drinkdrankdrunk: "Conference Presentations" by The Midnight Rider

my dissertation was [REDACTED] . . . it examined [REDACTED] . . . it addressed [REDACTED] . . . sounds impressive, yeah?--my mom said it sounded like a “bunch of bullshit” to her, especially since my poor parents were obliged to drive me to roughly 150 live wrestling events as a child (i was a chubby kid and professional wrestling was kind of “my thing”) . . . they were even more blown away when i started presenting papers on professional wrestling at academic conferences . . . during my tenure at shady state, i went to conferences in maine, tennessee, wisconsin, and illinois (and again, it blew my parents' minds that shady state would fly me to maine and put me up in a 3-star hotel to talk about my love of professional wrestling) . . . [REDACTED] at the university of stephen king would prolly be the most remarkable because my colleague assburger's g was part of the same panel discussion . . . the presentation itself was at night and in a bar, so i went for lowbrow humor (not that i've ever gone highbrow in my entire hillbilly existence) over the cult-that-is-academia . . . my mistake was ever telling assburger's g about the conference in general because he ultimately got me heckled off the stage . . . i guess i should note that i don't officially know that g has assburger's; however, he's 71-years-old, and i don't think assburger’s syndrome had been invented (for the money) in the 1940s-1950s . . . although g was a sociology professor for 30 years, he spent a great deal of time alone at home reading his books and seems to be the stereotypical absent-minded professor . . . he received his phd from [REDACTED] at 23, but to my knowledge, this was his first presentation at an academic conference (and he was certainly nervous) . . . g is also a vegetarian and a teetotaler, but on the night in question, he had 2 glasses of wine and a giant lobster before going on stage . . . he had written a short story about pretending that his childhood housekeeper was a lady wrestler, but when it came time to present, he starting rambling on about everything except the subject of his speech . . . he told the history of shady state in great detail----tracing our origins from tiny catholic teacher's college to being sold to shady education llc . . . g also went into great detail about how the company flew the entire shady state faculty/staff out to san diego for a retreat at a 5-star resort on coronado bay complete with descriptions of hotel amenities and the meals that were served . . . g also described his childhood growing up in northern kalifornia and playing little league baseball . . . and after 10-15 minutes of (painful) onstage ramblings, g finally got around to reading his paper . . . somewhere towards the end, he made a comparison of the maid-turned-lady wrestler from his story to an ohio state professor that was sitting in the front row . . . and if she had known g, she would have realized that he had a touch of the assburger's and that his comparison of her to a lady wrestler was ultimately his way of saying that he was paying attention to her (and in a strange way, you could even argue that he was attracted to her) . . . i had never met big bubba bundy (the osu prof), so i had no idea how pissed or drunk she was until i followed g onstage . . . she began heckling me almost immediately with chants of “wrap it up” and then “get off the stage” . . . i had to decide on the spot whether to play the professional wrestling heel and fire back at her or play the professional wrestling hero and assume the role of victim . . . since i was at an academic conference, i chose the latter and became really quiet/submissive and eventually the host of the event escorted a drunken big bubba bundy back to her hotel room . . . the remaining members of the [REDACTED] were quite nice to me the remainder of the evening and even took me out bar-hopping after the panel discussions ended . . . i halfassed my way through one more day of presentations, but the damage had been done . . . [REDACTED] was well on its way to becoming my go-to event, but i've never attended one of their functions since that week in maine . . . i guess i should also mention that i had attended their conference two years earlier in tennessee, but i didn't present a paper . . . my main memory of the event entails driving a hotel van up a windy, mountain road with 7-8 fat/mustachioed professors in hawaiian shirts sitting in the back--i was shrooming like a motherfucker too, but none of them seemed to notice . . . i remember that the older profs in attendance seemed to like me more than the younger ones--maybe it was because i seemed to be having a better time or maybe it was because one of them asked me about shady state at a cocktail party, and i was obliged to tell him that they were for-profit and had sold out to a company . . . i also presented two papers based on my dissertation at the “cheap trick university sports symposium” (a small college about 2 hours from shady state and not nearly as impressive as the university of stephen king) . . . shady state put me up in a holiday inn, and i snorted a bunch of adderall . . . i remember my first presentation being better than my 2nd (prolly because i snorted too much adderall) . . . the hosts of the conference also had a campus radio show and they interviewed me both times . . . all egomaniacal professors basically sound the same, but none of the others could quote dusty rhodes from 1976: “i've wined 'n' dined with kings 'n' queens/i've slept in alleys, ate pork n’ beans/i'm the need you want, the want you need/i'll make your back crack, your liver quiver/if you don't dig that mess, you got the wrong address/while everyone else is in the back room laughin' 'n' jokin'/midnight rider is out front, cookin' and smokin'” . . . after the conference was over, the group would go to a japanese steak house for dinner and the other professors in attendance seemed amused by the fact that i was proud to be drunk-driving home . . . i sent a prospectus in for the 3rd annual cheap trick university sports symposium, but they turned me down (but invited me to come to dinner afterwards) . . . i declined, and there was no 4th annual sports symposium . . . shady state also paid for me to attend two sport and society conferences at lambeau field in green bay, but i never presented . . . it was a free trip, and i stayed at a swanky hotel, plus i posed for pictures behind the green bay packers lectern and posted them on facebook (so everyone would think that i presented) . . . my main memory of the first conference:  the green bay packers yoga instructor (who was blonde/blue-eyed and smoking hot) took a shine to me and walked me around the event like i was her pet pyrenees . . . i knew there was no way that she would ever fuck me, but she rejected the advances of several corporate lawyers and a green bay packer in favor of her new/chubby puppy . . . my main memory of the second:  being too fucked up at 10 a.m. to sit in a classroom with my peers . . . at the previous night’s dinner, i scoped out all the single women on the room and zeroed in on my #1 choice (a mousy grad student from the university of wisconsin) . . . i made small talk with her at the table towards the end of the evening and made up my mind to sit with her the following morning--the topic of the presentation never really matters to me because virtually all academic presentations are boring/pedantic, and the speaker is always self-absorbed . . . i don’t actually remember what drug i did that morning, but i was way too fucked up to sit in a tiny room with other people . . . i think i could have handled a giant lecture hall, but the grad student chose to listen to the speaker in a small room and i had made up my mind to sit with her . . . i sweated through my blue shirt almost immediately, and my face turned a bright shade of crimson . . . then i started to cough--and i coughed and coughed to the point where the speaker moved away from the podium and asked me if i was alright . . . someone even sent for a waiter to bring me a glass of water . . . at intermission, i hustled back to my hotel room and pounded a couple bloody marys until i felt normal, but the damage had been done--the grad student never looked at me again, and i got the feeling that people were talking about me whenever i walked into a room for the rest of the conference

