Sugarbang

Sunday's Verse, "You Will Remember" by Pablo Neruda

2012-02-12T15:15:00.002-05:00

You will remember that leaping stream
where sweet aromas rose and trembled,
and sometimes a bird, wearing water
and slowness, its winter feathers.
You will remember those gifts from the earth:
indelible scents, gold clay,
weeds in the thicket and crazy roots,
magical thorns like swords.
You'll remember the bouquet you picked,
shadows and silent water,
bouquet like a foam-covered stone.
That time was like never, and like always.
So we go there, where nothing is waiting;
we find everything waiting there.

Music in the Air, "I'm Every Woman", Whitney Houston

2012-02-11T21:00:00.005-05:00

She was part of the soundtrack of my school life. I remember riding home from middle school and hearing one of her songs in the car, or on the radio when I got home and into my room. And no matter how awful the day had been, her voice and the beats would lift it right off me like so much unneeded baggage. The sound was warm and alive, it was red and golden lights, and sleek club floors with beautiful boys and girls dancing in pretty clothes. It was escape and freedom. And it would make me dance too, not giving a damn about anything but her voice and my happiness in that particular moment. And I'd dance until all I could hear was the roar of my heartbeat in my ears, and her voice, nothing ever drowned out her voice. Rest in peace.

Saturday's Verse, "A Morning Offering" by John O'Donohue

2012-02-11T13:54:00.003-05:00

I bless the night that nourished my heart
To set the ghosts of longing free
Into the flow and figure of dream
That went to harvest from the dark
Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me
Welcome the wonder of this day,
The field of brightness it creates
Offering time for each thing
To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:
The quiet loyalty of breath,
The tent of thought where I shelter,
Wave of desire I am shore to
And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today
To the invisible geography
That invites me to new frontiers,
To break the dead shell of yesterdays,
To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today
To live the life that I would love,
To postpone my dream no longer
But do at last what I came here for
And waste my heart on fear no more.

Wednesday's Verse, "The True Love" by David Whyte

2012-02-08T13:41:00.002-05:00

There's a faith in loving fiercely
the one who is rightfully yours
especially if you have
waited years and especially
if part of you never believed
you could deserve this
loved and beckoning hand held
out to you this way.

I am thinking of faith now
and the testaments of loneliness
and what we feel we are
worthy of in this world.

Years ago in the Hebrides
I remember an old man
who would walk every morning
on the gray stones
to the shore of baying seals,
who would press his hat
to his chest in the blustering
salt wind and say his prayer
to the turbulent Jesus
hidden in the waters.

And I think of the story
of the storm and everyone
waking and seeing
the distant
yet familiar figure
far across the water
calling to them,

and how we are all
preparing for that abrupt waking
and that calling
and that moment
when we have to say yes,
except it will not come so grandly,
so biblically,
but more subtly,
and intimately in the face
of the one you know
you have to love,

so that when we finally step out of the boat
toward them we find
everything holds us,
and everything confirms our courage,
and if you wanted to drown, you could,
but you don't

because finally
after all the struggle
and all the years,
you don't want to any more.
You've simply had enough
of drowning
and you want to live and you
want to love and you will
walk across any territory,
and any darkness,
however fluid and however
dangerous, to take the
one hand you know
belongs in yours.

A Quote From Isaac Asimov

2012-02-07T17:19:00.003-05:00

"Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

Monday's Verse, "The Journey" by Mary Oliver

2012-02-06T18:32:00.002-05:00

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Music in the Air, "Now", Everclear

2012-02-06T18:29:00.002-05:00

Saturday's Verse, "For a New Beginning" by John O'Donohue

2012-02-04T15:45:00.002-05:00

In out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.

For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.

Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life's desire.

Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.

B-Fest 2012: The Fest That Dropped It's Ice Cream On The Yeti And Put It's Weight On It Thought You'd Be Bigger

2012-01-31T11:47:00.013-05:00

Well thanks to massive ecological devastation I can't start my b-fest recap with a remark about the blistering cold as it was downright tepid when I arrived. I can however talk about how good it was to see friends old and new, the BMMBers, the locals, the friends of friends, the lovers, the dreamers, and me. But I'm losing track of the thread here so onward.

After the traditional Thursday night tipping back of Tiki drinks at Hala Kahiki we retired to watch the horrifying, and not in a good way, Howling II: Your Sister is a Werewolf, and took a moment of silence for Sir Christopher Lee's dignity. We parted in good spirits and looked forward to tomorrow.

After a wonderful morning gawking at the wonders in the Field Museum we dutifully made our way to the Norris Auditorium on Northwestern's campus and settled in for cinematic wonders of another sort. The lights dimmed and first up was...

Best of the Best, 80s action nonsense is my anti-drug, and I'm particularly fond of the low rent entries that came late in the decade as the cycle coughed itself out.

Symptomatic of the off kilter feel that characterizes a b-fest flick the Commies have taken a hike so it's US vs. South Korea in a Tae Kwan Do match between a rag tag group of misfits and a team, or in the James Earl Jonsian, TEEEEAM, of seasoned professionals who should be able to kill them just by looking in their general direction.

Eric Roberts and his magnificent of head of hair are on hand to cry a lot, ice cream cones are ruined and redeemed, and James Earl Jones is able to get a nice new extension on his summer house. A terrific start to the evening.

The Astro Zombies, Ted V. Mikel's anti-classic clumsily attempts to combine the police procedural with the mad scientist flick. What the means is a lot, no a lot, still not there, more, yep, that many, shots of clocks, test tubes, and John Carradine attempting to install his stereo. Tura Satana slinks around in some groovy cocktail gowns and nothing happens very slowly. If you must brave this one, don't do it alone.

To Catch a Yeti, Terrible 90s kid flicks have yielded some dark horse favorites for the schedule and this is no exception. What could have been just a 10 years too late made for television riff on E.T. with a little girl and a hideous bug eyed puppet standing in for Elliot and an expensive hideous bug eyed puppet is something quite else thanks to some massively bizarre casting and script decisions.

Meat Loaf plays a tracker sent after the Yeti with all the gravitas called for as if he's auditioning for No Country For Old Men. He's after the creature to secure it for a rich brat. Only they've confused "brat" with "multiple murdering sociopath". Filmed in New York City's famed Little Toronto neighborhood it does not wear out its welcome while providing a more than fair portion of "did I just see that?" moments that b-fest requires.

The traditional midnight screening of Plan 9 Nine From Outer Space had the audience flinging paper plates during the UFO flying sequences with gusto and they were cleaned up just in time to see...

Avenging Disco Godfather, My favorite of the offerings and again the apples and Buicks of the tone is key. This a typical cheeky Rudy Ray Moore movie floating on top of a story about drugs destroying a community as bleak and hopeless as anything out of the more serious side of seventies cinema.

Rudy Ray Moore is the Godfather, former cop, current DJ, and soon to be one man take down squad against the angel dust dealer who is poisoning the locals with his product. Moore's wardrobe is a sight to behold and the drug induced hallucinations of the characters are something out of David Lynch directing an episode of Sanford and Sons. Put yo weight on it and watch it if you haven't.

My brain and body where bailing on me so alas I tripped off into slumber during the reportedly amazing two punch of Death Bed: The Bed That Eats and Tarkan vs. The Vikings, thankfully both are on disc. I awoke to be treated to sound of everyone else sleeping their way through...

Mutant Hunt, Most everyone who didn't sleep through this wished they had but I was oddly charmed by it's utter nullity. Someone attempted to do a reworking of The Terminator and Blade Runner, and the fact that they had only ten dollars and no discernible talent in front of or behind the camera did not stop them.

Set in a futuristic dystopia of empty warehouses and ripped leotards an elite squad of non actors most go after rogue, grossly melting cyborgs. Which they do by standing aside bemusedly while the cyborg kills its latest target. Not much else to stay, only that it comes that near future where there are off world colonies but phones still have cords on them.

Sleep and a walk on the beautiful shore of Lake Michigan claimed me during Guru the Mad Monk and the already seen at a previous fest The Brain From Planet Arous but I made sure to make it back in time to see...

Stunt Rock, A fascinating concoction highlighting the insane feats of Australian stunt man Grant Page. there's a bare handful of story about him traveling to the U.S. to be a stuntman on a TV show but the movie firmly avoids engaging much with it at all and instead had the actors talk about his most dangerous stuns and play set footage of them.

For no clear reason the film decides the best partner for this is a MOR rock group who distinguish themselves with an on stage act involving two magicians dressed as Merlin and the Prince of Darkness hurling fireballs at each other. And again, no plot ever touches these scenes either. It makes for something appealing and would be a good disc to spin in the back ground of a party.

Road House, This had become a cult favorite in recent years and with good reason. Lean mean bouncer machine Patrick Swayze rolls into Jasper, Missouri and sets his sights on cleaning up the Double Deuce, the roughest dive in town. He brings zen koans and shattered knee caps to the people oppressed under the thumb of evil town owner Ben Gazzara. Before long the Deuce is oozing neon tubing, he's bedded the comely town doctor, and Sam Elliot has wandered in needing a paycheck like any of us poor mortals. Remember pain don't hurt, and laughter is the best medicine anyway, so belly up to the bar for a glassful.

And with that the audience fought back against the leaden Werewolf in Girls' Dormitory, the inept The Galaxy Invader, and closed things out with the solid It Came From Beneath the Sea.

And then the lights came up and we blinked in that mixture of sadness and relief that it was over. And as we cleaned up the place we started to formulate our plans as to how we'll all find our way back in here in 2013. Because sure as Rudy Ray Moore hates Aunt Betty, we will.

Music in the Air, "The Ecstasy of the Gold", Ennio Morricone

2012-01-16T16:48:00.001-05:00

A Quote From Czeslaw Milosz

2012-01-09T17:01:00.001-05:00

“The purpose of poetry is to remind us
how difficult it is to remain just one person,
for our house is open, there are no keys in the doors,
and invisible guests come in and out at will.”

