# is Stephan King lazy, altzheimery or just fucking with us?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547
**Category:** Cafe Society
**Created:** [February 11, 2012, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547 "2012-02-11T20:27:16Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 2
### Author:  [@Eyebrows\_0f\_Doom](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Eyebrows_0f_Doom)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/21 "2012-02-12T16:56:50Z")
> [@Fir\_na\_tine](#):
>
> King was raised in Maine. All police cars in Maine have blue lights and ONLY blue lights. Red lights are reserved for fire dept vehicles and volunteer firemen.
>
> It always comes as a surprise when I travel and see a police car with a red light.
The scene where the character sees the blue police lights approaching takes place in Maine.
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> Wait, what? There are places where police cars have blue and red lights for real? I’ve only seen red lights on cruisers on toys and in TV shows. I figured it was sort of like all phone numbers starting with 555 in media, not based on real life.
[Uh, yeah](https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1280&bih=620&q=nypd+car&gbv=2&oq=nypd+car&aq=f&aqi=g6g-m2g-S2&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=799l2011l0l2433l8l8l0l0l0l0l186l705l6.2l8l0#hl=en&gbv=2&tbm=isch&sa=1&q=police+car+lights&oq=police+car+lights&aq=f&aqi=g5g-m2g-S3&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=7563l8688l0l9207l7l7l0l0l0l0l129l608l4.3l7l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=c3cc61af6b996ea6&biw=1280&bih=620)?
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### Author:  [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/22 "2012-02-12T18:19:35Z")
The Green Mile has someone saying “Avon calling.” The Green Mile is set in Florida in 1932. Avon was trademarked in New York in 1932.
King needs a good fact checker.
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### Author:  [@Justin\_Bailey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Justin_Bailey)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 6:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/23 "2012-02-12T18:32:07Z")
> [@Annie-Xmas](#):
>
> The Green Mile has someone saying “Avon calling.” The Green Mile is set in Florida in 1932. Avon was trademarked in New York in 1932.
This is one King did do the research on. Avon began selling products door to door in 1886. And the Avon name was first used in 1929.
> **[Avon | Embrace Your Power](https://www.avonworldwide.com)**
>
> More than a beauty company, Avon is a global movement for women embracing their power. Pioneering in listening to women’s needs and speaking out for them. Standing for what matters to them. Supporting their endeavours. We’re a company that connects...
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/24 "2012-02-12T18:53:14Z")
If Google Ngram is correct, “get a life” became popular in the late 1980’s:
> **[Google Books Ngram Viewer](https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=get%2Ba%2Blife&year_start=1800&year_end=2012&corpus=0&smoothing=3)**
>
> Google Books Ngram Viewer
Almost certainly, the thing that really caused the phrase to take off was William Shatner’s use of the phrase on the December 20, 1986 broadcast of _Saturday Night Live_. My memory is that I knew the term when Shatner said it during the original broadcast. This would seem to imply that it’s somewhat older than that.
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### Author:  [@madsircool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madsircool)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/25 "2012-02-12T19:31:19Z")
This thread is far to anal. I cant imagine the hyperventilating when some find out that time travel didnt first happen until 2294.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/26 "2012-02-12T21:12:54Z")
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> Wait, what? There are places where police cars have blue and red lights for real? I’ve only seen red lights on cruisers on toys and in TV shows. I figured it was sort of like all phone numbers starting with 555 in media, not based on real life.
Most that I have seen and all the ones I have used.
Hate to say it but King seems to have lost it after the accident. None of his later works have the same quality. I still might pick this one up but maybe not.
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### Author:  [@TBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TBG)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 9:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/27 "2012-02-12T21:41:33Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#):
>
> That’s not an anachronism. Even granting that the exact time period of the film is vague (though seems to be after 1939 and probably before 1950), the word was used, though not in the modern sense. Back then, a “geek” was a sideshow act where a man would bite the heads off live chickens. Really.
>
> The current meaning didn’t develop until the 1950s. Calling Ralphie a geek was a far greater insult in the rough time frame of the film than it is today. It combines halfwitted with disgusting, and was clearly used outside of carnival use.
>
> Once again, this is the issue with people complaining about anachronisms bringing them out of the story – many times the errors they see are merely their own ignorance.
>
> I haven’t read the King, and I usually give that sort of thing a pass, but as mentioned, it seems the book was poorly copy edited; someone should have noticed the errors and fixed them.
Also, A Christmas Story isn’t a documentary of what really happened to young Ralphie Parker on his best Christmas ever, it’s old Ralph Parker/the narrator’s memories of his best Christmas ever. Memories are not perfect, and this also is why the movie is impossible to place at a particular year. All the stuff may have happened to Ralphie, but unlike how he remembers it, it didn’t all happen the same year.
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### Author:  [@Suil\_Dubh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Suil_Dubh)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/28 "2012-02-12T23:08:12Z")
> [@LH75](#):
>
> I enjoyed Stephen King’s writing much more before he quit drinking
> [@Loach](#):
>
> Hate to say it but King seems to have lost it after the accident. None of his later works have the same quality. I still might pick this one up but maybe not.
I’d argue that King lost it right around the time of “The Tommyknockers”, the first of his really bad novels.
The Wikipedia entry for “The Tommyknockers” says…
> [@](#):
>
> King wrote the book during a period of acknowledged substance abuse, and has written that he realized later on that the novel was a metaphor for that addiction.
…I can see how being a successful full-time writer at the height of an addiction may condition you to ignore your nagging internal editor, and just write, write, WRITE!
Which may be the strongest contributing factor to the decline in quality of his work.
