be a democracy. I love the US, but I think that it has not reached its full potential, the potential that the framers of the Constitution and the writers of the Declaration of Independence saw in 13 colonies that together changed the course of the British Empire.

With that hope–the hope of a bright future for the United States–”that government of the people, by the people, and for the people”–I pray that one day freedom in the US will really and truly be freedom.

Sick and Tired

What the hell is wrong with people? Micheal Jackson was a fucking pedophile, despite the fact that he was acquitted, he was a pedophile. He admitted to sleeping in the same bed as little children. Doesn’t anyone see that there is something wrong with that? People hate the Catholic Church because they allow priests to rape little boys, but if a “music genius” does it that’s fine. Guess what? It is not fine, nor will it ever be fine. Nobody that touches a child inappropriately should be allowed to get away with it. The problem with the CA justice system is that it was built in a way that guilty people can get away with murder if they have enough money. When celebrities rape or murder someone, they get away with it because they’re “special”. Only normal people go to jail in California. At least here in NYC we send our celebrities to jail when they break the law. We need to stop worshiping these people, who are nothing more than regular people with high profile careers.

So, I will not tell Micheal to rest in peace. Rather I hope he burns in Hell for his sins.

However, I will say RIP Farrah, Ed McMahon, David Carradine, and everyone celebrity and normal person alike. You will be missed.

Healthcare

Apparently, I don’t have health insurance anymore because I graduated last month. Gee, if only mom had told me that a month ago, I would have started looking at insurance policies or something. So when did she decide to spring it on me? When we were watching Sicko last weekend, that’s when. Now I’m left hoping that Obama gets the Universal Healthcare passed because I doubt that I will qualify for insurance based on my weight problems. Yay me. I have to wait for a conservative country full of idiots that think that universal healthcare would be socialist to pass a bill. I’ll keep my fingers crossed, but I won’t hold my breath. I guess I’ll be watching the Town Hall meeting on ABC tonight.

Update…

It has been awhile since I have written anything because it has been crazy here for the last few months. Who knew that graduation could be so stressful? The ceremony was nice, but more than a little wet–it was the first time in 22 or 23 years that it rained (the ceremony was outside). So, now I have my BA in psychology. I graduated Cum Laude and got highest honors in psychology.

My party was great–my grandfather even sang to me, which was amazing! We took tons of pictures, and the best were taken by little N–, especially those taken of baby T–. I got to dance with my dad and my grandfather. The food was okay, but it could have been better. Overall it was the most fun that I have had in a long time.

For the past month, I have been looking for a job, so I might have some money for grad school in Boston. I have also been looking for an apartment near campus. I wish someone had told me that rent in Boston was like rent in NYC, but oh, well. Classes start in September, and I already have homework. I’m waiting for some books to come into the library because they are way too expensive to buy considering that they aren’t textbooks. I’m in the middle of reading an article about making moral decisions as a cop and how immoral decisions can taint not just your case but yourself.

I went to the Mets game last night with C– and Ch– and the other QC Ambassadors. They actually won this time–last year they were slaughtered. The new stadium is really nice; there were even elevators if you don’t want to take the escalator or the stairs. I was really surprised that they didn’t play Sweet Caroline, which Dad said they usually play. I guess the fans voted to get rid of it because it is the song for the Red Sox. Whatever. I can’t stand Neil Diamond, so I was glad not to hear his voice.

Hopefully I’ll be writing more often now.
L

The End of General Hospital

No, GH is not ending, but this is how I would like it to end.

The Last Days of General Hospital:

Scene 1 The Docks: Fog covers the ground. A man chases a woman across the docks. The woman screams. Fade to Black. The old GH beginning (from the late 1990’s) comes on showing all the characters past and present.

Scene 2 The Hospital: EMS brings the woman in and Epiphany examines the puncture wound on her neck. “I don’t think that you’re going to need stitches, but I’m going to send a doctor in to see you anyway.” Monica comes in, and exclaims,”Lucy! What happened to your neck? Those are some strange puncture marks.” Lucy is visibly uncomfortable, “I fell on a spoon. Could you call my cousin, Rafe? His number is in my blackberry. He needs to get here as soon as possible.” Monica searches through Lucy’s purse, and finds the blackberry. She reaches Rafe and tells him that Lucy needs him at GH.

Scene 3 The Park: Liz is playing with Cam and Jake. A shadow appears in front of her. “Can I help you?” She asks the familiar stranger. She knows she has seen this man before, but she can’t figure out where. Because she was pondering that she was too late to fight off the stranger’s bite. Her life passed in front of her eyes (Her and Sara, her rape, her and Lucky, her and Xander, her and Jason, her and the boys) before everything fades to black.

Scene 4 Kelly’s: Mike is working the counter, and Rebecca is waiting tables. Patrick picks up a basket of food to take on Emma’s play date with Cam and Jake. As he leaves, he gets a feeling of foreboding, and he wonders what Robin is up to now. He puts the basket on the bottom of Emma’s carriage, and heads to the park.