Music in the Air, "Forever Young" cover

2012-01-09T00:42:00.000-05:00

Music in the Air, "Crystalline", Bjork

2012-01-06T19:09:00.001-05:00

Monsters, Mystics, and South of the Border Satanism

2012-01-03T21:35:00.004-05:00

Some notes on some of things I watched over the New Year's break...

Creature of Destruction, AIP's TV wing shipped out some its catalog to Texan auteur Larry Buchanan to remake in color for broadcast. He applied his Naugahyde touch to some of AIP's more stolid fare, turning them into lumbering, garrishly colored monstrosities with hilarious attempts at creature suits on two dollars and change.

The source for this particular entry was the leaden The She Creature, so it's only expected the Buchanan version turns out like a community theater production of the material. By a community theater whose members seem to hate each other no less.

The original's only selling point was the the monster suit which suggested the heroine's primoridial self was a busty, bewigged, walking lobster. The remake's attempt is a sad wet suit kitbash that looks nothing so much as what would have happened had Kermit the Frog's lily pad been next to Chernobyl.

Island of Lost Souls, Paramount's 1932 take on The Island of Doctor Moreau. A terrific film, and all the more to regret the Hayes Code pushing the studio out of the horror game, feeling that if they couldn't make horror films that were actually horrifying they weren't going to bother at all.

The film feels shockingly modern now due in no small part to Charles Laughton's performance as Moreau. From the openly sadistic pleasure he gets in torturing his creations to not being coy in the least about starting a breeding program, either by mating the hapless hero to his comely panther woman or pawing off the hero's fiance on his "half men". Nasty, brutal, and gorgeous in shimmering black and white.

Dracula A.D. 1972, The cultural zeitgest explodes in the late sixties and the gothic horror market collapses, and Hammer reacts and adapts with all the adroitness of your Grandparents trying to talk to you about Hip Hop.

Set in a "swinging London" that already feels five years out of date a certain "Johnny Alucard" ressurects the Tall One and the latest version of Peter Cushing Van Helsing must stop them both. More sad than hilariously bad, Sir Christopher Lee lacks even the energy to look bored and the actor playing Alucard is just awful enough to be tiresome instead of entertaining.

Caroline Munro appears briefly, dancing in fringed hot pants to distract, and the incredibly misguided party scene is one for the Oh Honey No hall of shame. But watching a studio flounder at an attempt to be groovy and with it isn't a a stone cold gas at all, can you dig?

Mystics in Bali, now this is one of the main reasons I'm attracted to that amorphous concept called "b-movies", following it down that rabbit hole leads to watching films you wouldn't think even could exist, let alone ones you've heard of.

From Indonesia's turn of the eighties film boom comes a story of a an unwary westerner trying to learn the ways of the local black magic practitioners. That's just enough plot for some amazingly gross home made effects and some jaw dropping sequences out of Balinese folklore. Such as the Penanggalan, a sort of vampire that consists if a woman's head floating through the air, dangling her entrails underneath no less.

The wonderful Mondo Macabro put this out in a very nice edition with a terrific documentary about the Indonesian exploitation industry attached.

The Brainiac, Delightfully delirious Mexican madness. A baron executed for witchcraft swears vengeance at the stake and returns 300 years later to destroy the last descendants of his original inquisitors.

All of this could be a standard riff on Black Sunday but it's the Baron's monstrous form that earns it a place among the great bad movie monsters like The Giant Claw. When the Baron is about the strike he assumes a form that looks remarkably like Sesame Street's Count Von Count having gone to seed as a homeless, heroin addicted Vietnam vet. With lobster claws for hands.

Then, not content to settle for just that, his method of attack is to flick his long, flexible tongue at the back of victim's head and suck their brains out. Much recommended, now who is going to finally do a subtitled copy of Ship of Monsters?

Season's Greetings From Sugarbang

2011-12-25T00:00:00.001-05:00

(click to englarge)

Music in the Air, "The First Noel", Nat King Cole

2011-12-24T15:46:00.001-05:00

Glad Tidings From Vargas

2011-12-14T01:12:00.002-05:00

(click to enlarge)

Music in the Air, "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel"

2011-12-11T23:12:00.001-05:00

Santa?

2011-12-10T04:00:00.003-05:00

Art Carney from the Twilight Zone episode "Night of the Meek" (click to enlarge)

Winter Wonderland

2011-12-08T03:31:00.002-05:00

From John Boorman's Where The Heart Is (1990)

Music in the Air, "We Three Kings", Patti Smith

2011-12-03T23:18:00.001-05:00

Hark The Herald Angels Sing

2011-12-02T23:15:00.003-05:00

Photo by Sheila O'Malley, taken from one my favorite entries on her invaluable site.

Music in the Air, "Thank You Very Much" from Scrooge

2011-12-01T23:21:00.001-05:00

For Mark Twain's Birthday

2011-11-30T22:49:00.001-05:00

Via Amelia Mangan

Tuesday's Verse, "Jenny kiss'd Me" by Leigh Hunt

2011-11-29T23:48:00.003-05:00

Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.

Monday's Verse, "Self Pity" by D.H. Lawrence

2011-11-28T21:20:00.002-05:00

I never saw a wild thing
sorry for itself.
A small bird will drop frozen dead from a bough
without ever having felt sorry for itself.

Music in the Air, "On the way to Bethlehem"

2011-11-27T23:50:00.000-05:00

Slouching Towards Bethlehem, Or Fake It Till You Make It Holiday Cheer

2011-11-26T15:16:00.003-05:00

I love Christmas and I don't believe in god, and I've come to believe that those two things don't have to be in conflict at all. Winter is hard for me, I hate it, I hate the cold, I hate the endless gray days. I hate watching my mood disintegrate and my empathy reserves for dealing with other people dwindle into dust. So I'm thankful for having things to decorate or make, for eggnog being back in stores, and for Annie Lenox's cover of "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen."

I'm absolutely the worst at sticking to any kind of goal or plan for self improvement, so I'm just going to post everyday. Even if it's just a link. Perfect is the enemy of good, and I tinker and tinker with a idea in my head until it's demolished and months have gone by on the blog with no new content. The spirit of Christmas to me is to remind ourselves that all winters end, that we can and have been good, and to light candles rather than bitch out the night for coming so early. So however you celebrate I hope it's a happy one, and here's to a smashing new year.

Sunday's Verse, "Wild Leaves" by Patti Smith

2011-10-16T18:26:00.002-04:00

Wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground
Every leaf a moment
A light upon the crown
That we'll all be wearing
In a time unbound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground

Every word that's spoken
Every word decreed
Every spell that's broken
Every golden deed
All the parts we're playing
Binding as the reed
And wild leaves are falling
Wild wild leaves

The spirits that are mentioned
The myths that have been shorn
Everything we've been through
And the colors worn
Every chasm entered
Every story wound
And wild leaves are falling
Falling to the ground

As the campfire's burning
As the fire ignites
All the moments turning
In the stormy bright
Well enough the churning
Well enough believe
The coming and the going
Wild wild leaves

31 Weird Tales: Tormented

2011-10-13T19:49:00.003-04:00

Director Burt I. Gordon is better known for his fits of giant mayhem a la Amazing Colossal Man, but this is a very interesting if flawed one off. A musician who is about to marry into wealth finds a unwelcome visit from a former flame ends with her taking an unintended but very beneficial spill off a lighthouse onto the rocks below. Thinking the problem solved he tries to turn his attention to his new life only to start noticing ghostly footprints in the sand and other signs the dead aren't so at rest. The lead gives an unusually shaded performance for a Gordon flick, but the primitive effects do keep this from being a minor gem in the Lewton tradition as there is no doubt that this is a supernatural event and not the antihero's guilty conscience coming home to roost. Still, for something off the path in fifties black and white monster movie tradition it's worth a look.

31 Weird Tales: The Apple

2011-10-12T22:34:00.003-04:00

Xanadu may be the better known disastrous disco musical of 1980 but this is much more fun, and much more insane. From the producers that would give us about 141 different Death Wish and Missing in Action sequels comes a biblical allegorical glam rock disco musical, complete with production number set in Hell. Jaw-dropping, and a great party disc, take a bite.

31 Weird Tales: The Corpse Vanishes

2011-10-11T21:31:00.002-04:00

One of Lugosi's more entertaining goofball poverty row entries. He plays a scientist of the Mad variety killing brides on their wedding days to harvest their glands to restore his wife's looks. And that's not the weirdest part of the flick even.

31 Weird Tales: Tenebre

2011-10-09T23:15:00.004-04:00

Sold giallo entry from Dario Argento that's as cold, cruel, and stylish as a switchblade. An American mystery writer in Rome finds himself a most unwelcome fan who appears to be making the plots of his books come to horrible life. Great score by Goblin too.

31 Weird Tales: Scream of Fear

2011-10-08T23:07:00.003-04:00

Hammer adapted to the post Psycho shift in horror most adroitly with a series of "Mini Hitchcocks", films that were a sampler box of the former director's greatest hits. Beautifully shot and well cast this is a perfect programmer for a rainy afternoon.

31 Weird Tales: Secret Ceremony

2011-10-07T23:03:00.003-04:00

Director Joseph Losey should be better known today than he is, but he was entering a period of critical and audience rediscovery when he helmed two notorious Elizabeth Taylor vehicles. One, Boom!, is virtually unwatchable, the other is a delightfully baroque psychodrama just waiting for cult rediscovery. Taylor and Mia Farrow play two damaged people who unwisely enter a relationship of mutual desperation and delusion and it quickly spirals out of control. Hypnotically strange and unfortunately hard to find, look for it to sometimes turn up on TCM.