The Midnight Rider prefers to remain mysterious.  You could visit his website, but he won't say where it is.  You could read his books, but he won't say what they are.  You could email him, but I'm pretty sure spam@gofuckyourself.gov is not a real email address.  In a world where everyone is repping their Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, sex tapes, line of clothing, new microbrew, virus panic vaccine status, and overall brand, I find that refreshing.  I am happy to have the Rider ride on drinkdrankdrunk.

"Penny Dreadful" Video!

 

The broken camcorder finally proved too temperamental to work with, so I shot the footage on the good old digital camera.  The results are probably better overall, but the zoom action is not quite so smooth.  It fit the rhythm here of the song, so it works here.  Since the song is about a kid who likes to read science fiction, I shot footage of my kiddo, comics books, and a Stephen King novel (the sci-fi purists, now grunting that I used the term "sci-fi" will have to forgive me for not shooting stacks of Isaac Asimov novels instead, but I didn't have any on hand).  For the other footage, nature seemed to volunteer this time between the rainbow and the lightning bugs.  As always, making the video was fun.  Hope you enjoy it as well!

For more fun, read Edna's Employment Agency!

New Recording!: "Penny Dreadful"

wredfright · Penny Dreadful

Well, we're finally through the Dick Bennett ep, and we're about done with Yeast? in general.  I was surprised this song, "Penny Dreadful", was written earlier than I remembered it.  I don't know if Yeast? ever played it.  There was a whole slew of songs at the end of Yeast? that never got anywhere.  I'd bring them in, and Dave would dislike them and put country beats on them, and we'd just give up and play "Generic Smokes" or some Big Black covers instead.  Most of those songs ended up not being so great, so Dave was probably on to something, but if this was among them, then we definitely missed out on something here.  Instead, The GoGoBots picked it up.  In fact, I think it's the first track on the Noise Prescription cd.  It's about a kid growing up and liking to read science fiction.  A penny dreadful is more associated with a lurid true crime story (they cost a penny at one point), but the term spread a bit to encompass all of pulp fiction, including science-fiction.  Speaking of which, I recently went to a pulp fiction convention to hang out with my pal Mark Justice.  I had never been to one before, but it was interesting.  It reminded me a lot of a comic book convention before cosplay became such a large part of it.  It was mainly dealers with copies of Conan paperbacks and other pulp stuff, including some of the original pulp magazines.  Prices weren't bad, though of course the rarer items were expensive.  I bought a collection of fiction inspired by the work of cartoonist Fletcher Hanks.  The stacks of Stephen King and James Bond novels, among other objects there, reminded me of my adolescence, and did make me want to pick up my Stephen King bibliography from where I left off in 1988 or so (I have periodically checked in on his work with the odd novel or two over the years, but he's so prolific, he probably has two dozen novels that I have never read).  Anyway, genre fiction of the pulp type fits in well with this song.  Musically, I just used some pennies for odd sound effects while in the background my son had fun with a toy microphone.  Other than that, it's the usual guitar, vox, keyboard as bass, and percussion.  It looks like the next few songs are those of The GoGoBots, though Yeast? did at least one of them before breaking up.  

