Michael Prescott's Blog

Black holes sing the blues

I just had to link to this amazingly well written and fascinating New York Observer essay that seamlessly combines three subjects of enduring interest: synesthesia, black holes, and Emmylou Harris. (Hat tip: Powerline.)

My favorite part:

So I’m sitting at a table in a hotel lounge with Emmylou Harris. [ ] And she’s talking about synesthesia and black holes....

She [ ] told me the story of a guy in one of her bands, Roy Huskey Jr., a bass player who told her that he had synesthesia: He saw musical notes as colors. And she remembered that he’d always say that, alone of all the notes, B flat was “very, very, very black,” really, really dark.

“The funny thing is,” she then told me, “I was reading the paper a while ago, and I came upon a report that black holes are now reported to emit sounds. And that the sound emitted is … B flat!”

It sounded too good to be true, but when I returned home and Googled the matter, it seemed to be quite true.

Google “black hole” and “B flat” and you get 3,500 entries with evocative titles such as (and these are the top three on the Google stack):

“Black hole sings the deepest B-flat”—MSNBC

“Black Hole Strikes Deepest

Musical Note Ever Heard”— space.com

“Black hole hums B flat”—BBC News.

A couple of qualifications: It’s not clear that all black holes emit the B-flat sound. (And the B flat, by the way, is the B flat 57 octaves below middle C). But there’s this one ginormous black hole in the Perseus cluster of galaxies, 250 light-years from here, that seems to have been humming B flat for 2.5 billion years!

That’s one lonely, sad-sounding, one-note black hole.

It conjures up the ultimate vision of universal cosmic sadness: a universe of black holes humming sadly to each other from behind their event horizons. Sadness built into the very structure of the cosmos, sorrow woven into the fabric of space-time.

The above link is valid as of today, but the story is sure to be archived after that. If I can find a permanent link, I'll add it in the comments section.

I love this story. I mean, didn't you just know that it's sorrow, not love, that's built into the deep structure of this sad old world? 

Damnation!

Most of the emails I get are very polite and interesting. But occasionally the moonbats take flight. Here's one I received today, from a gentleman in Scotland (my ancestral home) who took somewhat belated exception to an old essay I posted about Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ - or more specifically, about a Vanity Fair piece by Christopher Hitchen attacking that movie a few weeks before its release.

I post this partly because I think it's funny, but mainly because it illustrates a point I sometimes make (for instance, here) - that people who are vehemently hostile to religion are very often just hostile in general. It all has to do with the ego, which religion asks us to transcend and overcome. Hostile people are ego-driven, and they naturally see religion as an attack and a threat.

Please note: I'm not saying that all anti-religious folks are hostile; I'm just saying that some of them are. And yes, some religious people are hostile, too - even downright murderous. But their conception of religion needs work.

One small point: The emailer says I haven't even seen Gibson's film. This was true when I wrote the essay, since the film had not yet come out. But of course I have seen it now. For the most part I liked it, though I found some of the historical reconstructions questionable. 

Anyway, here's the email, reproduced unedited except for the deletion of expletives. The author's name has been removed to save him from embarrassment.

Hey, just read your article lambasting Christopher Hitchens and his stunning critique of a disgusting bilge of a film The Passion of the Christ.

Maybe you should re-read the original Vanity Fair article, or are you scared of people thinking you are a leftist 'elite', a phrase you constantly use in your 'essay'. Not surprising as your writing shows you up as the derivitive mental eunuch you are.

I don't normally speak such hatred for an author, but your predictable rubbish (that's your books by the way) is embarrassing. I can't believe you are even published. Maybe your crap is exciting or well written to a lonely 35 year old that still lives with his parents, but I actually find the fact that you are published, offensive. I work in a bookshop here in Scotland, and if we are ever crazy enough to order your books in I will hide them under a table where no-one can buy them. It's kind of a clean up the world from philistine writers service.

Your contention that Gibson is an ok guy just wanting to make his little film, and seem to dismiss the idea that the film is any way ideologically loaded (which with any film is IMPOSSIBLE, read Foucault or someone with an IQ, although I can't imagine it being hard to find someone that would challenge you), is folly in any sense. So what, people didn't actually find the film offensive about Jews -- the IDEA was there, and Gibson sought to perputuate lies.