Scene 5 The Park: As Patrick and Emma arrive at the park, Patrick hears Jake screaming, and finds Cam wandering around with blood all over him. He examines Cam and realizes that the blood was not his own. He then goes searching for Elizabeth, who he finds lying in a pool of blood. He looks for a pulse, knowing that he would not find one for she had lost too much blood. He calls 911, before getting Cam and Jake away.

Scene 5 The Hospital: Rafe arrives just as the ambulance carrying Liz’s dead body gets there. He immediately sees it for the vampire-related death that it is. He follows the body to the morgue where he stakes it.

Scene 6 Kelly’s: Sonny and Claudia come in for lunch. Rebecca takes their order. She goes into the back where Mike’s lifeless body lies. She bends down to lick some blood off of his neck. Her cell phone rings. She listens. “Its about time. I can’t stand being Rebecca. I miss being Emily.” She walks back into the front. Sonny asks where Mike is. Emily takes the knife out from behind her back and slashes Sonny’s throat. Claudia screams, “Bitch!” She attacks her, but it is too late. Sonny is dead, his hand resting againt the gun he was too slow to get. Emily bites Claudia, but decides to turn her instead of killing her. She had been punished too much already just by being married to Sonny.

Scene 7 The Hospital: Rafe finds Lucy in the hospital, and tells her “It has begun.”

Scene 8 The Docks: Lulu walks along the dock. She runs into Robin who again is contemplating suicide. They see Rebecca running towards them. She calls out, “Help! Someone attacked Mike!” Robin shakes off her suicidal thoughts long enough to run to help Mike. Rebecca stabs Lulu in the gut and pushes her into the water before Lulu can make a sound. That girl was way too sour to bite. She catches up with Robin at Kelly’s. Robin is crying because one of her oldest friends is dead. Emily knows not to bite her (vampires could get HI-V too), so she slashes her throat. Robin was dead before she knew what was happening.

Scene 9 Jason’s Penthouse: Jason and Sam are tracking Jerry Jax’s movements. Sam’s cell phone rings, and she takes it in the hall. “My dear, Olivia. It has been far too long.” “Caleb, I have missed you. It has begun, I take it.” “All the players are in place. Rafe and his ditsy cousin are in town. Recruiting Emily was a brilliant idea. She has already killed four and turned one.” She ends the call, and as she goes back into the penthouse Jason runs out. He yells to her that Epiphany needed him at the hospital. She figures that she will get him later.

Scene 10 The Hospital: Jason meets Epiphany, who tells him that Elizabeth is dead. He blinks in incomprehension, not understanding how that could be. Lucy sees Jason, and gets him to help in the hunt. He takes out his gun, and Lucy tells him that guns will not help. She then explains to him and Epiphany what is going on, and asks her to call anyone that could help. Jason tries calling Sonny and gets his voice mail.

Scene 11 Jax and Carly’s home: Carly’s phone rings. Its Jason, and he explains about the vampires. If it was anyone else, she would have thought that it was a joke, but she knew that Jason would never do anything like that. She agrees to help, and she talks Jax into helping too.

Scene 12 The Quartermaines’: Tracy and Edward are bickering over her marriage to Luke when her phone rings. She laughs at the caller. Luke walks in just as Tracy hangs up. “I knew that Lucy Coe was nuts, but vampires!” “Lucy’s in town?” Luke asks. “Yes, and according to her so are a bunch of vampires. She wants us to help fight them.” “Cool, I’m in,” says Luke as he calls Lucky and Nicholas. He hesitates before calling one last person. “Hells, are you up for a little game?”

Scene 13 The Cemetary: Caleb, Livvie, Emily, and Claudia meet with the rest of the vampires. The time was coming, and everyone was getting antsy. Caleb smiles as he sees Lucy and Rafe leading a group of people wearing designer workout clothes into the cemetary. An arrow pierces his bicep, and he rips it out. Emily attacks Nicholas and turns him. She still loved him, and she didn’t want Spencer to be an orphan. Just then Lucky plunges a stake into his former best friends’ chest, mourning the girl he once knew. Helena is torn. She loved her grandson, but she didn’t want to have a vampire in the family, plus she thought she might be able to get custody of Spencer if his father was dead, so she staked him. Carly goes after Claudia, the woman she had just found out had been behind Michael’s coma. She was dust before she knew what had happened. Livvie went after Jason, the man that broken her heart. Not knowing that Sam was a vampire the whole time, he was confused, but dodged her fangs just in time. Sad, but not really surprised, he dusted her vampire ass. Seeing this, Caleb went after him, but he was intercepted by Rafe, who knew that in the end it would be the two of them against each other. As Caleb’s fangs hovered over, Rafe’s neck, Rafe plunged the stake into his heart, sending him to Hell forever. Caleb’s death caused all of the other vampires (which were being fought off by the denizens of Port Charles) back into humans.

Scene 14 The Hospital: The battle was done, and Port Charles lived to see another day. When the smoke cleared, they discoved the bodies of all the slain. Mac greeved for his niece, the first daughter of his heart. He called Robert and Anna, who were on their way. They also found that the vampires had killed the five families, except for Johnny, who was in Manhattan on assignment with Maxie.

The End.