To hear more music, get the Dick Bennett ep

The Coronavirus And The Plague By Albert Camus

So, unless you have been hibernating through the winter, you've probably heard about the Coronavirus disease 2019, otherwise known in short as COVID-19.  It apparently started in China and now has embarked on a world tour.  Its arrival in the United States has caused pretty much a freakout with schools and libraries closing, events canceled, travel bans, and other assorted disruptions to daily life.  The latest where I live is the closing of bars and restaurants.

The hope is to slow the spread of the virus so that hospitals and other healthcare resources don't get overwhelmed and have to make difficult choices about divvying up care.  Whatever the good intentions, the actions taken against the virus's spread will certainly have consequences, primarily economic.  So far, most of the criticism has come from the political right, which makes sense since they typically represent the moneyed interests of the country, but some independent voices have also questioned the wisdom of these political decisions.  But others such as Nassim Nicholas Taleb have noted that the earlier to panic in a situation like this, the better, so even an overreaction is much preferable to the alternative.  This video is probably the easiest way to get his point about the importance of stopping this thing early.  Comparisons with traffic deaths and flu deaths don't quite fit the exponential risk that COVID-19 brings.

So, it looks like we're basically living in The Plague by Albert Camus, which has always been one of my favorite books, but I never wanted to live in it (it could be worse; we could be living in The Stand by Stephen King).  If you're not familiar with The Plague, it details the spread of a disease in one city and how the people respond. It is a good illustration of Camus's take on existentialism as well as a good read.  It is often interpreted as an allegory, but it can be read as just a tale of quiet heroism against a disease.  So, if you have some free time now due to COVID-19 or just want to get away from the tv news, it is a good book to read given the circumstances.  And, if you finish it and need a laugh to get through this challenging time, then please feel free to check out my books, especially the latest one.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Overview

It took twenty posts and half a year, but I managed to go through most of the changes between the original and revised versions of The Stand by Stephen King.  But in case anyone doesn't want to get that detailed, here is a handy list of the major changes:

1) There are eight new chapters:  11, 12, 14, 17, 20, 31, 33, and 38.

2) Two old chapters get split into two.  Old chapter 11 becomes new chapters 13 and 15, and old chapter 37 becomes new chapters 46 and 47.

3) Most of the chapters get expanded, some significantly.  Many new scenes are introduced, and old scenes are often more detailed and lengthened.

4) All of the chapters get fiddled with, sometimes down to very small levels such as changing the punctuation.

5) King provides a new preface.

6) Dates are often changed in the novel.  For example, the story is now set in 1990.

7) Cultural references are often updated.  For example, Howard the Duck becomes Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

8) New characters are introduced such as Mark and Perion, and old characters get much more characterization.  For example, The Wolfman's story is explained (he's The Kid).

9) King chooses some different song quotations and adds quotations from poet Ed Dorn to the beginning and end of the book.

10)  The beginning and end of the book are changed with new scenes.

11) Illustrations by Berni Wrightson are included.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 20

Chapter 77 is the penultimate chapter, and King doesn't change much at all.  He only seems to add two lines of dialogue near the beginning and fiddle a bit here and there.  One might think that maybe King finally got worn out a bit revising and decided to coast to the end.  But, then, you know, there's the end of the novel, which is a new section.

78 also isn't much changed.  One fun change is that King deletes Lowell from the list of Maine cities and adds his own fictional Castle Rock.  78, or 68 to be more accurate, is also where my paperback ends, aside from a brief bio of King and some ads/mail order forms for other books.

The hardback does not stop.  It continues on with a quote from Ed Dorn, and then an epilogue featuring the return of Randall Flagg (only hinted at in the paperback), which perhaps starts with an allusion to "The End" by The Doors (Stuart Redman did mention meeting Jim Morrison once).  Evil, symbolized by Flagg, seems to be eternal, according to King.  And that's the end!  The uncut Stand runs for 1153 pages!

In the next post, I'll provide an overview for folks who are curious about the changes, but don't want to read all twenty posts.  Both versions are good, but I prefer the longer one.  Ideally, King or some scholars might someday set the novel back in its original time setting, delete/replace the 1980s references, and keep the expansion otherwise, as the novel is thoroughly an artifact of the 1970s.  That would likely be the best version of all.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 19

Chapter 62 has the usual expansions and fiddling.  For example, Dayna Jurgens hears about the crucifixion of Hector Drogan, which wouldn't have made much sense in the paperback since that crucifixion scene didn't occur in it.  It's essentially the same otherwise though.  One would think by this point that King would be tired and just let the novel roll on, but the man is thorough; he appears to be tinkering with the entire manuscript.

63 has less expansion and fiddling, but it's a short chapter in both books, so that's probably why.  Basically, Tom Cullen has an additional line of dialogue, and King makes some other minor changes such as adding an apostrophe to the front of "Bye".

64 has more expansion, providing more details of Harold Lauder's death.  A typo also sneaks in.  There aren't many in this long, long book, so I was a bit surprised to find it.  The Colt Woodsman gets called a "Cold Woodsman".