Also, it interests me that you write such a damning account of Hitchens, when by your own admission, you have never seen said film!! You write, 'They do not want any testaments to religious faith.' Wrong. We just don't want sanctimonious, right wing drivel. You'll know all about writing drivel, of course.

I hope you will forgive my tone, no actually, I don't, because I have no sympathy for such a boring thriller-by-numbers monkey as yourself.

Damnation awaits purveyors of rubbish (I scarce use the word to describe you) literature like yourself. GO read a thesaurus and CHALLENGE your reader. WHy do you sit around and write such tripe. I...just...don't...understand...it. When you can write with even half the eloquence or erudition of someone like Hitchens, you may just be fit to kiss his feet.

Please be a better writer for all our sakes, or for f***'s sake just stop altogether and stop crowding the shelves with tripe like your own.

Writer's are supposed to CHALLENGE people. But you're one of these, 'I don't want people to think I'm an elitist' idiots. Why are you so scared to try and do something original for f***'s sake?

Here's hoping you find a good writer's club ...

Men of glass

Today I understood something about the appeal of the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand, who was an influence on me in my younger days. What occurred to me -- and what seems quite obvious now that I think about it -- is that Rand's iconic heroes are a picture of personal strength exactly as it would be seen by a very insecure person.

Let's take the character who is probably the best known exemplar of Rand's ideal man, Howard Roark of The Fountainhead. Roark is characterized by an absolute, steely indifference to anyone and anything around him. He simply cannot be hurt by the world. He cannot be hurt by other people, whose opinions are of no consequence to him whatsoever. He cannot be hurt by external events, which he shrugs off, no matter how painful they might seem to be. He cannot be hurt even by his own emotions because, as Rand makes clear, whatever pain he feels goes down only to a certain point -- not a very deep point -- and then stops. The Fountainhead's most famous image is of Roark blasting away at granite in a rock quarry, and Roark himself is a man of granite, the man Simon and Garfunkel might have had in mind when they sang, "I am a rock, I am an island ..."

Now isn't this exactly the image of the human ideal that would appeal to a highly insecure individual?

Imagine for a moment that you are an insecure teenager -- which is almost a redundancy, because teenagers are, by nature, insecure. Their lives and characters are unformed, their future is uncertain, peer pressure is great, and the ego rides herd over their every action. This is natural; it is just what it means to be teenager, any teenager. And so it should be no surprise that that it is among teenagers that Rand's books, especially The Fountainhead, have their greatest appeal, and that most new converts to her philosophy are between 15 and 19 years old.

As an insecure teenager, you are perpetually in danger of having your feelings hurt. Every whisper, every glance, every smirk or laugh is an arrow in the heart of your fragile self-esteem. The world is a threatening and unpredictable place, and what wouldn't you give to rise above it all, to be immune to any possible criticism or derision or humiliation or ostracism? What wouldn't you give to be free of all that, and to know that nothing could hurt you in any way, ever again? What wouldn't you give, in other words, to be Howard Roark?

I think this is why teenagers in particular, and insecure people in general, are drawn to Rand's vision. In her pristine, untouchable heroes, elevated above common humanity and safely insulated from any possible emotional upset, insecure readers find an escape from their own vulnerabilities. Howard Roark is their ideal. Nothing can hurt him, because nothing can touch him. They long to be like him. He is -- they think -- strong.

But they are mistaken.

Because the truth is, we do not become stronger by withdrawing from the world or from our own feelings. We do not achieve inner peace and serenity by becoming a rock and an island. The more we retreat, the more fearful we become. The more we hide, the more things we feel the need to hide from. The more out of touch we are with ourselves and with those around us, the more unpredictable life seems to be. In real life, the man of granite is as fragile as glass.

This is probably why Rand's philosophy ultimately proves unsatisfactory for most of its adherents, and why most converts to Objectivism drop out of the movement within a few years. Readers of Rand's fiction come to realize that their escape hatch from the world has turned out to be dead end, that their role model is only a false idol.

