December 28, 2006

In May this year (a blessing I am writing this piece several days before this year ends), I fell in love with Stephen King and his books. I first tried his non-fiction classic, On Writing. The book just stuck out on the shelf in a humble bookstore. But I still tussled about the price: 60 RMB. Not really a good bargain for a little booklet no more than a 10-RMB pocket dictionary. After the purgatory -- I took it up, put it down and took it up again -- I went to the cashier. In the following week, I was spitting cokes and coughing crumbs in a McDonalds where I used to read things. The book was funny. It was inspiring.

Then I thought I should read more. And so I bought twenty more books by S.K. The second book I finished reading was The Green Mile. Actually, it was the movie based on the novel first led me crying my throat hoarse. By then, I had just finished half the book, but in the end I read up the last page. It was a great story, (assuming great is greater than any other words that means great, greater or the greatest.)

In October, I was beginning to read his sixth (or seventh, or eighth, maybe) book: The Shining. Like my reading The Green Mile, Stephen King's mini-TV series got into my eyes when I just finished one third of the book. What's more exciting was I was on a business trip in Fujian Province, staying in a hotel. Of course, not the Overlook stranded by snow, just a standard room in a roadside hotel, where 24/7 cars blared at it. Luckily, I got the book, the 3 disks and my laptop with me.

So when my roomie was out bathing in the seaside sunshine, I watched through the mini-TV series (which, so far, I had been mistaking it for Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in 1980.) I drew all curtains closed to blot out any living light and plugged my ears with earphones, cutting off all interferences from outside the Shining-Me system.

But there had always been distractions. I watched the first episode under the thunderous snores of my roomie 2 o'clock in the morning; I finished the second in a string of calls from the same hooker. (6 times in all, I remember.) And my third went well until two maidservants knocked the door and charged in with a pile of bed sheets, two rolls of toilet paper, a mega-horsepower vacuum, and their privately blaring conversation, just when Jack Torrance was hacking his way into the bedroom.

Anyway, I managed to finish my watching. Before I got the three disks, I resorted to IMDB for the movie's rating and had found it among the Top 250. So after my pause-and-play games with the mini-TV series, which I thought was the movie, I was telling myself: "Oh, gosh! This movie (the mini-TV series, actually) is really good. It deserves to be found within the Top 10!"

There were still 100 pages left when I finished the "movie," so I wandered into a McDonalds to finish them. It was 11 o'clock in the night. (After I had finished the first episode, I climbed onto bed and buried my head under the pillows to fall asleep. When I got up, it was two in the afternoon. I stumbled to finish the second and third episodes when our taxi came. We went to a local university to give a lecture as had been scheduled. The university was embraced in mountains. Practically, it was a long way. So when I got back to the hotel, it was nearly 11 o'clock in the night. That's now what I am continuing to write.)

I sat at a corner where the lights seemed better, but after several minutes when I was already deeply into the novel, some light bulbs went out. I was too tired to move my ass, so I finished all my reading in that dim light. When I finally was again lying under the rumbling snore fits of my roomie, I believed my eyesight level had tumbled 2 points at least. My eyes were burning out.

The day after, I was back in Shanghai, in front of my laptop searching IMDB for more information of The Shining. Wow, that was when I realized what I had watched with all my antithetically religious piety turned out to be a mere 6 points by the rating, while the 8-point The Shining by Stanley was still on a DVD shelf somewhere in the world.

That was also when I grunted a laugh: following the crowd. I treasured the mini-TV series because the IMDB says so (thanks to my stupid eyes, too.) What's more funny was all people that had seen the mini-TV series gave them thumbs up, only because I told them what the IMDB and my stupid eyes had told me so.

After the laughing fit, I reviewed the three episodes and found:

I was still lovin' it! (The same words when I was seeing them for the first round and the same words when I closed the book in McDonalds -- "I'm Lovin' It!")

But all at the same time, my obsession of the authentic The Shining by Stanley Kubrick was growing big enough to rip up my clothes. I raided at least ten DVD shops and was fruitless. Finally I got it in an obscure store tucked in a road corner.

The next thing you know, I shut off the curtains, turned off the lights and shoveled the disk into the drive and then spent the following 2 hours' time waiting to spit out another WOW, an authentic WOW.

But two things happened. No. 1, the disk stuck in the middle and no way I could repair it. No. 2, when I have finally managed to have finished the rest, still with curtains drawn, lights out and disk swerving in the drive, I sighed, "So that's it."

That's it.

I don't really think Stanley's movie was better than Stephen King's mini-TV series. Frankly, I would change the rating positions of the two products. That was when I grunted my second laugh since the enlightenment: Never follow the crowd.