65 and 66 are much the same, but I didn't spot any typos.  67 isn't much different, but there is a couple of interchanges between Lloyd Henreid and Shirley, the telephone operator.  Another interesting aspect is that when King updated the year Paul Burlson would be in charge of the secret police he only moved it from 1990 to 1991.  Apparently, King decided that Flagg's police state would move along much more quickly.

68 and 69 continue this trend. 70, like 63, is a short chapter and has less expansion and fiddling for that reason.  There is a new paragraph in which Trashcan Man gets a little more detailed in figuring out how to get the nuclear warhead up the stairs, but that's the biggest change.

71 gets treated much like 70 does.  72 returns to the pattern of more expansion.  For example, it contains Larry Underwood's list of how many miles he and the other walkers have traveled each day.  It also has a new scene where the walkers find animal crackers and potato chips in a station wagon filled with corpses.  One interesting change is that instead of books by John Jakes (though Stu Redman only calls them  "books about that Kent family"), he asks for books by Gore Vidal.  All the books are long, historical novels though.

73 also gets more expansion.  Larry has a nightmare about playing a concert.  The second time he has the nightmare (the first time in the paperback), John Wayne Gacy gets added to the creeps in the audience.

74 follows this pattern.  One interesting change is that King alters the initials on the keycase from S.L. to A.C.  Maybe S.L. stands for 'Salem's Lot, an earlier novel of his, and A.C. is the first part of AC/DC, one of King's favorite bands?  I don't know what the initials stand for, nor why he switched them.

75 gets more expanded.  King adds a few scenes.  Tom Cullen and Stu watch movies (including Rambo IV, which didn't exist at the time), they have an accident on the snowmobile and they have to find another one, and their travels on Christmas Eve are described.  King also makes smaller changes such as correcting the spelling of "breech birth".

76 is another short chapter, so, like the other ones, it doesn't get expanded and fiddled with much.

77 is next! 

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 18

Like most of the chapters, 58 is expanded, but, unlike many of them, it's not by much.  One interesting addition is that King includes lyrics from Dave Van Ronk's "Backwater Blues" instead of just mentioning the song and mentions Tom Rush's "Sister Kate".  One could almost create a soundtrack to the novel from all the songs King mentions.  Of course, the song mentioned most often, "Baby, Can You Dig Your Man?" by Larry Underwood, would be missing.

59 follows this trend.  One interesting change is that when someone yells out at the meeting about Randall Flagg, King changes the reference to Flagg from "black man" to "hardcase".  Perhaps he was being politically correct for 1990, but it could also be that "black man" was a poor choice from the beginning since Flagg can pass for any race and the more typical "dark man" reference for him implies evil more than skin color.  However, King also changes Mother Abagail's reference to Flagg from "black Imp" to "Imp"; on the other hand, he leaves plenty of other racial slurs in the novel.  Another interesting change is that the ending of the chapter changes its setting from the picnic scene to the scene of the explosion.  It's essentially the same plotwise, but Fran Goldsmith makes Stu Redman swear that he'll return on Nick Andros's blood.

60, a short chapter, is basically the same, just a tad fiddled with and expanded (for example, Glen Bateman has an extra line of dialogue).

61 starts Book III.  One interesting change before the chapter starts is that the epigraphs change a bit.  In the paperback, King quotes the band America:  "I understand you've been running from the man / Who goes by the name of the Sandman / He flies the sky like an eagle in the eye / of a hurricane that's abandoned . . ."  This lyric gets replaced by the chorus of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land".  King also corrects the credit for the "Stand By Me" lyrics from The Drifters to Ben E. King.  61 gets more expansion than the few previous chapters.  Judge Farris's journey west is much more detailed.  One reference update I enjoyed was King's replacement of Howard The Duck (called "Howard Duck" perhaps to show that Bobby Terry, the reader of the comic book stack, isn't very smart) by Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. They are both funny animal comic books and both were quite popular in their respective times.  King also replaces Superman with Batman, as Batman with his 1989 movie was more popular in 1990.   

62 is next!

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 17

Like most of the other chapters, Chapter 51 gets expanded.  For example, Larry Underwood and Harold Lauder's conversation, as well as its aftermath, is a bit more detailed.  Most of the other scenes also get expanded a bit, but there are no major changes except for the committee's discussion of the spies, which gets omitted in the paperback, but in the 1990 hardback runs for six pages.

Chapter 52 is similar.  Scenes get more detailed and references get updated (on a poster in Harold's house, Jimmy Carter becomes George Bush).  The expansions also help with the foreshadowing of Nick Andros's death at one point, adding some suspense and dread to a novel that already has quite a bit of dread and suspense.

Chapter 53 has the usual expansions.  Among the more major ones, King adds the agenda of the Free Zone's meeting; Stu Redman telling Fran Goldsmith how he met Jim Morrison once, long after Morrison was supposed to be dead; and Nadine Cross remembering using a Ouija board in college.

Like the committee meeting in 51, the meeting in 54 is expanded, but not by as much.  The other scenes are also expanded or changed a bit, but there are no additional scenes.