The strong person engages with the world and is willing to be hurt by it. Rand's heroes have never progressed that far. They are not an ideal. They represent, not a goal to be reached, but a way station that most of us have already left behind.

It's just weird

I don't talk about politics very much on this blog, because so many other bloggers are covering that front. But today I encountered a bizarre stream of comments excited by Harry Shearer's latest contribution to The Huffington Post. These comments are so off-the-wall, so downright weird, that they deserve mention.

Writing of the prime-time introduction of Supreme Court nominee John Roberts, Shearer observes that President Bush made some odd jaw movements:

During the announcement remarks, George W. Bush unveiled a (to me, at least) entirely new facial movement, and it was a trimphant debut, since the movement/tic/signal was repeated more than a dozen times.

This seems to be a lightearted remark, not meant to inspire any deep thoughts. But many of Shearer's readers find a darker truth behind this minor observation. And this is where it gets strange.

Here's a sampling of their comments, which were apparently meant to be taken seriously:

Many have noticed Bush's tics before- this is a new one to me, but it definitely looks like a facial tic. Now the cause of the tics could be many: some have surmised mild tourette syndrome ... or his prior cocaine abuse. I'm no neurologist, but I'd guess a combination of both.

Maybe he did some of his old cocaine and was just grinding his jaw like mad.

Yes, I was so distracted by Bush's jaw moving down & to the left, every time there was a pause in his speech! Seems to me that during one of the Kerry debates, that Bush was drooling from the edge of his lip also. At that time, a doctor who watched the debate, said it was some ? condition, & the doctor seemed very concerned there was something medically wrong with him & the White House was keeping it from the public. He also mentioned possibility of a particular medication he (Bush) might be on....& it had something to do with all those years of alcohol/drugs??

At this point, a voice of sanity with the screen name Stutefish enters the deebate, providing the simple (and funny) explanation:

Roberts's son was horsing around off camera. The facial contortions you saw were those of a man trying to keep a straight face in an unexpectedly funny situation ...

Quite true, as the accompanying photos show. (Click on images to enlarge. Hat tip to GOP Vixen.) The rambunctious four-year-old had decided to perform a spontaneous dance for the assembled reporters, and Bush was doing his best not to break out in laughter.

Case closed? Not at all. The idiotic comments continue unabated, as if poor Stutefish had never spoken.

Hmmm. Could be temporo mandibular joint disorder (TMJ.) ...then again, it could be meth mouth.

Believe me, it's the result of years of cocaine use. I have a couple of friends in their late forties. They abused big time for over a decade...not any more. And they still do the jaw side-to-side bit (just like they did when they were doing the deed). The man - in so many ways - is the epitome of years and years of drug and alcohol abuse.

Randi [i.e., Air America Radio host Randi Rhodes] was talking about it on her show yesterday. She said it's definitely a sign of cocaine use.

What really concerns me is that Bush is exhibiting what is commonly known among gamblers and grifters as a "tell". This is an affect or facial tic that indicates when someone is lying or bluffing. The total picture I see is one of a person who doesn't know what the truth is anymore.

Isn't bush on antidepressants? Some of the SSRI's can cause tics.

I saw the jaw movement as well, and my first thought was that he's on crystal meth.

Could it be an early sign of tardive dyskinesia from the psychotropic medications he's allegedly given to control his rages? (Not that the meds are doing their job . . . )

my Dad has to take a drug called Dexadrin (also used by fighter pilots in the us airforce, also know as the goal pill...) which is a speed prescribed by psychiatrists for depressed people in certain cases. My fathers expressions of biting his teeth is exactly the same as the president...... maybe he is being medicated ?????

The odd jaw movement may be the results of medication. Tardive dyskinesia is a movement disorder that may result from extended therapy with certain antipsychotic medications such as haloperidol. The condition is characterized by involuntary, rhythmic movements of the face, jaw, mouth, and tongue, such as lip pursing, chewing movements, or protrusion of the tongue.

A friend of ours noticed the jaw thing during the debates last summer and she suggested that it was indicative of him doing cocaine or speed.

My theory is that the radio transmitter Bush wears on his back (remember the debate bulge?) occasionally short circuits and causes his facial muscles to do funny things like in high school biology when you touched a live wire to a frog's leg or in Abu Grahib when they touch electrical wires to prisoners' gonads.