31 Weird Tales: The Car

2011-10-06T20:34:00.005-04:00

Sometimes films are much better than they have any right to be, and this, a Jaws cash-in (from Universal no less) about a Satanic Lincoln terrorizing a small southwestern town is one of them. A nifty, effective b picture that Hollywood used to be able to turn out with regularity. It makes effective use of the harsh beauty and isolation of it's locations, the diabolical vehicle in question is a great George Barris custom job, and it's smartly paced and well acted too, check it out.

31 Weird Tales: Sunset Boulevard

2011-10-05T21:23:00.002-04:00

Maybe not first to come to mind at the phrase "horror film", but Billy Wilder's magnificent, black hearted gem only grows in my affection with each passing year. Bleak, funny, and mad it's still the best movie Hollywood ever made about itself.

31 Weird Tales: Eye of the Devil

2011-10-04T21:05:00.003-04:00

A beguiling, unjustly forgotten gem with Deborah Kerr and David Niven. Kerr unwisely follows her husband, Niven, back to the ancestral home only to find a chilly welcome from the locals and secrets best left uncovered. Sharon Tate has an eye catching role as a local waif, watching everything unfold with a dry smile. Shot in beautiful black and white it plays like a marvelously sinister fairy tale.

31 Weird Tales: The Abominable Dr. Phibes

2011-10-03T16:49:00.003-04:00

A marvelous dark confection with Vincent Price as a mad genius seeking revenge on the doctors he holds responsible for his wife death and using the 10 Biblical Plagues of Egypt as his template. That only begins to scratch the surface of this mescaline soaked Art Deco gem. Perfectly arch in tone and performances and unusually lush looking for AIP. Most recommended.

31 Weird Tales: Black Sabbath

2011-10-02T15:19:00.004-04:00

Mario Bava directs a trio of tales of terror. A sumptuous visual stylist, Bava often reveals more plot and character in the colors and lighting he uses, meaning his films are treats for the eyes but can be hard to follow as straight narrative. No matter, the anthology format serves him well as he skillfully tightens the noose around three hapless protagonists.

Saturday's Verse, "The Stolen Child" by W.B. Yeats

2011-10-01T18:11:00.004-04:00

Where dips the rocky highland
Of Sleuth Wood in the lake,
There lies a leafy island
Where flapping herons wake
The drowsy water rats;
There we've hid our faery vats,
Full of berrys
And of reddest stolen cherries.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wave of moonlight glosses
The dim gray sands with light,
Far off by furthest Rosses
We foot it all the night,
Weaving olden dances
Mingling hands and mingling glances
Till the moon has taken flight;
To and fro we leap
And chase the frothy bubbles,
While the world is full of troubles
And anxious in its sleep.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Where the wandering water gushes
From the hills above Glen-Car,
In pools among the rushes
That scarce could bathe a star,
We seek for slumbering trout
And whispering in their ears
Give them unquiet dreams;
Leaning softly out
From ferns that drop their tears
Over the young streams.
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

Away with us he's going,
The solemn-eyed:
He'll hear no more the lowing
Of the calves on the warm hillside
Or the kettle on the hob
Sing peace into his breast,
Or see the brown mice bob
Round and round the oatmeal chest.
For he comes, the human child,
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than he can understand.

31 Weird Tales: Count Yorga, Vampire

2011-10-01T13:30:00.006-04:00

31 Weird Tales fights back from the grave with a groovy vampire tale. With their characteristic pragmatic effectiveness AIP reacted to the collapse of interest in Gothic horror with a vampire story set in then present day Los Angeles. Smartly, they did not update the vampire into a tragic antihero but kept him a ruthless monster operating under the facade of a smooth, predatory visiting Count. Robert Quarry ably carries the title role, and the hurriedness of the production gives it a grim, gross feeling perfect for a vampire story. As vampires are not sparkly boyfriends in waiting but desperate, parasitic creatures leeching out the life-force of every one around them. (Inert joke about ex-boyfriends here.)

Last Men, 10 Plagues, and Man Eating Plants in Pennsylvania

2011-09-14T14:52:00.012-04:00

Having bats swoop above your head and dance around the tree tops is a pretty damn great way to start a viewing of monster movies, and so it was at the Riverside Drive-In this past weekend. Located in the lovely, lonely woods just outside of Pittsburgh it's two nights of monster and b flicks on the big screen. The event also allowed me to correct the shameful oversight of having never been to a Drive-In as well. The prints shown came from a generous collector and were gorgeous. In between films they played vintage trailers and marvelous conncession stand ads attempting to sell popcorn and soda as epic events in themselves.

The bill this year was represented by 8 films in total.

Black Sabbath, Italian horror maestro Mario Bava's anthology film. AIP's version of the film shuffles segments beginning and ending with two strong stories wrapped around a sumptuous looking but tepid middle. The first concerns a woman who learns the folly of robbing the dead, and the last is a marvelous variation on a vampire tale with a great performance by Boris Karloff, who also serves as the host of the bumpers between the stories. Here is where having a great print is felt most as Bava was a visual stylist first and the look of the film tells as much, or often more than the acting or oblique story line. Seen in this quality the film was a ravishing feast for the eyes in red, midnight blues, and that strange emerald green that's a Bava staple.

The Last Man on Earth, A loose adaptation of Richard Matheson's I Am Legend that has a great central performance by Vincent Price but basically feels like a dress rehearsal for the much superior Night of the Living Dead. Price carries the film and it has it's moments of genuine dread, but the rest of the cast is average, and there needed to be another actor as good for the ending to pack the punch it's trying for. Again the scenes of of the vampirized plague victims mindlessly shuffling and trying to break in to Price's house were an obvious influence on Romero, only he would take these images someplace truly apocalyptic.

Castle of Blood, Some pacing problems keep this from being a first rate gothic shocker. A gentlemen accepts a bet from Edgar Allen Poe himself to spend the night in a reportedly haunted mansion. He scoffs at such superstition but soon after arriving at the abandoned place is confronted by a lovely Barbara Steele begging him to take her away from this terrible place. It builds up some nice atmosphere and once it's revealed what's actually going on at the house it gets some full blooded scenes. But unfortunately it plays at time like the reels are out of order, and that it ran short so the producers had to pad it out to distribution length with a scene of a character picking up a candelabra and slowly walking to the other side of the house, looking around, and then slowly walking back and putting the candelabra down.

Island of the Doomed, Interesting as it's clearly resting on the fault line between old and new cinema horror. 10 years earlier and it's easy to see this as a tame, bloodless, black and white thriller about a group of trapped vacationers on a isle with some lethal plant life. But it's not just being in color that makes the difference, it's the amount of blood, the brazen misbehavior of the characters, and the sheer nastiness of the whole endeavor that announce a new phase is coming. I liked it because of its garishness frankly, even though it featured the most odious of the comic reliefs of the entire two nights.

The Abominable Dr. Phibes, My hands down favorite of the whole thing. Vincent Price plays a hideously scarred mad genius who uses the 10 biblical plagues as a template for seeking revenge on those he believes responsible for his wife's death. But no description can do justice to actually seeing the thing. From the licorice black tone of the whole thing as a very baffled Scotland Yard detective tries to figure out why some of London's finest physicians are ending up in predicaments like being impaled on gold unicorn statues to the otherworldly lovely Virginia North as Phibes' assistant. Who looks right smart in Art Deco by way of LSD get ups and steals scenes without saying a word. Highly recommended.

Dr. Phibes Rises Again, The rather thankless sequel to the utterly bonkers first suffers by comparison. Virginia North has taken a hike and her replacement fits the dark haired mysterious beauty part of bill but nothing else. Phibes really has no business in the story, and indeed pushes aside the much more interesting tale of Robert Quarry's doomed immortal looking desperately for the fabled River of Life. Still, it's impossible to work up too much antipathy to anything that ends with Vincent Price crooning "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" over the end credits.

Count Yorga, Vampire, AIP figured out how to do a vampire in a then contemporary setting right. Robert Quarry is terrific as the titular count, not a tiresome tragic anti hero but a smooth operating predator who you can believe has survived centuries by virtue of always having the upper hand. The scene where he amusingly examines a stake a would be Van Helsing has brought to fell him with is a particular highlight.

I, Monster, Amicus trots out a Jekyll and Hyde adaptation but curiously plays coy with the names, calling Sir Christopher Lee's Jekyll "Dr. Marlowe" in the film. A nice closer, a good solid adaptation, nothing too memorable, but then once you've seen Vincent Price furiously playing a neon pink and orange organ it's going to take a lot to leave an impression. Can't wait for next year.

Bite Me

2011-09-02T15:21:00.001-04:00

It's the Apple Festival this weekend in my Hometown. I keep pushing for something like this instead of clog dancing.

Thursday's Verse, "A Walk" By Rainer Maria Rilke

2011-09-01T14:56:00.003-04:00

My eyes already touch the sunny hill.
going far ahead of the road I have begun.
So we are grasped by what we cannot grasp;
it has inner light, even from a distance-

and charges us, even if we do not reach it,
into something else, which, hardly sensing it,
we already are; a gesture waves us on
answering our own wave...
but what we feel is the wind in our faces.

A Playlist for Pride

2011-06-26T18:10:00.002-04:00

Happy Pride to all my LGTBQ buds. And for the wonderful news in NY.

Sunday's Verse, "Sonnet XXVII" by Pablo Neruda

2011-06-05T23:31:00.006-04:00

I do not love you as if you were a salt-rose, or topaz,
or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.
I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,
in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

I love as the plant that never blooms
but carries within itself the light of hidden flowers;
thanks to your love a certain solid fragrance,
arisen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.

I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.
I love straightforwardly, without complexities or prode;
I love you so because I know no other way.

than this: where there is no 'I' nor 'you,'
so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,
so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep.