55 continues this trend, but, in addition to the usual expansions and minor fiddling, 56 has three new scenes:  Nadine getting her belongings from the house she shared with Joe/Leo Rockway, as she tries to assuage her guilt about what she's done and planning to do; a brief one with Fran having a conversation with Laurie Constable; and a very brief one noting that more people are entering Boulder.

57 also has a new scene, a freaky one where Randall Flagg takes over a drive-in movie theater to have a one-way conversation with Nadine.  In the other sections, expanded and changed a bit as usual, one interesting addition is that Brad Kitchner mentions the destruction of Gary, Indiana, though he doesn't know that it was caused by the Trashcan Man.

58 is next!

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 16

Chapter 45 has the usual date changes.  For example, Mother Abagail is now born in 1882 and not 1877.  It also is expanded to provide more background on Abagail's past.  For example, in the 1980 paperback, the paragraph that ends with "That year had been a topper." is followed with the one that begins "And little by little . . ."  In the 1990 version, three long paragraphs appear between those two.  The flashback to her music performance is also expanded, and King uses the scene again in a nightmare where Abagail faces off with Randall Flagg.  King adds two pages of Abagail using the outhouse before she looks out at the corn.  Her journey to and from the Richardson farm is also longer by several pages, filled with her memories and more details of the events in that section.  The cooking scene is also a bit longer, and King throws in lyrics to a hymn Abagail sings and plays on the guitar.  Nick Andros is described not just as "The young man with the dark hair" but as "The young man with the eyepatch and the dark hair", continuing the eye injury from Ray Booth.  Maintaining that detail also adds to Nick's almost psychic power.  Not only is he deaf and mute, but he's nearly blind.  Nevertheless, he's often more perceptive than people with all senses functioning.  The aftermath of the meal scene gets expanded a bit, as does Abagail's conversation with Nick and Ralph Brentner and the rest of the scenes in the chapter, including a funny bit where Abagail shows Ralph a letter she received from Ronald Reagan congratulating her on turning a hundred years old.

Chapter 46 gets quite changed, since King adds a storyline featuring two new characters, Mark and Perion.  Mark gets sick and dies, Perion kills herself from grief, and Fran Goldsmith wonders how she will be able to deliver her baby in a world seemingly without medical care.  The excerpts from Fran's diary are longer and more detailed; for example, the visit to Stovington runs for four pages instead of only one.  Some details get changed.  For example, Nolan Ryan is described as playing for the Texas Rangers and not the California Angels, presumably because he switched teams in the 1980s.  Some updates don't work as well though.  King moves the Arab embargo oil shortage from the 1970s to the 1980s, which isn't historically accurate.  There are also more entries.  In the paperback, the diary skips from July 8 to July 19, while the hardback includes entries from the 12th, 14th, and 16th before the chapter ends.  King having apparently decided that the chapter was getting long, split it into two, with the entry from the 19th taking place in the next chapter.  One last interesting bit is that King has Fran misspell Abagail's name as "Abigail" here, perhaps to show that she's only heard it in her dreams and so doesn't know the correct spelling.  He is very thorough!

Chapter 47 continues what in the paperback is just a single chapter.  This time, King doesn't add a new storyline, but he does expand significantly the meeting of Fran and the others with Dayna Jurgens and the other women she travels with.  In the 1990 version, the women don't have an auto accident, but they escape from captivity.  The chapter contains a firefight between the women and their captors with Fran's group in the mix of the chaos (the women use the encounter as their opportunity to escape).  It's a fairly brutal scene, as the women take revenge and kill the men who had been keeping them as sex slaves.  It also serves as foreshadowing for the conflict between the two sides of survivors later in the novel.  As in the previous chapter, Fran's diary entries are expanded (the August 1st entry grows from one sentence to one page) but there are no more of them.  Other scenes get expanded a bit as well.  Oddly enough, the spelling of "Abagail" as "Abigail" also continues this chapter even in the dialogue where there is no logical reason for a misspelling.  Perhaps the copyeditor got confused by King's subtlety because this doesn't occur in the paperback.               

Chapter 48 also is quite different and includes the character The Kid, whom King notes in the preface that he had always regretted cutting.  The Kid is quite memorable, a hotrodder rockabilly type who sodomizes with a pistol and otherwise terrorizes the Trashcan Man.  In the paperback, The Kid is replaced by an old man who gives Trash a ride in a car and only lasts a couple of pages before dying of a heart attack.  The Kid gets twentysome pages.  Other than the major addition of The Kid storyline, the chapter has the usual expansions (Trashcan's arrival in Las Vegas has extra scenes; Hector Drogan's role grows from a couple of lines in the paperback to a few pages, ending in a crucifixion--this scene also shows vividly how different the Boulder community is from that Flagg runs) and changes such as a reference to the fight in the previous chapter.

Chapter 49 and 50 start the chapters in Boulder, which aren't as altered as these last three chapters, though King still expands and fiddles with them a bit.  Some interesting changes from this section include inflation.  In 1980, King priced Nick's house in Boulder at $150,000-200,000.  Ten years later, it's in the $450,000-500,000 range.  The paperback book itself cost $2.95 in 1980, and, from what I can dig up, $6.99 in 1991.  Even with the expanded length, that's quite a jump for just a decade's passing!