Drugs, there are certain drugs, prescription and non that have this jaw flex side effect. Remember the halcyon daze?

Okay, so let's sum up. Roberts' little son starts acting up while Bush is introducing the nominee. Bush struggles to keep a straight face despite this humorous distraction. And from this, the good readers of Harry Shearer's blog deduce one or more of the following:

Bush is on antidepressants, Bush is on antipsychotic medication, Bush is on speed, Bush is on crystal meth, Bush is on cocaine, Bush is suffering flashbacks from years of cocaine abuse, Bush is a pathological liar, Bush has Tourette's Syndrome, Bush is wearing a hidden radio receiver. (I think the radio receiver idea was meant seriously, though with this crowd it's hard to be sure.)

Sigh.

Q & A

A reader with the screen name Sully asked me some questions about writing, which I'll try to answer here.

Sully started off by saying, Actually, part of me would like you to talk about your books more. Or at least, the construction of them.

I can understand that, but talking about my books is usually a little boring to me. I have written a fair amount about this subject on my Web site in the Interviews & Chats section. In this space I typically focus on other stuff.

1. Now that you've written all these books, do you have a good idea of how long it takes to do a first draft?

Normally it takes me a month or two to come up with an idea, another couple of months to develop the basic plot and do the initial research, and then about eight months to write the book (60 ms. pp. per month X 8 mos = 480 ms. pp. total). The eight months includes rewriting, which I usually do as I'm going along.

However, I am currently starting a more complex book that may take longer to do, because it requires more research and more work. So it's not a hard-and-fast rule.

I notice that a lot of thriller writers can pump one book out a year, more or less. Is this because you're contractually obligated to?

In some cases, yes. And there are writers who do two or even three books a year under different pen names (I'm not one of them). Some romance writers crank out a book every three weeks, although at a certain point, as someone once said, "That's not writing - it's typing!"

Can you reasonably predict a pace for yourself? The way a carpenter might know that they could create a canoe a week, say.

With experience you can predict the pace unless you're trying something new and difficult. Then it may be more of a crap shoot. Or it may just turn out to be crap ...

2. How much do you feel you have to offer something different up to your readers? That is, people buy thrillers partly because they are the same thing as before, with some variations. How conscious are you of changing up the mix, so to speak?

I try to figure out what works and stick with it but build on it. For me, I seem to do best with a female protagonist and a male villain. I don't know why;  it's just the way my mind works. Maybe the image of Diana Rigg in her skintight jumpsuit on The Avengers impressed itself so deeply in my preadolescent brain that I cannot get away from the idea of a female crime fighter. (That was one hell of a jumpsuit.) I have written male protagonists and, once, a female villain, but the male heroes tended to be flat and the female villain bore a disconcerting resemblance to Cruella de Ville. So I stick with the tried and true.

But I do like to evolve and try new things and stay apace with the market. For instance, standard cop-vs.-serial-killer books are pretty old-hat now. My last three books either did not involve a serial killer (Dangerous Games, where the villains were a pair of kidnappers), or put the serial killers into new situations (Next Victim, where a serial killer gets hold of a terrorist's weapon; In Dark Places, where a serial killer is mixed up in a conspiracy of dirty cops).

When I do new things, I alienate some fans but probably attract new ones. For instance, the killer of In Dark Places was a realistically depicted street criminal with a foul mouth and a streetwise attitude. Some readers were quite offended by him - they prefer the debonair, suave, Hannibal Lecter style of killer, I suppose. That's understandable, but I had already written my share of urbane killers, and I wanted to try a  more "urban" one instead.

3. How carefully do you outline beforehand?

I write up the whole plot as a 10- to 13-page synopsis. Normally I adhere to this fairly closely, but I feel free to invent new incidents as I go along, or to rearrange things. With Last Breath, I added a whole second climax that was not part of the synopsis. So I'm not married to the synopsis, or if I am, then I'm married to it in the same way that Bill is married to Hillary - for convenience.

4. I read somewhere, that usually the sale of a first book, if it's good, can garner a modest advance, and depending on how that book does, can garner a 2-book deal that is more generous. How common is this, do you think?