Flash Fiction: The Crystal Newt

2011-05-23T21:53:00.002-04:00

"Another crystal lizard, another crime about to happen."
"That's a newt."
"What?"
"That's not a lizard, it's a newt."
"How do you know?"
"Look at the size, the shape of the head, and the tail." Hudson looked at her incredulously for a moment. "What? My kid had to do a science report on the damn things so I know more than I ever wanted to about our amphibian friends."

Hudson smiled, Vasquez never talked about her personal life much and it pleased him somehow to have her mention her son to him. His thoughts quickly drifting away from the case he focused back on the little crystal animal in front of him. It rested on a pink silk pillow, next to it was the cardboard box and wrapping it'd come in.

Hudson picked up the newt with a gloved hand, turning it toward the light. It was a fine piece of workmanship and glittered prisms over his hand and on to the desk. The recipient of it stood nearby anxiously watching him. Hudson knew what he would say, that they would send it to the lab for tests, that they would place an unmarked police detail on watch, and that if he had any idea what might be taken or why that would be quite helpful. And it he knew it wouldn't matter a damn bit. The lab had found no prints or anything unusual on the newts or the boxes, the thief would strike without the cops realizing anything amiss. And if, like the others, he knew anything, which Hudson was starting to suspect he did, he sure as Hell wasn't talking.

The last part interested Hudson the most, he seen big ticket thieves before, even serial ones, but whoever was doing this had really gotten under the skin of the city's well to do. The items taken weren't anything unusual for such jobs, fine paintings, rare books, silver and jewelry. And yet Hudson saw a tighter circling of the wagons among the wealthy after each crime. They had none of the imperious attitude he was used to in dealing with them. They were scared, and he wanted to know why. Why they seemed to flinch away from the newt, the man in the room with him, the owner of the house, was keeping a safe distance from it.

Vasquez carefully bagged the newt and box and gave Hudson a meaningful look, she was on to something. Hudson knew the owner would be of no further help and left the man his card, saying they'd be in touch. As they walked out the door of the mansion he asked her if she'd found anything.

Vasquez smiled, "I think we might be needing to find an expert in Ancient Egyptian death rites."
"Oh Christ."
"O Osiris more like it."
"What the Hell do we need that for?"
"The thief is sending more than a crystal newt."
"How do you know?"
"The pillow it comes on, we've just been looking at the newt, trying to find a jeweler or someone capable of making something like that, well I asked the lab to run tests on the pillow, not just dust for prints and they came back with something rather interesting."
"Which is?"
"It's not pink silk, it's linen, Egyptian linen, hand woven, the kind used for burial shrouds."
"You're kidding."
"Nope."
"Which means our thief might not be stopping at just taking inanimate objects."
"Yep."
"Well you call the expert, I'll get the coffee, Christ, and I thought summer was going to be boring since we wrapped up the DeMarco case."

Saturday's Verse, "On Looking up by Chance at the Constellations" by Robert Frost

2011-05-21T22:56:00.003-04:00

You'll wait a long, long time for anything much
To happen in heaven beyond the floats of cloud
And the Northern Lights that run like tingling nerves.
The sun and moon get crossed, but they never touch,
Nor strike out fire from each other nor crash out loud.
The planets seem to interfere in their curves
But nothing ever happens, no harm is done.
We may as well go patiently on with our life,
And look elsewhere than to stars and moon and sun
For the shocks and changes we need to keep us sane.
It is true the longest drouth will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.
Still it wouldn't reward the watcher to stay awake
In hopes of seeing the calm of heaven break
On his particular time and personal sight.
That calm seems certainly safe to last to-night.

Easter Greetings

2011-04-24T00:36:00.003-04:00

"All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well." -Julian of Norwich

Vamps, Yetis, and Haunted Woods.

2011-04-13T20:23:00.008-04:00

Castle of the Walking Dead, Germany decides it wants to jump on the sixties Gothic revival bandwagon, but does so by way of trying to imitate Mario Bava trying to make a Hammer film. It works quite well though, setting the film in that odd neverland where it's both the 17th and the late 19th century, the women pair very sixties beehives with their Regency gowns, and there isn't a forest or empty street not festooned with glowing, diffused colored lights from places where no light source could naturally be. Sir Christopher Lee is on hand to be genuinely good as a villain and collect a paycheck, and everyone else acquits themselves amiably in this chiller.

Female Vampire, Jess Franco's movies seem to exist outside Outsider Art. While things like The Room or Manos: The Hands of Fate exhibit a sense that someone involved had a basic idea of what narrative film making should look like, even if none of that ended up on screen. But Franco operates out of his own universe. The comely and willing to do apparently anything Lina Romay plays a mute vampire Countess who drains the "life force" from her victims. She wanders around doing this while a heavily eye lined gentlemen stares pensively into the horizon. Eventually the two meet, he dies, and she thrashes around in a bathtub full of Hawaiian Punch and dies of grief. That this does not make me not want to watch a Franco film ever again speaks to his odd appeal. It's pretty much like some exotic candy from an ethnic grocery store that tastes horrid and yet you buy it every time you go.

Holocaust 2000, The Italian Rip Off Machine sets its eyes on The Omen. Loads of fun for all the wrong reasons. From seeing Kirk Douglas' frank disbelief he's in this film to some truly mad reinterpretations of The Omen's key beats. Douglas plays an industrialist trying to build a new super Nuclear Fusion plant somewhere in the Middle East when dark portents and mysterious accidents began to befall the project and anyone who tries to stop it. His fears are compounded when he begins to believe his new, much younger wife may be carrying the Antichrist. Completely oblivious to his grown, creepy, waxy skinned son Angel who does everything but pedal a tricycle furiously around the house. A text book example of Italian Exploitation's charms, primarily in the tradition of having quite a few interesting ideas and ambitions and not quite pulling them off in ways that don't end in hysterical laughter on the audience's part.

Not Quite Hollywood, an invaluable documentary on the colorful and cheerfully vulgar history of Australian exploitation cinema. The interview subjects are candid, the films clips shown are amazing in every sense of the word, and nearly everyone onscreen takes a moment to say something snotty about Picnic at Hanging Rock , a film I like very much, but do enjoy now picturing as the snobby rich kid with good grades the rest of the class can't stand.

Salon Kitty, Tinto Brass' revel in art smut has enough eye poppingly beautiful women doing jaw dropping things to make it a fun revel in bad taste for about the first 90 minutes. However, as it has nothing more to say than Nazism Is Bad and People In Power Are Often Hypocrites it really doesn't justify running over two hours. Still, as a movie of a kind that will never be made again it's a good choice for the more adventurous viewer.

Shriek of the Mutilated, I'm still not certain this wasn't an elaborate practical joke pulled on me. Nominally about a group of college students who go to an isolated lodge somewhere in upstate New York in search of a legendary Yeti that decimated an ill fated search party seven years before. In tone and execution it is nothing so much as what would have happened if John Waters had directed the Scooby Doo movie. At that phrase half of you recoiled in horror, and the other half went immediately in search of this. Both are the correct responses.

The Warrior and The Sorceress, There's no need to make a parody of the Sword and Sorcery genre when it was perfectly capable of sending itself up with good natured brio. This is gloriously fun, with David Carradine playing the title role in yet another riff on Yojimbo set on a totally not Tatooine planet in some grim post apocalyptic future. Our hero wanders into a village that is in such dire straights its women have no clothes. Two rival warlords are constantly squabbling over the one village well and Carradine sets to playing them against each other. Well worth tracking down, and some of the best acting comes from one warlord's nearly immobile, ruff wearing lizard puppet sidekick.

Yeti: Giant of the 20th Century, Oh Italy I miss your great rip off factories that once ran noon to midnight pumping out helplessly cheap, often insane copies of whatever was making the most money in the states. This carbon monoxide copy of the '76 King Kong is an oddly cheery affair with a Yeti with huge Keane painting eyes befriending a blond and her mute little brother. Amazingly it does not end with the Yeti taking a tumble of an Italian standing in for Toronto (!) landmark but rather suggests they were hoping for a sequel. My viewing companion perfectly nailed this as "The Wonderful World of Disney's Mighty Peking Man."

Sunday's Verse, "Your Laughter" by Pablo Neruda

2011-04-03T18:08:00.003-04:00

Take bread away from me, if you wish,
take air away, but
do not take from me your laughter.

Do not take away the rose,
the lance flower that you pluck,
the water that suddenly
bursts forth in joy,
the sudden wave
of silver born in you.

My struggle is harsh and I come back
with eyes tired
at times from having seen
the unchanging earth,
but when your laughter enters
it rises to the sky seeking me
and it opens for me all
the doors of life.

My love, in the darkest
hour your laughter
opens, and if suddenly
you see my blood staining
the stones of the street,
laugh, because your laughter
will be for my hands
like a fresh sword.

Next to the sea in the autumn,
your laughter must raise
its foamy cascade,
and in the spring, love,
I want your laughter like
the flower I was waiting for,
the blue flower, the rose
of my echoing country.

Laugh at the night,
at the day, at the moon,
laugh at the twisted
streets of the island,
laugh at this clumsy
boy who loves you,
but when I open
my eyes and close them,
when my steps go,
when my steps return,
deny me bread, air,
light, spring,
but never your laughter
for I would die.

Encore

2011-03-22T21:43:00.002-04:00

Too many, "Why didn't you pick _" nibbling at my brain to not do another round of Sondheim. So to continue...

"Careful before you say listen to me..."

2011-03-22T16:13:00.003-04:00

It's the birthday of one of my absolute favorites, Stephen Sondheim. I'm working on a big post on what one of of his best, Into the Woods, means to me, but for now some gems from his astonishing career.