I'll pick up with 51 next.              

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 15

Chapter 44 gets a few expansions.  Among other changes, Larry Underwood swears a bit more in the beginning, thinks a bit more about the death of Rita Blakemoor, remembers ditching his motorcycle and starting to walk, gets discovered (and nearly killed) by Nadine Cross and Joe earlier, rummages in a store, enjoys the seashore a bit more, wonders about Nadine and Joe a bit more when he does meet them (when Joe tries to kill him yet again), remembers a musician friend who descended into and rose out of drug addiction, plays a bit more music, and humorously fancies himself as a Scotland Yard detective.  Nadine gets a large section of the chapter, in which King fleshes out more of her and Joe's background and has Nadine save Larry's life again (Joe wishes to cut Larry's throat while he sleeps).  This addition makes Nadine a much more sympathetic character than she is in the earlier version, though King makes up for that by making her a bit more antagonistic to Mother Abagail in the dream scene.  The characters' discovery of all the abandoned cars on the highway gets more detailed, as does their discovery of the message left on the barn and their visits to the motorcycle dealership and Stovington.  Lucy Swann's introduction gets more details as well.

Quite a few brand names get changed in this chapter.  For example, Harold Lauder really enjoys Payday and not Milky Way candy bars in 1990.  I wonder if King's own tastes changed since both brands were probably still around in both eras.  Another interesting change is that Harold's carving of his and Fran Goldsmith's initials gets a heart with an arrow illustration this time, though the text still reads, "In a heart.  With an arrow." which is probably unnecessary in this edition.

Chapter 45 is next.  The middle of this book has some long chapters!        

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 14

Chapter 28 gets expanded similarly to how Chapter 27 did.  The scene with Fran Goldsmith and the pie also includes an incident where Fran burns french fries, remembers seeing the massacre in the tv station on tv, and recalls a town hall meeting in which the citizens decided to barricade the town.  The scene where Fran buries her father is also expanded to include more details of how she got his corpse out of the house.

Chapter 29 gets a minor expansion after Stuart Redman knocks Elder, a soldier Stu believes is out to kill him, out and details Stu wondering if perhaps Elder hadn't come to kill him.

Chapter 30 is a short chapter that just gets fiddled with and, as a result, gets expanded a tad.

Chapter 31 is a new chapter, detailing Randall Flagg brutally getting his forged papers and a car from a dying Christopher Bradenton.

Chapter 32 gets a minor expansion where Lloyd Henreid masturbates after he kills the rat.

Chapter 33 is another new chapter, featuring Nick Andros getting attacked by and then killing Ray Booth, the ringleader of the thugs who beat him up when he first arrived in Shoyo.

Chapter 34 is basically the same, just the usual minor fidgets such as when King corrects "trustee" to "trusty" when Trashcan Man reminisces about being in prison.

Chapter 35 gets majorly expanded at the beginning and features Rita Blakemoor and Larry Underwood discussing leaving New York City.  A sex scene in the middle of the chapter gets expanded as well.  King adds a scene where the characters outfit themselves for the journey in a sporting goods store, including a quote from The Lord Of The Rings, one of King's inspirations for the novel.  The scene where the characters leave Manhattan also gets a couple of expansions (a man offers Larry a million dollars for fifteen minutes with Rita and Larry and Rita's reunion runs a bit longer).  As with almost all the chapters, there are minor changes as well.

Similarly, Chapter 36 gets some expansions.  Fran's nursing of Gus Dinsmore is described in more detail, Fran and Harold Lauder discuss how to walk across New England, and Harold explains why he brought the paint down from the barn roof.

Chapter 37 gets a few expansions during Stu's conversation with Glen Bateman such as when Glen discusses plagues striking at the end of a century.  Of course, most of the expansions involve dialogue by Glen, a character who loves to talk.

Chapter 38 is another new chapter, the last for some time.  In it, King provides more slice of life scenes of how the superflu affected people who survived it across the USA.  They all die, showcasing in particular the general comments, from the previous chapter, Glen had about how people would cope.

Chapter 39 gets a few expansions such as Lloyd thinking guiltily about his eating of the corpse in the next cell. 

Chapter 40 deletes the accident Nick has (which explained how he was injured without the Ray Booth attack) and the recovery of his eye.  His recovery overall gets more detailed.

Chapter 41 has a longer beginning which features Larry remembering his rejection of an earlier camping trip.  The narrator also mentions Irma Fayette, a minor character from Chapter 38.  The end of the chapter also gets expanded and seems to feature Flagg passing through the town Larry is spending the night in.

Chapter 42 has a few minor expansions but is essentially the same.

Chapter 43 features several new scenes:  Nick and Tom Cullen having a conversation, Nick thinking about Tom, Nick and Tom hiding in a barn's storm cellar from a tornado, details of the tornado's aftermath, Nick and Tom encountering a herd of buffalo, and Nick wishing for a car and driver to give them a ride.  The scenes where Tom plays with toy cars, Nick finds a bike for Tom, they cross the Kansas border, they meet Julie Lawry get extended, and they meet Ralph Brentner get extended.  Their leaving town is altered a bit, and King drops the mention of Rand McNally when Nick uses an atlas to plot their course to Nebraska.

