I’ve had plenty of friends talk about bad initial reactions to their vaccinations. I’ve never had much trouble except with the flu vaccine. This week, though, one of the vaccines I got Tuesday left me groggy for a couple of days. That did not help my output. However the groggy wore off by late Thursday — and vaccines are still a health miracle.
Nor did it help that everyone I tried contacting for Local Reporter articles early in the week — I wanted to set up interviews for midweek — was out (that time of year, I guess). So I spent Wednesday while I was feeling groggy trying to find an idea I could bat out in a much shorter span of time. I got several ideas I can tackle later but that was it. I wound up doing a short article about Pride Month in Carrboro and nothing else. That wasted a lot of time I could have spent on other projects.
I did get the second chapter of Jekyll and Hyde rewritten, focusing on the Victorian stage adaptations. Rereading the stage plays, I realized the landmark Richard Mansfield adaptation not only introduced Jekyll’s love interest to the sausage-fest story (there’s also bad girl for Hyde but rather than his lover, it’s his landlady) but establishing Jekyll as a good man who screwed up his research rather than a morally mixed man who deliberately became Edward Hyde.
The later Irving adaptation now looks to me to have a very strong influence on the 1920 John Barrymore film version. In that version Sir George Carew, wife of Jekyll’s sweetheart, is an old roue who thinks Jekyll, a man with no vices, is a fool: the only way to manage one’s lusts and base urges is to have enough experience you can master them. Several film reference sources suggest Henry Wotton, Dorian Gray’s mentor in sin, is the template the screenwriter used for Sir George. But in the Irving stage play Sir Danvers Carew is also a lecher and adulterer; I suspect that’s a much more likely inspiration for the film’s take. And the shot of Hyde below looks a lot like Barrymore’s Hyde.
Here’s Barrymore.
Over at Atomic Junk Shop I looked at the first appearance of Tony Stark’s father, Howard, plus a few images from 1970s comics. One of them is below, an ad hinting at Jack Kirby’s imminent arrival at DC Comics.
As explained at the link, I don’t think the add works.
Not a great week for work, in other words, but I am very pleased with my Chapter Two rewrite. And last month I sold an ebook of 19-Infinity and one of Questionable Minds so yay! And thanks, whoever you were — I hope you liked them.
Rights to all images remain with current holders.