Friday's Verse, "Winter Solstice" by Jody Aliesan

2011-02-04T17:00:00.005-05:00

when you startle awake in the dark morning
heart pounding breathing fast
sitting bolt upright staring into
dark whirlpool black hole
feeling its suction

get out of bed
knock at the door of your nearest friend
ask to lie down ask to be held

listen while whispered words
turn the hole into deep night sky
stars close together
winter moon rising over white fields
nearby wren rustling dry leaves
distant owl echoing
two people walking up the road laughing

let your soul laugh
let your heart sigh out
that long held breath so hollow in your stomach
so swollen in your throat

already light is returning pairs of wings
lift softly off your eyelids one by one
each feathered edge clearer between you
and the pearl veil of day

you have nothing to do but live.

Whales, Giant Monkeys, and Pumamen: B-fest 2011

2011-02-01T15:10:00.018-05:00

I've come around to thinking the A&O folks pick the perfect weekend for b-fest. After all if you're nuts enough to want to see a blaxsplotation version of Frankenstein why shouldn't you also be nuts enough to want to travel to Chicago in the dead of winter? I sat out last year and was rewarded with a nicely low key event this year, reconnecting with old friends, making some new ones, and seeing some more Things That Cannot Be Unseen thanks to the lineup.

Arrived on Thursday to have dinner with the mysterious El Santo (a.k.a. Scott) a learned gentleman of the tide lands who is said to have done something at a remote Antarctic research station that is only spoken of in awed whispers as "The Prometheus Incident." Joining us was Edward (a.k.a. erm, Edward) a warrior poet of his Queen's army and renowned for having been captured by a fearsome Raj and earning his freedom by bench pressing a tiger to impress the ruler.

Both made for great company at The Himalayan, a terrific Indian/Nepalese place where the sauces where so good you felt the only way you could express your full gratitude was to rub them into your face arms and hair. We resisted and retired to Hala Kahiki, a charming kitsch oasis where the drinks seemed designed to remove you from your dignity as quick as possible. The night closed in Bro Rag and Mal's room over an expensive bottle of Vodka and a Yokai film that deserves much closer examination at a later date.

The next day was the official start of the show but the day left plenty of time for sight seeing. I finally got to visit the Shedd Aquarium. There must be something in our evolutionary memory of the sea, where all life came from that can account for the pupil dilating, blood pressure lowering effect of just watching whales swim. It was a lovely afternoon watching a Beluga with her calf, a pod of Pacific Dolphins arc through the air, Sea Otters dance around each other, and strange creatures out of Weird Tales that make their homes in the dark crevices of the oceans. All too soon it was time to go but I settled into Norris Auditorium in anticipation of the other kinds of strange wonders that where about to be unleashed onscreen...

The Pumaman
This is one of my favorite MST3K episodes so I was curious if it'd feel flat without those cow town puppets in the corner. Happily it took flight with the audience with much greater ease than its hapless hero. Whisper thin paleontologist Tony Farms discovers he's the heir to the powers of Italians trying to cash in on Superman with just 10 dollars.

When he puts on a tacky belt he becomes The Pumaman! , clad in Dockers and a long sleeve crew neck t-shirt and endowed with the power of awkwardly flailing in front of aerial footage of London and the power of constantly getting his Puma-Ass handed to him. The belt is given to him by Andean Shaman Vadinho. There's a long, ignoble tradition of movie sidekicks doing all the actual heavy lifting but it reaches new ridiculous extremes here. Vadinho throws all the effective punches and takes down head villain Donald Pleasence when Pumaman finally gets painted into a Puma-Corner.

Sometimes these spaghetti exploiters are graced by a much better than they deserve score from folks like Ennio Morricone or Goblin. Not so here and it's prefect really, if your hero is wearing a poncho from the Juniors department it only behooves him that his soundtrack should sound like someone holding a tape recorder over the sample button on a Casio.

Top Dog
The real surprise entertainer of the night. What looked to be a tepid way too late riff on Turner And Hooch instead held interest by having some of the most schizophrenic tonal shifts ever. Scenes of cops getting shot point blank in the head are next to scenes of the dog waggishly stealing some food off of lead Chuck Norris's table. It's as if Cannon got the rights to the Benji property but decided to fashion it as yet another Death Wish sequel. It might not scale the heights of divine madness like Lone Wolf McQuade but it was quite fun to watch the dynamic non-acting of its cast or how the filmmakers took great pains to not take advantage of any of San Diego's many attractive shooting locations.

Mama Dracula
While the first two features tried to shamelessly ape previous successes to make a quick buck this bizarre wonder obviously had capital A Art on it's Laudanum soaked mind. An engagingly strange, at least until the 90 minute mark, romp that retells the Elizabeth Bathory legend by way of a lost Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey Dracula feature.

Louise Fletcher is in full Frau Blucher accent tending two Tiny Tim vampire sons in a sumptuous country estate and feeding her habit through luring young victims into the clothing boutique she runs on the side. And while all this going on she has a Harold Lloyd reborn as a new wave singer mad scientist on staff trying to invent a perfect synthetic blood so she can quit risking discovery to maintain her eternal youth and beauty.

This would have worked best as a hypnotically weird 20 minute short. As it is it doesn't have the loopy energy to sustain a 2 hour running time and devolves into a showcase of some admittedly splendid Art Nouveau furnishings. Still, I'm glad b-fest unearths films like this and I'd love a director's commentary.

Plan 9 From Outer Space
Ed Wood's masterpiece and one that's become as familiar as an old friend. I'm more interested in seeing what folks have scribbled down on the paper plates that are thrown during the flying saucer footage. You find some real gems, and some real care. One person does nifty ink drawings of beloved cult actors who've left us in the previous year.

Blackenstein
Alas I had wanted to stay up for this but I could feel the dread hand of exhaustion clutch itself around my heart and so slept through it only to awaken to the eldritch horrors of...

Manos: The Hands of Fate
The Spiritual Ancestor of The Room in that it falls so outside the conventions of basic narrative storytelling let alone every kind of cinematic convention it almost becomes a brilliant piece of Outsider Art. Another MST3K classic this was a bit harder to endure without the wisecracks as the grainy landscape footage and queasy hopeless pall hanging over the film makes it feel like watching atrocity footage with the actual atrocity bits snipped out. But again, I'd love a director's commentary for this too.

The Manitou
This, THIS, is one of the great ones. An only in the seventies premise with an an only in the seventies cast. Tony Curtis plays a conman psychic running a racket on the rich little old ladies in his San Francisco neighborhood whilst wearing a Doctor Strange robe. His sweet deal is shaken up one day when he receives a call from a former girlfriend. She's asking for a ride to the hospital because it seems there's a fetus growing at an alarming right at the base of her neck. And nobody blinks. The next day the attempted removal goes disastrously wrong and it becomes clear the more Curtis investigates that the fetus is actually a reincarnated Medicine Man from a long extinct tribe desperate to be reborn and reclaim his powers. And nobody blinks.

Can Tony Curtis and Not Really Native American Shaman Michael Ansara stop Misquamacus from ushering in an era of darkness? Will a hidebound by tradition doctor finally accept the unbelievable when a floor of his new hospital is turned into a paper mache ice cave? And and is a topless Susan Strasberg shooting lasers at a space lizard enough to right the cosmic balance? Tune in, turn on, and completely loose your mind and find out. Highly, highly recommended.

Undefeatable
Cynthia Rothrock attempting to act put me back to sleep so thankfully I apparently missed the cornucopia of audience rape jokes (stay classy guys!). And I kept napping through I Accuse My Parents to find I'd taken one hell of a wrong left turn at Albuquerque...

Night of the Lepus
Another of the great ones. With another unbelievable cast, this time serving a tale of giant killer bunny rabbits running loose in the Southwest. Yes Giant Killer Bunny Rabbits. And again, nobody blinks. I can tell you about this film, you can even look up clips on YouTube but nothing compares to sitting in a theater and seeing a herd of bunnies charging through a darkened miniature set, and the war drums are pounding on the soundtrack and you know characters are about to get killed and yet you can't stop noticing their wiggly little noses, or their pert little cotton tails, or their long, adorable ears. The producers tried, oh how they tried, but there is no way to make a horrifying Earth's Vengeance Reaper out of something you want to rub on the belly.

American Ninja
American Ninja 2 was one of my personal favorites of 2009's schedule so it was with much enjoyment I watched how the rich legacy began. Not as full on delightfully gonzo as the sequel the first concerns pouty Michael Dudikoff arousing the ire of his bunk mates at basic training by not remembering his past and being better at everything than them. Steve James is not at full Steve Jameson awesomeness yet but he gets his moments, particularly when he and Dudikoff team up to take down the bad guys and their Skittles ninja army.

And while it's not as mad as the second it's still a Cannon film and so takes place in the Cannon universe. A universe where there are more Uzis than cops, and the most surprising people have Uzis, and so long as your shirt is sufficiently ripped and your headband tight you can skirt due process.

Skidoo
This was an unpleasant surprise. I have a copy of this but I'd seen it in pieces. Watched in one sitting it unfolds into a perfectly paisley kidney punch of that hideously perfect Anti-Entertainment, The Unfunny Comedy. What felt like a wacky misfire is revealed to be a joyless slog watching Old Hollywood trying to deal with a counterculture that they are baffled by at best or have outright contempt for at worst.

The latter feeling is easy to understand as the hippie characters are as likable as the ones in a Dirty Harry film. But the squares, played by a once in a lifetime lineup of Jackie Gleason, Carol Channing, Frank Gorshin, Cesar Romero, and Burgess Meredith among others, are as embarrassing as your parents trying to ask about that "Tronic" movie and if your FacePlace friends like that Lady Gogo singer.

Still if you ever wanted to see all the villains from the Batman TV series together and tripping balls it's the only game in town. Notable for only achieving a measure of genuine wit at the very end as Harry Nilsson, who composed the film's score, sings the end credits. It's not just relief that the movie is at long last over but the bit actually achieves the breezy, let it all hang out tone that the film has been failing at for the last ninety wretched minutes.