I'll pick up with 44 next.     

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 13

Chapter 27 gets an expanded version of Larry Underwood's reminiscences. Instead of breaking from the past into the present after telling how Larry fell out with his friend Rudy Schwartz, the story continues to tell how Larry met his girlfriend Yvonne Wetterlen and lost her as well. The expansion makes Larry's meeting later that chapter with Rita Blakemoor all the more poignant.

On to 28 next!

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 12

Chapter 26 gets majorly expanded.  In the 1978 paperback, it's 4 pages.  In the 1990 hardback, it's 20.  So far, no other chapter has gotten this much expansion, and I want to say that no other one coming up does either, but we'll deal with that question as we progress further in the novel.  Chapter 26 is mainly atmospheric and has that 1970s paranoia about the country falling apart in such full effect that one wonders if Mr. King was getting high by smoking a potent mixture of the Pentagon Papers and the Watergate Tapes.  This aspect of King surfing the zeitgeist is one of my favorite aspects of the novel anyhow, so I quite enjoyed this expanded chapter.  Let's see.  We have campus radicals; newscasters having a shootout with the army and taking over the airwaves; samizdat editions of newspapers; a talk radio host getting executed on air; a massacre at Kent State University that makes the one on May 4, 1970 look like a minor incident; black nationalists taking revenge on white supremacy one white person at a time live on tv; some last lies from a dying president of the USA; and much much more.  Basically, this chapter shows the lengths the government goes to in an attempt to cover up the superflu, and the utter evil and futility of those efforts as the truth comes out and most of the population dies.

One notable change is the shift of the talk radio show's telephone numbers from 656-8600 and 656-8601 to 555-8600 and 555-8601 (too many King fans annoyed people with the original numbers perhaps?).

Chapter 27 isn't quite as exciting, but it starts a new phase in the novel.  After Chapter 26, civilization as the characters knew it is over; it's postapocalypse time now!  We'll pick up there next.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 11

Chapter 23 has the usual minor expansion and fiddling, for the most part.  For example, Kings adds a bit to the sentence "He would read as his supper cooked over a small, smokeless campfire, it didn't matter what; words from some battered and coverless paperback novel" making it "He would read as his supper cooked over a small, smokeless campfire, it didn't matter what; words from some battered and coverless paperback porno novel, or maybe Mein Kampf, or an R. Crumb comic book, or one of the baying reactionary position papers from the American Firsters or the Sons of the Patriots.  When it came to the printed word, Flagg was an equal opportunity reader."

Chapter 24 has more expansion.  The scene with Lloyd Henreid and his lawyer is quite longer, and Lloyd finds out that, due to a recent Supreme Court case, he may be executed within the month.  One odd thing is that later in the chapter, a prisoner who attacks Lloyd gets a pack of cigarettes, but King changes the brand from Pall Malls to Tareytons.  Both brands were seemingly still made in both time periods, so why the switch?  Maybe King switched brands himself.  I doubt he researched the preferences of prisoners, but it's King, so perhaps he did.

Chapter 25 has two similar expansions, first when Nick Andros rides a bicycle to leave town to find help and then later when Jane Baker dies.

Chapter 26 gets expanded even more, and I will pick up there next. 

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 10

Most of the additional chapters in the revised version of The Stand occur early in the novel, and Chapter 20 is one of them (and, yes, when a novel has 78 chapters, Chapter 20 is still early).  The chapter focuses on Fran Goldsmith figuring out what to do with her life now that she is pregnant.  It's essentially a characterization chapter, which is why it probably got cut from the earlier, shorter version of the novel.  Fran hangs about in a hotel, King makes an AC/DC joke, and Fran's mother gets the flu, as Captain Trips starts hitting Maine hard.

The next chapter featuring Stu Redman only has some minor revisions, but the following chapter is quite expanded.  One minor revision in it though is quite fun.  In Chapter 22, King updates the reference from Jimmy Carter to George Bush.  So, instead of a description of the President of the USA as the "Georgia Giant" and a "clod-hopper"; he gets called "The dirty alderman."  Despite their shared Maine background, it appears King might have liked Bush less than he did Carter.  Then again, he also deletes the line, "The night that man had been elected had been a night of horror for him, and for all thinking men", but since the thought is attached to Len Creighton, who is one of the men responsible for the flu, it's probably just a reflection of the fact that Carter was not perceived as militaristic as his predecessors Nixon and Ford were, and thus might have been viewed as a threat by men such as Creighton to the military's development of biological weapons, and perhaps to Creighton's livelihood of war in general.

The expansion of the chapter involves Billy Starkey's suicide in the Project Blue laboratory where the superflu escaped from.  Before he goes though, Starkey pulls Frank D. Bruce's head out of the bowl of soup he had died in, a fact that had bothered Starkey when he observed it over the surveillance cameras.  As Creighton, who had taken over the command post from Starkey, notices though, Starkey was unsuccessful in clearing all the soup out of the man's eyebrows, which now becomes a fixation for Creighton, perhaps a suggestion by King that though the individuals change, the role remains about the same.

