I think my mind has finally reached bullshit overload. Lately I've been noticing that when I start to read a newspaper or magazine article that is really superfluous to my life's concerns, I start to feel fatigue in my brain, almost as if the tissues are saying, "We can't accept anymore of this information." As if my brain is a weightlifter who has got to a point in his training where pressing extra poundage really won't make a difference and might even be harmful. I am drawing upon my bodybuilder friend Rexx's comments for this last analogy, because the heaviest thing I lift these days are overgrown coffee table books.

Anyway, this resistance doesn't happen with everything, but it's become more noticeable of late; especially when I'm reading the nonsense in the tabloids. My eyes and head just refuse to cooperate to peruse the article, and I wearily turn the page. When you're reading a tabloid, of course, there's a good chance there will next be a picture of some starlet on the red carpet, which doesn't take much brain power to tangle with.

For somebody who has used his brain to make his living and his way in the world, mine often feels mighty tired lately. The fairly mindless activity of watching strippers dance on a stage, therefore, is quite suited to me at this time.

Strangely enough, however, reading a complicated mystery novel like The Deadly Percheron, which I wrote about here a few days ago, was a pleasant task for my noggin. Perhaps that's one of the salutary effects of reading puzzle-like fiction; it's like a workout for the brain.

I'm reading a suspense novel by Georges Simenon now called Red Lights. It was made into a movie a year or two ago, and I plan to see the film after I finish the book. I like to compare the literary versus the cinematic modes of storytelling...another way of exercising my brain, I guess.

I might not lift iron in a gym, but I certainly work out a lot in my head.

So sign me up for Einstein's Gym.

I mentioned Sylvia Lopez last night when discussing Hercules Unchained.

She was a European actress who died young of leukemia, just as her career was starting to heat up; but she made memorable appearances in a number of sword-and-sandal films.

She plays the wife of the infamous Herod the Great in the film of the same name, but her greatest role was as Omphale, Queen of Lydia, in Hercules Unchained (1960).

Her sequence in this film is a masterpiece of late 50s cinematic excess. The art director, makeup artists, costume designers, and cinematographer Mario Bava went all-out to visualize one of the most dominant, yet vulnerable, females in movie history.

In the film, Hercules (Steve Reeves) is brought to Omphale's island (every temptress should have an island) after he loses his memory by drinking from the waters of forgetfulness. After she disposes of her previous boy-toy by having her specially imported Egyptian funerary specialists turn him into a human statue, she places Herc on her couch of love. The word "cozy" doesn't even scratch the surface here. What makes the scene so overwhelmingly great is how Omphale teases the mighty Hercules, drenching him in the hypnotic aura of her radiant narcissism. She even claims pearls become more beautiful after she wears them. I don't like overly vain women, but I would have made an exception for Omphale, who earns her vanity the old-fashioned way--by being more beautiful than any other female in the hemisphere. Anyway, after seducing (crushing?) Hercules thoroughly with the force of his own lust for her, Omphale plies him with even more forgetfulness water, and strips the beefcake not only of his dedication to physical action, hard work, and upright living, but gets him to sleep in the daytime so he has the night free for lovemaking!

It's fascinating to see Hercules really put his regimen behind him and devote himself to a life of pure fun...seemingly for the first time in his semi-immortal existence. It's happened to lesser men than Hercules...can you see me raising my hand?

If you're going to throw away a lifetime of good living, it might as well be with the Queen of Lydia, who is surrounded by a bevy of miniskirted attendants, limber dancing girls, as well as her personal army outfitted with great red cloaks and extremely cool helmets with bizarre fins.

Since Hercules is the hero, he eventually is brought back to his senses with an assist from his wily young buddy Ulysses (who later dreamed up the idea of the Trojan horse, just to show you how whip-smart Ulysses was).

But during the twenty or so minutes that Steve Reeves is enraptured by Sylvia Lopez, the viewer is truly in celluloid paradise.

Check out the link below to the fantastic site WOmWam (which stands for Women Overwhelming men, Women Attacking men), to see some photos of Sylvia, her face immortalized by the great lighting of Mario Bava, who went on to direct such stylish films as Hercules in the Haunted World and Blood and Black Lace.

Who needs drugs when there are movies with images like this? In fact, I shudder to think what it would have been like to watch this on drugs...

SylviaLopez

Well, two Hercules movies on DVD calmed me down...as well as half a bottle of Dr. Brown's black cherry soda and a few chocolate truffles...I better watch the sweets...and the butter too: the other night over our chicken dinners my bodybuilder friend Rexx asked me if I thought I was Orson Welles when I ordered extra butter for my baked potato, and they brought me a plate with ten little pats...and, um, I used about six of them...