Some of his pre-“The Tommyknockers” works were also long (“The Stand”, “The Talisman”, “It”) but they somehow managed to hold the story together. His later works are all over the place, and generally seem to have tacked-on “how-do-I-write-myself-out-of-this-corner” endings\*
\*OK, the ending for “It” was also pretty tacked-on and terrible, but the rest of the book was fairly well written.
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### Author:  [@Loach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loach)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/29 "2012-02-12T23:41:50Z")
> [@Suil\_Dubh](#):
>
> I’d argue that King lost it right around the time of “The Tommyknockers”, the first of his really bad novels.
>
> The Wikipedia entry for “The Tommyknockers” says…
>
> …I can see how being a successful full-time writer at the height of an addiction may condition you to ignore your nagging internal editor, and just write, write, WRITE!
>
> Which may be the strongest contributing factor to the decline in quality of his work.
>
> Some of his pre-“The Tommyknockers” works were also long (“The Stand”, “The Talisman”, “It”) but they somehow managed to hold the story together. His later works are all over the place, and generally seem to have tacked-on “how-do-I-write-myself-out-of-this-corner” endings\*
>
> \*OK, the ending for “It” was also pretty tacked-on and terrible, but the rest of the book was fairly well written.
I actually liked Tommyknockers more than a lot of more recent works. From what I recall it wasn’t so much of a metaphor as he was so deep into coke he doesn’t remember writing much of it. In contrast his first book after the accident, Dreamcatcher, was totally forgettable. His biggest talent was always building characters. In Dreamcatcher I had a hard time following which character he was talking about because they were all so bland. The only interesting part was his description of his accident as it happened to one of the characters.
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### Author:  [@Terr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Terr)
#### Post date: [February 12, 2012, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/30 "2012-02-12T23:46:42Z")
> [@RickJay](#):
>
> Still, if you’re going to set a novel in Dallas in 1963 it might be a good idea to do a little research. King is a well travelled man. He has left Maine.
And of course those constant references to Midland/Odessa refinery smells reaching Dallas - when all he had to do is look at the map.
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### Author:  [@slowlearner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/slowlearner)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/31 "2012-02-13T00:36:29Z")
the world he writes about exists only in his big stephen king brain, that’s why east texas is a desert in the stand. his literary offenses are numerous and sometimes great but he creates great characters, which is about the best you can hope for from contemporary writers
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### Author:  [@Sunspace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sunspace)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/32 "2012-02-13T01:08:05Z")
> [@elfkin477](#):
>
> Wait, what? There are places where police cars have blue and red lights for real? I’ve only seen red lights on cruisers on toys and in TV shows. I figured it was sort of like all phone numbers starting with 555 in media, not based on real life.
In Ontario they have red and blue lights. In fact, it was only recently that Ontario police vehicles got blue lights. Before that, they had red and white lights only.
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### Author:  [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/33 "2012-02-13T01:25:04Z")
> [@Loach](#):
>
> Hate to say it but King seems to have lost it after the accident. None of his later works have the same quality. I still might pick this one up but maybe not.
The first chapter of **Cell** is unintentionally hilarious to people who are familiar with the Duck Boat tours (not just me, I read it to several people on separate occasions, and they all had the same reaction as I did) but I haven’t enjoyed any of the books he’s written after his accident nearly as much as the ones written before then. **Blaze** was excellent, but written long ago despite only being published a handful of years ago.
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### Author:  [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 1:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/34 "2012-02-13T01:25:21Z")
//fanwank// What, you think Al’s Diner has the only wormhole in the world? And every time someone goes back they change a little something about the world. Hence, the world Jake goes back to is not the same world that you lived in, exactly.
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### Author:  [@An\_Gadai](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Gadai)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 3:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/35 "2012-02-13T03:14:39Z")
> [@slowlearner](#):
>
> the world he writes about exists only in his big stephen king brain, that’s why east texas is a desert in the stand. his literary offenses are numerous and sometimes great but he creates great characters, which is about the best you can hope for from contemporary writers
It makes me wonder though, since wikipedia and other online sources of information have become popular do novels have fewer of these mistakes?
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### Author:  [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/36 "2012-02-13T06:37:47Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#):
>
> It makes me wonder though, since wikipedia and other online sources of information have become popular do novels have fewer of these mistakes?
Before the Internet, I would literally work up a sweat in the library, moving from department to department in an effort to check facts, not all of which could be found. Computers sure streamlined that process–so there _ought_ to be fewer such errors!
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### Author:  [@Sacrilegium](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sacrilegium)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/37 "2012-02-13T19:02:43Z")
Steph **a** n King? Al **t** zheimery?
singular1, you might be getting a little Altzheimery yourself. Or are you just fucking with us? 😃
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### Author:  [@GargoyleWB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GargoyleWB)
#### Post date: [February 13, 2012, 8:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/38 "2012-02-13T20:59:31Z")
> [@JohnT](#):
>
> There’s also the fact that he has his main character smelling the oil refineries in Midland, TX while in the DFW area, notwithstanding the fact that Midland is over 250 miles away from Dallas.
It must be closer, Mrs Todd can still drive it in under two hours.
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### Author:  [@KneeSid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KneeSid)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/39 "2012-02-14T00:13:40Z")
“Get a life,” was a standard insult that Nell said to the Chief on “Gimme A Break.”
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### Author:  [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)
#### Post date: [February 14, 2012, 12:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-stephan-king-lazy-altzheimery-or-just-fucking-with-us/612547/40 "2012-02-14T00:50:50Z")
You might find this interesting. It’s an article containing a video which shows that _Downton Abbey_ contains a lot of anachronisms in its dialogue:
[http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3767](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3767)
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