I'll pick up next with Chapter 23, which focuses on Randall Flagg, the novel's major villain (assuming you forgive Starkey, Creighton, and the rest of the military for messing with the superflu in the first place). 

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 9

The first thing that stands out about Chapter 19 of The Stand is that it has a picture in it.  The 1990 edition has several illustrations by Bernie Wrightson (or Berni; the spelling of his first name seems to vary), perhaps best known as the co-creator of the comics character Swamp Thing.  Wrightson had collaborated with King before on Creepshow and Cycle of the Werewolf.  Strangely, these illustrations are dated 1984 and 1985, suggesting that the revised Stand had a long gestation period.  The first one is of Larry taking care of his dying mother. In general, the illustrations don't add much to the novel, but they're a nice touch and a nod to the old tradition of novels with illustrations which had mostly died out in the 20th Century.

Beyond the inclusion of the illustration, other changes in this chapter are minor.  One interesting one is that King dropped a complaint from Larry's mother about the hospital emergency room being "full of Puerto Ricans".  One might suspect that the more politically correct times of 1990 made that 1970s ethnic complaint a bit taboo, but since he leaves in some of Alice Underwood's other ethnic and racist slurs in the text, it's probably just a result of his fiddling with the text.  The man is a thorough reviser.

I'll pick up next with Chapter 20, which appears to be a new chapter.  

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 8

Chapter 17 in the 1990 edition is an all new chapter, which features Billy Starkey observing the carnage in the military compound that unleashed the superflu and deciding the government should cover up the flu's existence and origin by killing anyone who stumbles upon the truth.  The chapter cuts to another scene where a Houston reporter and photographer get murdered by undercover military personnel.  In addition to fleshing out Starkey a bit, the chapter makes the handwringing about government and authority in the later Boulder Free Zone scenes more thematically powerful.

Chapter 18 picks up the storyline from the earlier edition again and features Nick Andros becoming the new sheriff by default  in Shoyo, Arkansas.  Oddly enough, the expanded chapter seems to be missing a paragraph from the earlier edition where Nick lowers his head to avoid lip-reading insults from the prisoners.  Otherwise, it seems to have the usual fiddling and minor expansions until the end of the older chapter, to which King adds a few more pages in which the sheriff and most of the town dies, saddling Nick with taking care of the men who assaulted him.  The doctor who treats Nick also notes that the town appears to be blockaded by the army and all the phones are dead, which continues the storyline from the previous chapter about the government trying to cover up the superflu, or barring that, its victims.

Chapter 19 moves to Larry Underwood and New York, and I'll pick up there next.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 7

The new Chapter 13 gets expanded a bit where Stu Redman banters/duels with Dick Deitz, and, of course, also has the usual minor fiddling such as removing the italics from "The man with no face" when Stu dreams of Randall Flagg.  The big change is a major expansion in the middle of the old chapter.  King adds a chapter where Deitz tape records an account of the research on Stu and then takes the material from the end of the old chapter involving the nurse Patty Greer and makes it into a short chapter of its own.  Chapter 16 is essentially the same as the old chapter 12 with some minor fiddling (for example, Nehi becomes Jolt in the gas station shootout scene).

Chapter 17 is brand new though, and I'll pick up there next.

Changes In Stephen King's The Stand 1978-1990 Part 6

In the 1990 edition of The Stand, Chapter 8 gets expanded at the end and the reader gets a few more paragraphs detailing how the flu spreads across the country.  Chapter 9 gets a few more details about Larry Underwood's one night stand with the oral hygienist, and Larry's mom buys him a Sara Lee cheesecake with strawberries in addition to all the things she bought him in the earlier edition.  That last addition is odd, but I haven't heard that Stephen King received any sort of product placement money for the novel, so it's probably just a minor detail meant to add to the realistic feel of the novel (well, as realistic as an apocalyptic novel gets anyway) that got cut when the original manuscript got edited.

More major changes happen in Chapters 11 and 12, which aren't the 11 and 12 in the earlier edition.  The 1990 edition has 78 chapters whereas the earlier version has only 68, so, in addition to the various other changes, King adds ten new chapters to the book.

Chapter 11, the first of those new chapters, involves Larry visiting his mother at her workplace, where she lectures him about how selfish he is and then gives him money to go see a movie until she's done working.  He goes and sees one of the Nightmare On Elm Street movies.  Chapter 12 involves Frannie Goldsmith fighting with her mother over Frannie's pregnancy.  Both chapters certainly aren't essential for the plot, but are nice ways for King to develop the characters a bit more, especially for Larry's guilt complex and Frannie's concerns about motherhood.  Interestingly enough, both chapters involve the protagonists having conflicts with their mothers.

Chapter 13 returns to one of the chapters in the earlier edition, where Stu Redman gets some answers about his quarantine.  I'll pick up there tomorrow.