Cool As Ice
I thought about sitting this one out as it played at my first b-fest back in 2003, and I was more than content to go another 8 years without seeing it again. I absolutely hated it this time too but it turned out to be fun to revisit my hatred, nostalgia hatred if you will.

Vanilla Ice does a remarkably good job playing a hateful tool bag whose motorcycle gang gets stranded in a small town leaving plenty of time for Ice to charm the locals and nearly decapitate his love interest with his bike by way of tying to impress her. Michael Gross is on hand to give the required "I've got electric bills like everyone else okay?" performance.

Perversely the film looks great, it has some neat production design and it's beautifully shot by Spielberg's frequent, Academy Award winning collaborator Janusz Kaminski. But the seeping charisma vacuum that is Vanilla spoils any chance of this elbowing its way onto the shelf of terrible musicals I have far too much patience for. A Jager shot of a movie, in that every so often I have one to remind myself I really, really don't like Jager shots.

Mighty Peking Man
I love giant monkey movies. I even love terrible giant monkey movies. Which is fortunate because because outside a few notable examples most are complete rubbish. Expecting the 1976 King Kong to be a hit pretty much every other country with a functioning film industry rushed out a copy. Most were as regrettable as their model but managed to suck in a far more entertaining manner and for far much less money too.

Our mopey hero leads an expedition into the jungle where he discovers that once again Eastern ape suit technology lags far behind the West. He also makes the acquaintance of a manque Sheena who was able to forage a Lancome counter in the unforgiving heart of the jungle. He makes the rather easy to foresee as unfortunate descision to bring both back to civilization. It ends badly for just about everyone save him.

Another example of the evening's odd mini theme of so called heroes causing more trouble than they solve and suffering no consequences for it what so ever. It was a great capstone to the lineup and as the lights came up I felt that traditional pang of sadness that another year had come to an end and I relief that I would soon be able to grab a hot shower to slough the filth of too many caffeine drinks and Vanilla Ice's complicated haircut off me.

Thanks again to the A&O folks, and to everybody who made it. And to those who couldn't here's to 2012 and you were there in spirit. Even when Carol Channing did a striptease for Frankie Avalon. In fact especially then.

(photo taken from jima's flickr stream)

Tuesday's Verse, "Restlessness" by D.H. Lawrence

2011-02-01T00:36:00.004-05:00

At the open door of the room I stand and look at the night,
Hold my hand to catch the raindrops, that slant into sight,
Arriving grey from the darkness above suddenly into the light of the room.
I will escape from the hollow room, the box of light,
And be out in the bewildering darkness, which is always fecund, which might
Mate my hungry soul with a germ of its womb.

I will go out to the night, as a man goes down to the shore
To draw his net through the surf's thin line, at the dawn before
The sun warms the sea, little, lonely and sad, sifting the sobbing tide.
I will sift the surf that edges the night, with my net,
the four Strands of my eyes and my lips and my hands and my feet, sifting the store
Of flotsam until my soul is tired or satisfied.

I will catch in my eyes' quick net
The faces of all the women as they go past,
Bend over them with my soul, to cherish the wet
Cheeks and wet hair a moment, saying: "Is it you?"
Looking earnestly under the dark umbrellas, held fast
Against the wind; and if, where the lamplight blew
Its rainy swill about us, she answered me
With a laugh and a merry wildness that it was she
Who was seeking me, and had found me at last to free
Me now from the stunting bonds of my chastity,
How glad I should be!

Moving along in the mysterious ebb of the night
Pass the men whose eyes are shut like anemones in a dark pool;
Why don't they open with vision and speak to me, what have they in sight?
Why do I wander aimless among them, desirous fool?
I can always linger over the huddled books on the stalls,
Always gladden my amorous fingers with the touch of their leaves,
Always kneel in courtship to the shelves in the doorways, where falls
The shadow, always offer myself to one mistress, who always receives.

But oh, it is not enough, it is all no good.
There is something I want to feel in my running blood,
Something I want to touch; I must hold my face to the rain,
I must hold my face to the wind, and let it explain
Me its life as it hurries in secret.
I will trail my hands again through the drenched, cold leaves
Till my hands are full of the chillness and touch of leaves,
Till at length they induce me to sleep, and to forget.

On Lighting A Candle And Trying Not To Curse The Darkness

2011-01-12T17:56:00.005-05:00

Sarah Palin is a spiritual crack cocaine dealer. She trades in lumps of self-righteous outrage, bags of coded language and dog whistles, and promises the high of pretending to be a persecuted minority while still holding on to the privileges of the majority. She is not the only dealer of this type of course, there were many before her and there will be many after her too. But she's made herself a figurehead of this movement, contributing with a wink and a smile to a toxic environment that's been bubbling and reeking and reached its hideous ends in Tuscon this Saturday.

It's enough to make you feel small, helpless, and scared. It's how I feel right now. But I don't believe it has to be this way. And I don't believe or think it's the natural order of how things are supposed to be either. Hate is not natural. There are many who profit from it and encourage it to cement their power but it's not who we are. I don't know if our default state is to love but I do know it's to do no harm. To look out for one another. You can believe this is divinely inspired. I don't, but whatever it is I've seen too much of the good in people to be able to just sit back and say nothing. I won't let the Spiritual Crack Dealers control and win the argument by default.

And so let's look at anger again. Uncontrolled anger is a poison, but anger can also be a catalyst to action. I like the quote from St. Augustine “Hope has two beautiful daughters: their names are anger and courage. Anger that things are the way they are. Courage to make them the way they ought to be.” And in a world where people will do this and where people will do that I think all of us have in a little something that can make the world a little better. So what do we do with our anger? We use it to resolve to be better, to try a little harder. We don't roar across the countryside like The Furies, but we tell each other the story of The Furies and transform them into something good. And so...

Alecto, The Unceasing, she gnaws like a constant hunger. Quell her with Heifer International, a remarkable group that sends livestock to developing countries to end hunger and build financial independence for its recipients. Buy a share in a sheep, send a swarm of bees, get together with your gaming buddies and see if you can sponsor a water buffalo.

Meagaera, She is the most dangerous for she dwells in petty jealousies and envies. Level the playing field by visiting DonorsChoose and helping out the next generation of leaders, explorers, and teachers. In Arizona alone, help kids paint their stories, make Bill Nye proud by confirming that science rules, and help out a fellow future film geek.

Tisiphone, the Avenger. Strike a blow against mental illness by helping out Pets For Vets. They place rescue dogs with Veterans who are suffering from emotional or physical injuries due to combat. Their success in this is remarkable.

To quote from Angels in America you are all fabulous creatures, so come on, let's make the great work begin.

Sunday's Verse, "A Ritual To Read To Each Other" by William Stafford

2011-01-09T04:29:00.002-05:00

If you don't know the kind of person I am
and I don't know the kind of person you are
a pattern that others made may prevail in the world
and following the wrong god home we may miss our star.

For there is many a small betrayal in the mind,
a shrug that lets the fragile sequence break
sending with shouts the horrible errors of childhood
storming out to play through the broken dyke.

And as elephants parade holding each elephant's tail,
but if one wanders the circus won't find the park,
I call it cruel and maybe the root of all cruelty
to know what occurs but not recognize the fact.

And so I appeal to a voice, to something shadowy,
a remote important region in all who talk:
though we could fool each other, we should consider--
lest the parade of our mutual life get lost in the dark.

For it is important that awake people be awake,
or a breaking line may discourage them back to sleep;
the signals we give--yes or no, or maybe--
should be clear: the darkness around us is deep.

Sunday's Verse, "Ozymandias" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

2011-01-02T00:37:00.002-05:00

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T00:51:00.003-05:00

(Jane Wyman)

Quiz Show

2010-12-30T21:06:00.011-05:00

Via Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule.

1) Best Movie of 2010

I see so few movies in the theaters I almost shouldn't answer this but True Grit. Or better put "hands down favorite of 2010".

2) Second-favorite Roman Polanski Movie

3) Jason Statham or Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson

Both in a buddy cop flick scripted by Shane Black.

4) Favorite movie that could be classified as a genre hybrid

5) How important is foreknowledge of a film’s production history? Should it factor into one’s reaction to a film?

I love reading production histories but a film has to stand on its own. Histories can help clarify or reveal though.

6) William Powell & Myrna Loy or Cary Grant & Irene Dunne

Nick and Nora forever.

7) Best Actor of 2010

I will not pick between Jeff Bridges and Matt Damon in True Grit so you'll have to shoot for it boys.

8) Most important lesson learned from the past decade of watching movies

Good movies sometimes seem to have be made and released by accident than by any conscious design.

9) Last movie seen (DVD/Blu-ray/theater)

True Grit at the local multiplex with my pops, which added to the experience.

10) Most appropriate punishment for director Tom Six

I had to google his name so I'm going to continue to ignore him.

11) Best under-the-radar movie almost no one else has had the chance to see

It's from 1990 but more people need to know about John Boorman's Where The Heart Is, they really do.

12) Sheree North or Angie Dickinson

13) Favorite nakedly autobiographical movie

14) Movie which best evokes a specific real-life place

The French Connection

15) Best Director of 2010

The Cohen Brothers.

16) Second-favorite Farrelly Brothers Movie

Pass.

17) Favorite holiday movie

18) Best Actress of 2010

19) Joe Don Baker or Bo Svenson

20) Of those notable figures in the world of the movies who died in 2010, name the one you’ll miss the most

21) Think of a movie with a notable musical score and describe what it might feel like without that accompaniment.

Goblin's score for Suspiria is its own character, so that picture would lose a lot of it's juice and become almost a pretty flip book of memorable sets. Here's just one cue:

22) Best Screenplay of 2010

True Grit, will most definitely be reading the book now.