It's hard to say what conditions in the industry are like right now. What you describe was true when I was getting started back in the 1980s, and it remained true in the '90s. But most first (and second and third) novels are paperbacks, and there has been a big drop-off in paperback sales because of distribution problems. Supermarkets and drugstores have cut back on the number of paperbacks they display, leading to big drops in print runs. As a result, the situation today is more unpredictable.

In theory, if your first book sells well, it will lead to bigger advances. But ordinarily you have already signed your second contract before the first book has even come out. And to be honest, most first novels do not sell very well, anyway. Publishers are often willing to give a writer time to develop, but retailers are much less patient and will often be reluctant to order many copies of Book # 2 if Book #1 sold poorly. This is very shortsighted on the retailers' part, because it takes time to build an audience. In consequence, there is more pressure than ever to hit big right away - which is easier said than done.

Despite all the obstacles, though, new writers are published in large numbers every single year.

5. Do you have anyone in law enforcement fact-check for you after the first draft? For details and such?

I used to, but at the moment I don't. When I lived in L.A., I knew an LAPD officer who gave me a lot of inside info and was very helpful. But I'm not in L.A. anymore, and he's retired from the force anyway. Lately I have mostly done books with an FBI focus, and it is almost impossible to get anyone from the FBI to talk to you. Their rules forbid it even if the agent is retired. They are quite paranoid about the Bureau's image (it's a strange, insulated culture, the FBI). So I have had to rely on research - mainly Internet research, and also books.

Thanks for your questions. I appreciate your interest, but maybe you can see why I don't talk about this stuff too much. There are always so many negatives and difficulties to be faced in the publishing business that dwelling on them can get a little depressing. That's why I have not followed industry news or author blogs over the years, and why I don't want to do an author blog myself. It always turns into a whine-and-moan session.

The same thing happens when authors get together in person, by the way. It's just the way we are - miserable by nature!

Still beats working, though.

Shameless self-promotion

I don't usually promote my books on this blog, but not having much to say lately, I figured I would show the artwork for my upcoming thriller, Mortal Faults. The book will be published by Onyx Books in January and is a sequel to Dangerous Games.

Click on the image to make it bigger. The tagline is the same one used for Dangerous Games and is presumably a placeholder until a better line can be inserted.

War of the Worlds, revisited

All I can say is that this is one brilliant piece of satire that works on many different levels, all of them funny.

Bravo, Iowahawk!

Now where can I pick up one of those liqui-cushioned Kokomo Mogul 8s?

Fun with skeptics

It's amazing the lengths to which die-hard skeptics will go in order to defend their position. Winston Wu, in his valuable online essay debunking skepticism, mentions a particularly funny example of how the cornered skeptic refuses to yield to common sense.

He points out that skeptics often dismiss any "anecdotal" evidence as worthless, even if there is a great deal of it. Then he writes:

To give you an example of the ridiculous extent they will carry this argument to, I once tested the skeptics on my own list by asking them if they a) considered the feedback rating on Ebay.com to be of any significance, and b) if they would trust someone more if they had a higher feedback rating rather than a negative one, and c) if they would bid on an item from a person with a 99 percent positive feedback rating or someone with much less and many negative comments in their seller profile.  This was a no-win situation for them, for if they admitted that feedback ratings mattered in their decisions, then they would be acknowledging that anecdotal evidence was evidence after all.  If they didn’t, and remained consistent, then they would be denying a simple reality that every user of Ebay, even fools and children, knew, which was that the higher the positive feedback rating on a seller, the more reliable and trustworthy, and vice versa.  Yet these skeptics on my own list chose the latter, giving plenty of technical outlandish reasons for doing so, admitting that feedback ratings didn’t affect their decision, even claiming that they were too easily faked.  It was obvious they knew nothing about Ebay and the mechanisms set in place to prevent such things. 

Of course, knowing nothing of eBay did not prevent the die-hards from asserting absolute certainty about their (erroneous) positions. Wu concludes:

Obviously, this big argument of theirs that “anecdotal evidence is invalid” doesn’t even work with simple down to earth venues like online auctions, so why use it as a measuring tool for reality and truth?  Anyone with common sense knows that in regard to the Ebay test, they are utterly and completely wrong.  Yet, as I mentioned, these skeptics are not about truth or reality at all, but about playing philosophical word games.