Anyway, tonight I watched the original Hercules with Steve Reeves and the lovely Sylva Koscina, and the even more memorable sequel Hercules Unchained, with the unforgettable Sylvia Lopez as the queen who weaves a spell of forgetfulness over Hercules and turns him from a hard-working and upright hero into a lazy, wine-guzzling semi-gigolo...hmm, I'd enjoy a job like that if Miss Lopez was my boss...although I don't think I'd care to be a victim of her methods of termination...fun job, nice environment, but high turnover...

More on this tomorrow.

I'm in such a bad mood that I can't even post today. I wrote a huge post full of bile, and I deleted it. Everything feels curdled in rage...to put it succinctly, while dealing with my own financial troubles today, I got totally pissed off seeing newspaper stories about the mega-millions David Beckham and his cruel-eyed wife Victoria wallow in...as well as all the previous weekly stories about the divorces and bloated bank accounts of other wealthy athletes. Scientists talk about the dangers of secondhand smoke in our society...how about the dangers of secondhand cheesiness and greed? Not to mention the fact that these guys don't deserve to make money like this for what they actually do...

The ostentatious display of undeserved wealth in this country is reaching a point of horrifying overload. If only I could stop reading or listening to the news, period...

I'll reply to the comments people kindly left me tomorrow. I've had enough of the modern world today...I'm going back in time now to ancient Rome or Greece...via the Sword and Sandal Machine.

A late post tonight. First I had some computer trouble and I had to shut the iMac down for awhile, and in the interim I did some work on a freelance project. But now here I am...

So I was telling you about The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin, published in trade paperback by Millipede Press, www.millipedepress.com. It was first published in 1946 and was just reprinted for the first time in thirty years.

I’ll try to be vague enough in describing the story so I don’t spoil it for you, but if you don’t like to know anything about a book when you read it, come back to this entry another time. This is the basic outline: In 1943, a psychiatrist attempts to help a young man who is exhibiting bizarre behavior that seems more humorous than malevolent. This leads the doctor to become victimized in a complicated and murderous plot. After being attacked, he gets amnesia and loses his identity, his livelihood, and his wife. He is accused of being mentally ill and is locked in a mental hospital. How he gets out of the hospital is one of the best parts of the book...grim, but brilliant. It also makes the character of the psychiatrist really come alive as a professional in his field, so it's a great blend of suspense and character. He retreats to the edges of society, working near the amusement parks of Coney Island under a new identity...the physical legacy of his amnesiac experience is something terrible that happened to his body, but he has no idea how it occurred or why...eventually he finds his way back to the people who knew him, rediscovers his identity, but the damage has been done...he just wants to find out WHY. And he does...the explanation almost doesn’t seem up to the awfulness of what’s he gone through, but it’s satisfying enough in the way of 1940s noir fiction and cinema.

What made this nightmarish book impossible to put down? Again, the character of the psychiatrist. Through his ordeal he remains a bright and decent individual struggling to figure out why he’s suddenly plunged into a nightmare...the book is written so beautifully that every bit of description and dialogue holds your eyes to the page. As I said, the murder plot is extremely complicated...but you read it and try to keep it all in your mind as if your own sanity depends on it. Yes, a couple of the twists are so weird that they really send shivers down your back...you can feel how it awful it would be to experience such reversals. You can identify with this decent man thrown into horrors he doesn't deserve, and his reactions all the way through seem realistic and logical, which makes your empathy for him all the stronger. The bodies pile up...the horror doesn’t end...until things are resolved in a dramatic climax with a monstrous character. The horror continues in the very last line of the book...but gains a dimension of sadness there, too.

And the meaning of the title? Those big horses, percherons, which are used to pull things like beer wagons, turn up at the scenes of the crimes...there is an explanation, and it makes sense why; it makes sense, that is, in the logic of the killer’s murderous envy and hatred.

It’s amazing that a book like this could have been out of print for so many years. I’ll have to re-read it again soon, because I get the feeling that it’ll have a whole other level to enjoy now that I know where the plot is heading. Good books are often like that...

So if I’ve whetted your appetite for The Deadly Percheron, check it out. I hope the publishers will start reprinting some of the author’s other fiction. John Franklin Bardin died in 1981, and he published ten novels in all, plus a final, unpublished one called I Love You, Terribly, the first three chapters of which are included along with The Deadly Percheron. The book also has an introduction by contemporary novelist Jonathan Lethem, which presents a few ideas about the character of the psychiatrist that merit consideration--but for which a second reading of the book may first be necessary.

Ah, a bookworm's work is never done!