23) Movie You Feel Most Evangelistic About Right Now

Sticking to amazing classics of trash cinema I'm always pushing The Apple or Exorcist II: The Heretic.

24) Worst/funniest movie accent ever

There are too many in the "Orish" division to pick from, so a fond laurel goes to Christan Bale's "Nu Yawk" squawk in Newsies.

25) Best Cinematography of 2010

26) Olivia Wilde or Gemma Arterton

Wilde, seeing her in Tron getup revealed a fetish I didn't know I had.

27) Name the three best movies you saw for the first time in 2010 (Thanks, Larry!)

The Apartment

The Letter

How to Steal a Million

28) Best romantic movie couple of 2010

29) Favorite shock/surprise ending

Don't Look Now

30) Best cinematic reason to have stayed home and read a book in 2010

Nothing really pissed me off by it's existence, just made me tired at its lack of originality.

31) Movies in 2011 could make me much happier if they’d only _______________

...understand that 3-D is not an acceptable substitute for a good script.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T00:06:00.003-05:00

(click to enlarge)

The Ghost of Christmas Present

2010-12-24T14:24:00.002-05:00

In a punch bowl mix...
The better part of a bottle of Bourbon
1 bottle crandberry juice
4 bottles Izze Pomegranate soda
float several cinnamon sticks and frozen, clove studded orange slices on top

For those feeling fancy some high proof rum slid on top and lit is festive. Not that I am suggesting you do that and for God's sake if you do make sure the bowl is heatproof. Not that I learned that the hard way either.

Merry Christmas!

Friday's Verse, "Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot

2010-12-24T02:04:00.006-05:00

"A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter."
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

(photo by Sheila O'Malley)

The Sol Invictus

2010-12-21T18:44:00.004-05:00

Fill glass with orange juice and ice, add:
1 oz. Gin
1/2 oz. Brandy
1/2 oz. pomegranate liquor

garnish with clove studded orange slice if wished

Sunday's Verse, "Sunday Morning" by Wallace Stevens

2010-12-19T05:14:00.002-05:00

(Thanks to Amaryllis for sharing this with me.)

Why should she give her bounty to the dead?
What is divinity if it can come
Only in silent shadows and in dreams?
Shall she not find in comforts of the sun,
In pungent fruit and bright green wings, or else
In any balm or beauty of the earth,
Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven?
Divinity must live within herself:
Passions of rain, or moods in falling snow;
Grievings in loneliness, or unsubdued
Elations when the forest blooms; gusty
Emotions on wet roads on autumn nights;
All pleasures and all pains, remembering
The bough of summer and the winter branch.
These are the measure destined for her soul.

Friday's Verse, "Invictus" by William Ernest Henley

2010-12-17T01:50:00.001-05:00

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

The Art of Catholicism

2010-12-13T22:04:00.006-05:00

It would pain Bill Donohue to know but some of these works were funded by the public, through taxes and monies collected by The Church. And most of these artists were working class and some even lived, and died, in poverty. But all of them left behind something worth remembering, even if we don't know some of their names. (Click on all to englarge.)

Delphic Sibyl, detail, Michelangelo, 1509.

Rose Window, Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris.

Filipino carving of St. Paul, artist unknown.

St. Cecilia, John William Waterhouse, 1895

La Virgen de Guadalupe, artist unknown.

The Taking of Christ, Caravaggio, 1602.

The Labyrinth at Chartres Cathedral.

To Create is To Love

2010-12-13T17:30:00.006-05:00

Sometimes you are witness to a perfect storm of Fail...

In a large survey of museum-going households released in April, it was found that they are significantly better educated and affluent than the U.S. population; they are also overwhelmingly white. The time has come, then, to stop funding the leisure of rich white people: all public monies for the arts should cease. Quite frankly, to make the working class pay for the leisure of the rich amounts to class discrimination. In the spirit of social justice, a better case could be made to fund professional wrestling—it's what the working class enjoy.

This was said by President of Cranky Old Man With a Mailing List (a.k.a the Catholic League), Bill Donohue. Where to start?

First off I'd be very curious to see that study as Google turns up nothing. Secondly I'd like to speak up on behalf of The Smithsonian. This started when Mr. Donohue called for, and shamefully got, the removal of a work of art from the National Portrait Gallery. It was a video installation piece by late, gay artist David Wojnarowicz. Called "A Fire in My Belly" it's a haunting piece of work that can be viewed here. Mr. Donohue's manufactured outrage stems from the fact that for eleven seconds you see a shot of ants crawling over a Crucifix.

Ignoring context, Mr. Donohue calls this "hate filled." One wonders how he can stand to read the Gospels with Jesus' use of the art of storytelling, filled with frightful, impossible to taxidermy metaphors, similes, and requiring the listener to think critically instead of safely falling back on "Thou Shall Nots".

As to the classism, racism, and anti-intellectualism in his argument here is were I have to be careful not to fall into a string of profanities. Art is precious to me, as it is to every human being. And the Smithsonian is part of that. Growing up my family took yearly trips to D.C. to visit my Grandfather and Great Aunt. And part of the thrill was knowing we'd visit one, or more, of the Smithsonian Institutes.

We are not a wealthy family, I don't get a new Lexus every year and we don't have arguments over what color to paint the shutters at the summer cottage on the Cape. And yet I loved looking at Gauguin in the National Portrait Gallery, and wild orchids at the Natural History Museum, and best of all the rockets and meteorites at Air and Space.

To be human and aware is to love Art. It's as simple as stopping for a moment to admire the leaves changing color in autumn. Or singing a song, or dancing, or reading a book. That's what infuriates me about the demagogue's love of sneering at Art as a trivial waste separate from Humanity instead of coded into our innate desire to create.

Consider the caves at Lascaux, the paintings there are breathtaking and still send shivers up my spine looking at them. I love that we still don't know why exactly they were made and probably never will. But it was no "leisure class" who painted them, it was humans. Humans who knew that to be alive is to observe, to observe is to be inspired, and to be inspired is to create, and to create is to love.

The last strikes at the lack of heart in Donohue's and every like (small) minded argument. There is no love, only fear, and a desire for control in them. And Art is impossible to control, or to corral. It can hang in a gilded frame as easily as it can be painted on the side of a school gymnasium. It can be perfomed at Carniage hall or played on a Subway platform, busking for money. Art is free and makes us free, and for people who have a vested interest in keeping us afraid and erronisly thinking we're seperate that just won't do. It's up to us to prove them wrong. You can contact the National Portrait Gallery here and encourage them to put back up Mr. Wojnarowicz's piece and not give into bullies.

(And a final note with regards to that condescending remark on professional wrestling. Mr. Donohue would be most surprised to read this essay by Mick Foley about an artist whose work means a great deal to him.)

Missing Summer

2010-12-11T20:11:00.001-05:00

Actress Zoe Saldana

The Gelt

2010-12-08T21:55:00.004-05:00

Fill glass with chilled club soda, add:
- One oz. rum
- One oz. chocolate liqueur
- Float one half oz. Galliano on top

L'chaim!

Eighth Candle

2010-12-08T21:43:00.002-05:00

"There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." -Leonard Cohen

Seventh Candle

2010-12-07T19:14:00.003-05:00

"The Annunciation" by John William Waterhouse

2010-12-07T19:03:00.002-05:00

(click to enlarge)

Sixth Candle

2010-12-06T20:10:00.006-05:00

"How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed in a weary world." -William Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice

"...think of all the fellas I haven't kissed..."

2010-12-06T20:10:00.002-05:00

Fifth Candle

2010-12-05T23:33:00.003-05:00

"There is not enough darkness in all the world to put out the light of even one small candle" -Robert Alden

Winter Wonderland

2010-12-04T22:41:00.004-05:00

(click to enlarge)

Still from the unjustly forgotten gem Where the Heart Is (1990) directed by John Boorman.

Fourth Candle

2010-12-04T21:10:00.003-05:00

"Light gives of itself freely, filling all available space. It does not seek anything in return; it asks not whether you are friend or foe. It gives of itself and is not thereby diminished." -Michael Strassfeld

Today's Dose of Arthur Rackham

2010-12-04T21:07:00.002-05:00

(click to enlarge)

Third Candle

2010-12-03T21:38:00.003-05:00

"Fall in the Light", Lori Carson & Graeme Revell

Second Candle

2010-12-02T21:34:00.002-05:00

"Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out." -Vaclav Havel

Christmas Music That Doesn't Make Baby Jesus Cry

2010-12-02T17:18:00.001-05:00

"The Annunciation" by Henry Ossawa Tanner

2010-12-01T22:42:00.003-05:00

(click to enlarge)

First Candle

2010-12-01T21:44:00.004-05:00

"It is better to light a single candle than curse the darkness." -Unknown

Comfort and Joy

2010-12-01T20:56:00.003-05:00

I don't believe in God but I love Christmas.

I grew up a Jehovah's Witness and if they're known for anything besides waking you up from a nice Saturday afternoon nap it's the No Holidays thing. They justified it by pointing out, accurately I may add, each major Christian and civil Holiday's Pagan roots. It's why the War on Saturnalia and the outrage that you can't call the Solstice Tree by it's proper Christian name tickle me to no end. That said I love Christmas trees and lights and eggnog and watching A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's important to have traditions, and to mark the passage of time, even if only to remind yourself that all winters end.

It's also the first night of Hanukkah, getting closer to the Jewish part of my heritage is also something I want to do more of in the coming year. And I see no conflict in celebrating both. By next year I hope to have got enough in touch with my Jewish roots to feel guilty about this.

If nothing else, it'll keep the updates regular around here until New Year's. And I hope how ever you celebrate the season it's one that leaves you with a sense of peace and possibility for 2011.

"Oh I suppose Hell got an NEA grant!"