To read the full account of the skeptics' latest humiliation, go to http://www.geocities.com/wwu777us/Debunking_Skeptical_Arguments.htm and scroll down to "The eBay Feedback Test that Skeptics Failed," under the heading of Argument #5.

Life before life

Although I am pretty well convinced that our minds survive death, I have never been partial to the reincarnation hypthesis. I realize that the majority of people on Earth do believe in reincarnation, and there are sophisticated religious and mystical traditions that endorse the idea. Personally, however, I just dislike the idea of an endless round of lives ... the dull repetition of the same heartbreak and disappointment ... and worst of all, having to go back to high school again and again!

Luckily, while there are a lot of data suggestive of reincarnation, other possible explanations are available.

The most impressive work in this field has been done by Dr. Ian Stevenson, a psychology professor (emeritus) at the University of Virginia who has investigated and logged thousands of cases of "spontaneous past life recall." Most of these cases take place in countries where belief in reincarnation is widespread - India, Pakistan, and Lebanon are three examples. Typically, a very young child, with no prompting, begins to talk about a past life, giving names and details that can be checked and verified. These cases differ from s0-called "past life memories" induced by hypnosis, which are much more dubious, since hypnotized subjects have a known tendency to confabulate. Of course, little kids can confabulate, too, but when their claims are tested by taking them to the site of their alleged past life, they have often proven remarkably adept at identifying friends, relatives, and significant locations from the life of the deceased.

Anyone who has studied Stevenson's work (and plowed through his rather dry prose) would be hard pressed to explain away the stronger cases in his collection as coincidence or fraud. Much of this material does seem to be paranormal in origin. But there are problems with ascribing all the case histories to reincarnation.

In a few (admittedly rare) cases, the child remembers a past life as a certain person, but it later develops that this person didn't die until after the child was born. This would cast doubt on the idea that the spirit of the deceased was actually reincarnated as the child.

Also, in most cases, the child remembers a past life that was relatively recent (within a generation) and that was lived in the same geographical area (maybe two or three villages away). But why would reincarnation involve spirits coming back to the same place and time?

And in a very large majority of cases, the deceased person died young, in pain and trauma because of some illness or violent act. "Past life" memories of old people who died peacefully in their sleep are rarely, if ever, found by Stevenson.

The deceased person typically has strong feelings of attachment to his family and home, often impelling the child to visit and "reestablish" old ties. In some cases the deceased seems anxious to bring his murderer to justice or to rectify some wrong done to him, or done by him.

When I add all this up, what I get is not reincarnation but  a different though equally outre explanation: earthbound spirits.

What, you ask, are earthbound spirits? According to centuries of mystical tradition and to many accounts delivered by mediums, some people are so severely traumatized by their own death that they remain stuck (for a time) on the earth plane, lingering near their old homes and families, trying to communicate in any way they can.

My guess is that such spirits, if they exist, would find it particularly easy to influence a small child, whose own personality has not fully developed. (They may also find it relatively easy to influence an adult whose ego has broken down because of mental illness - perhaps explaining the common psychotic symptom of "hearing voices" or experiencing personality shifts. And if the material obtained under hypnosis is of any value, possibly these spirits can influence a hypnotized mind more readily than an alert mind.)

Let's assume, for argument's sake, that these wayward spirits do linger near their old haunts (so to speak), trying to find some way to "get through" to the living. Now let's say that one of them finds a receptive child - a child who serves as a natural medium. Wouldn't the spirit channel its memory and personality through the child, using him as an instrument to get what it wants? And the child, unable to clearly distinguish between his own thoughts and those impressed on him, could easily mistake the alien memories for his own. What we would have, then, is an explanation that incorporates aspects of (unconscious) channeling and outright spirit possession - two phenomena that have been well documented in parapsychology literature.

I think this hypothesis addresses Stevenson's cases at least as well the reincarnation idea. Better, actually. Even the birthmarks found on some of these children, which are said to correspond to marks or wounds on the deceased, could be interpreted as a result of the effort of the earthbound spirit to impress itself on the child, just as stigmata, rashes, lesions, and similar features are sometimes observed in cases of possession.

