Dracula

Today is Tanabata, the Star Festival but I'm just not in the mood. Usually J's grandfather goes out and cuts an enormous piece of bamboo and then we all spend the night decorating it with shiny things and twirly things and long strips of origami paper with our wishes written on them. It has been raining like mad, I've been home alone watching all sorts of sad and depressing movies. And I find I just can't get out of this gloomy mood.

This vampire mood.

Now I was never on that vampire wagon. I haven't so much as seen an entire episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (although recently I feel the urge). I was much too old for goth and probably wouldn't have done it anyway. Marilyn Manson is just a poser, bleh!

But, I just finished reading The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova and quite liked it. I felt I learned something in those eight hundred pages. I figured I might as well read the original Dracula while I'm on the kick.

Bram Stoker was pretty much bedridden until he was seven years old. He recovered, the doctors all said miracle, and went on to become an athlete even. Stoker was busines manager for Henry Irving's theater for most of his life. They were best buds. He researched for eight years before he wrote Dracula. He also wrote like twelve other novels, three non fiction books, several short story collections and then handfuls and hanfuls of other short stories. I read somewhere that at age 38 (I believe) he decided he wanted a law degree and four years later was called to the Bar. The man was smart.

Here is Bram.

Although I am not even half way done with the book my first shock came when I discovered Dracula did not look like this!

Not at all. He in fact had white hair, big fluffy eyebrows that met in the middle and a big white fluffy moustache! Well, at least so far. He tends to grow more youthful after gorging.

An even bigger shock is how much I like the book. It is much better than I thought it would be. I don't know what I expected, but I am very much enjoying it. Even more than The Historian and even more than Anne Rice's Interview with the Vampire.

Remember Disco Duck? The song? Well, in Japan there was no duck. They had Disco Dracula. Some German band. Just as cheesy.