2010-11-29T17:57:00.003-05:00

(click to enlarge)

Season's Greetings

2010-11-28T23:54:00.002-05:00

"He clapped His hands, and the thunders rolled..."

2010-11-27T21:32:00.003-05:00

Slacktivist is one of my favorite blogs, his Left Behind take down is essential reading, and this post has proved unexpectedly lovely. This is one of the few times you'll want to read the comments, plenty of wonderful poems and songs and stories being shared. Including the poem in the previous post, which is where I found it.

One of the comments wondered if this sharing was a kind of worship. I think it is. It's beautiful how humans will build communities, even online ones, to connect. To say, "I was here, this is what I saw." Art in every form is the only kind of divinity I'll ever really fully believe in. Or even more accurately, the only kind I'll ever fully trust. We can look to a promise and find it empty, but when we look at each other and tell stories we've done something real, and amazing. In an odd way stories can be the realest things we'll ever know.

Saturday's Verse, "Untitled" by Cary Bleasdale

2010-11-27T01:53:00.005-05:00

If they did religion right,
And I mean, did it right when they started the whole thing off.
And if there was a God.

We wouldn’t have words
To describe the sacred mystery
Of transubstantiation
Instead, we’d have a word to describe
The transformation of the blessed news
That we’re all, sorta, kinda, beautiful
Into the real cessation
Of all the stupid shit we do.
And that word, and that world
Would be unsubstantiated by the experience
And essence of suffering because the only true
Phrase in all the bible is ‘vale of tears,’
Which is the only part of the whole damn thing
That should’ve been written by William Shakespeare.
And if there was a God,
there would be a word for the feeling
Of waking up next to your lover and staring up
At your cheap, leaking, plaster ceiling and knowing
In that moment that everything’s gonna be alright
This morning.
And if there was a God,
He would tell us the word for being young and broke
With holes in your pants and bumming your smokes
For loving the sunshine and dirty jokes
And for finding your god in a rum and coke
Or maybe in a church, the sort of church they don’t make anymore
With no stained glass in the windows and a hole in the floor
Where they raise your spirits, where they raise their voices
Where they raise the roof,
And the love in your blood is ninety proof
And you can still taste the sins from the night before
But you had a good time, and that’s alright,
Because if there is a God, he’s the sort of God
Who helps drunks cross the street against the light.
And if there was a God, you could call Jesus at ten AM
On a Tuesday morning and he’d pick up the phone and tell you
All sorts of things, about stars and trees, and his brand new shoes
And you could talk to Jesus and tell him that really funny joke
About the three old nuns who walk in on the pope
And he’d tell you the one about the Irishman
And when you asked him if he’s a baseball fan
He’ll put Babe Ruth on the phone. Just for you.
And just before he’d hang up, he’d say
Hey, you’re beautiful. And I love you.
And it wouldn’t make it ok
But you’d be able to get out of bed
And that is worth a prayer.
And if there is a God, it’s inspiration
And if there is a saving grace, it’s perspiration,
And if there is something that makes me believe in god,
It’s fornication.
But good fornication, the kind of fornication you have on your kitchen floor
Because you both woke up thirsty at three am and wound up
Fornicating
In a perfect pool of moonlight that may
Or may not, have been sent by God.
And if there is a God.
I don’t think he watches.

Walking the Beat

2010-11-14T14:13:00.003-05:00

Two Pakistani policewomen.

Happy Birthday Lulu

2010-11-14T13:23:00.003-05:00

(click to enlarge)

The Color Purple

2010-10-20T01:04:00.003-04:00

Today is LGBTQ Spirit Day. A show of solidarity for gay youth and a memoriam for those who have taken their own lives due to bullying. Participants are asked to show support by wearing something purple.

But more than that it's a call to action. It's starts by showing your colors it finishes with all of us putting the pressure on everybody from school boards on up to Congress to make sure gay kids are protected and looked out for. It's not letting teachers and principals look the other way because gay youth aren't covered under anti-bullying policies and laws. And it's saying to any religious objection how can they square their bigotry with the very frightening words "I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."

And finally, let's hear what Guitar Wolf has to say on the subject.

Thank you Guitar Wolf.

Friday Scramble

2010-10-08T02:47:00.002-04:00

On tumblr I've got projects going for the month of frights. 31 Faces is a look book of faces uncanny and beautiful for inspiration to pick up the grossly underrated art of playing dress up. 31 Weird Tales are movies dealing with things that go bump in the night, whether it be a person's own guilt or a ghoul from beyond the grave. All films I love and most deserving to be better known too.

Wednesday's Verse, "Hope is thing with feathers" by Emily Dickinson

2010-09-22T13:49:00.004-04:00

Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune--without the words,
And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard;
And sore must be the storm
That could abash the little bird
That kept so many warm.

I've heard it in the chillest land,
And on the strangest sea;
Yet, never, in extremity,
It asked a crumb of me.

Scraps: Luna and Leo, Leo's story

2010-08-30T20:39:00.005-04:00

Wind, water, bird, rabbit... the last scent charged her. Her eyes, the most human thing about her, the pupils dilated, her pulse quickened. Hunger yes, but there was more kill, devour, yours... She stood on two legs too tall. Too tall to walk on all fours. Her body ached to walk on hands and feet but her back would not allow it. The shape of a woman, standing in a battered t-shirt and pants she'd stolen from a donations bin outside the University library. She didn't know why she even needed clothes now. Her fists tightened at her sides. That was the other part, the weak part, the part that had let them hurt her, that wanted to speak. Like they wanted to her to speak. A growl rose in her throat, she would never do anything they wanted ever again. The scent of the rabbit came to her again and in an instant she ran, her feet barely touching the ground. There was a flash of claws and of soft brown fur and a terrible scream and then only the sound of the stream running through the woods...

The woman in the cabin put a hand to her belly, "I know ladybug, I'm fixing us some dinner right now." It was no good she knew, she'd known since she'd read the cards. She was not going to live much longer. But the cards had said nothing about the child, well...the cards had said a great many things about the child but not the promise of death. The woman held on to that, she knew they would find her and kill her but there was a chance the child could be born. That's why she ran. She also hoped it would give a chance to get the child to her father before she was killed. She forced herself to think of things at hand. She frowned, the soup could use a little longer. She walked to the open window and watched the moon rest in the tops of the pines. Her hand rubbed a gentle circle on her stomach as a half remembered tune came to her. How did it go? She began to sing "...Tonto el que no entienda cuenta una leyenda..."

The girl lay her blood covered hands in the stream, licking the coppery taste off her lips. She pressed her hands hard against the stones at the bottom feeling their smoothness as her heartbeat slowed down. She was about to look for a place to sleep when she heard the voice in the distance. A few rental cabins lay that way, and the girl had kept her distance from them. She was startled to realize she was walking in that direction. She stopped, she snarled, the weak part was acting up again. No, Bad, Alone... But the voice continued singing and it was like smoke on cool fall evening, the girl didn't understand the words but that only added to their enchantement. Angry at her weakness she kept walking.

She could see the cabin a little bit now through the thicket. A woman stood at the back window, the girl saw she was heavily pregnant. The girl insisted to herself to go no further, she sat down and wrapped her arms tightly around her knees. She listened and it was like the woman was singing to her "...Luna quieres ser madre y no encuentras querer..." The girl felt something uncoil her in her for the first time as sleep overtook her, she hadn't even time to wonder at why she was crying when she slipped into unconsciousness.

Saturday's Verse, "The Dead Woman" by Pablo Neruda

2010-08-21T14:17:00.004-04:00

If suddenly you do not exist,
if suddenly you no longer live,
I shall live on.

I do not dare,
I do not dare to write it,
if you die.

I shall live on.

For where a man has no voice,
there, my voice.

Where blacks are beaten,
I cannot be dead.
When my brothers go to prison
I shall go with them.

When victory,
not my victory,
but the great victory comes,
even though I am mute I must speak;
I shall see it come even
though I am blind.

No, forgive me.
If you no longer live,
if you, beloved, my love,
if you have died,
all the leaves will fall in my breast,
it will rain on my soul night and day,
the snow will burn my heart,
I shall walk with frost and fire and death and snow,
my feet will want to walk to where you are sleeping, but
I shall stay alive,
because above all things
you wanted me indomitable,
and, my love, because you know that I am not only a man
but all mankind.

Scraps: Alex and Evie, beginnings

2010-08-12T22:21:00.005-04:00

"Oh Evie, Really?" Alex's eyes shone in disbelief. Alex didn't handle upheaval well. I tried again, "Alie, I think we should try to humor him, just go along-," her eyes darkened, "just this once! I know, I really do. But we're not going to make it a habit."

Alex had been sitting cross legged on the kitchen table, she jumped down and began to pace. That was a good sign. She might still say no but at least she was giving it some thought. Her feet padded against the floor, she'd kicked off her her pumps when she'd walked in the door earlier. They lay in the corner, the glitter over the toes sparkling in the light. The apartment was mostly lit from the light from the street lamps and business signs outside the window streaming in. Our tiny kitchen was our conference center. Neither of us took to cooking much and Alex had put forth the great idea of using the cupboards for our growing collection of books.

Alex continued to pace, her breathing slow and even. I stood up and nervously ran my hands over the skirt of my dress, smoothing out invisible wrinkles. My dress was forest green velvet, a few shades darker than my skin. I watched Alex pace, looking more and more like a big cat in a cage. I didn't like it. I knew she didn't and that's why she paced. She would pace and pace herself into frustration and finally force herself into action.

Her lips were pulled into a thin line, the glint of her fangs barely visible. Her spots seemed to shift in the half light of the kitchen, it was getting darker. She stopped stock still. "Oh to hell with it," she sighed. She turned to me, "Get your coat, I'll grab my shoes. Let's do this."

The Photography of Bert Stern

2010-08-12T21:21:00.007-04:00