Unlike memories that allegedly surface under hypnosis, the spontaneous "past life" memories of children typically fade as the children grow older. I wonder if the child's ego, as it develops, gradually pushes out the intruding spirit consciousness. Or perhaps the earthbound spirit loosens its hold on its former life and goes "toward the light."

The ape wonder of the world!

Okay, my favorite movie is King Kong.

Not the lame-o 1976 Dino DeLaurentiis remake, which had little to recommend it other than the debut of Jessica Lange, nice art design of the native village, a good score by John Barry, a cool full-size mechanical Kong hand, and some nice shots of the fallen Kong lying amidst smashed concrete at the base of the World Trade Center. (That may sound like a lot, but everything else - dumb script, aimless direction, hammy Charles Grodin as Carl Denham, ape-suited actor playing Kong, bad miniature sets, obviously phony giant mechanical snake, poor traveling matte work, unexciting climax, dated Deep Throat jokes - yeah, everything else was lousy.)

No, by King Kong I mean the one, the only, the original 1933 Kong, a classic of mood, atmosphere, pacing, and outsized romantic-adventure thrills.

And now it's being remade again - this time by Lord of the Rings impresario Peter Jackson, a lifelong Kong fan.

I was not, at first, very enthused by the prospect. Although Jackson did an outstanding job on Lord of the Rings, I wasn't sure how he would tackle King Kong. I tracked down an online copy of the Kong script he and a writing partner wrote back around around 1997, when he was first trying to get the film made. It was terrible - full of dumb, campy humor and irritating in-jokes. (Sorry - I don't know where to find it anymore, or even if it's still online.) I knew Jackson was rewriting the script, but even so, I feared the worst. Then I heard he had cast Jack Black as Carl Denham. Disaster! The movie was going to be a send-up. Look what they done to my Kong, ma ...

But now, having seen the trailer (which can be viewed online if you have QuickTime and either a fast modem or a lot of patience), I'm starting to be optimistic. Not that PJ's Kong will surpass or even equal the original; that was never a possibility. But I think it may well turn out to be a very good adventure film with a basically serious tone.

Screen caps from the trailer can be viewed here. A few of them, below, illustrate my points. (Click on images to make them bigger.)

First, PJ and Co. seem to have captured an authentic (or at least authentic-feeling) 1930s New York atmospere. Check out this fine period image:

Second, the look of Skull Island and the dinosaurs is very nice. Gone is the documentary-style realism of DeLaurentiis's version (which was filmed on the Hawaiian island of Kauii, where the TV show Lost is filmed now). Jackson's film gives us a rich, painterly jungle with mysterious blurred depths and layers of artistically silhouetted foliage - just like the 1933 Kong.

And the dinosaurs look great. They're not the Nature Channel beasties of Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs. These are stylized monsters - not animals, not specimens, but monsters - fresh from an old Frank Frazetta illustration. The "V-rex" (a creatively reimagined T-rex) has the bumpy crocodilian hide of the dinos built by Marcel Delgado for Willis O'Brien's animation in the original Kong. No slavish devotion to the latest paleontological wisdom here - this brute is built to inspire nightmares, not win a spot in a museum documentary. The heaviness and cold, lizardlike  evil of this design are the right way to go.

And how about Jack Black? In the brief clips I saw, he looks just fine as Carl Denham - toned down, cleaned up, with the right 1930s snap to his dialogue. When, after hearing Kong's distant roar, he tells his cameraman, "Herb, get the camera," he sounds dead-on perfect - a slightly mad man in reckless pursuit of a dream.

My one gripe? Kong himself. Shown only briefly in the trailer, he is mightily impressive when he roars at the threatening V-rex, but in repose his snaggletoothed, rather dopey-looking countenance is not what I expect from the Eighth Wonder of the World. He looks more like Mighty Joe Young's slightly addlepated grandpa than "a king and a god in the world he knew."

Overall, though, I'm upbeat. King Kong may actually get me into a movie theater - a place I haven't been for at least three years.

Bring him on!