There Was a Time When I'd Buy Anything By...The Residents (But Now They Just Annoy Me)

So you're in highschool and you've just discovered musical alternatives -- life isn't just about Tom Petty and The Tragically Hip. Like many teenagers you decide you have to experience the weirdest, most extreme things you can find, especially if you have to search in the darkest corners of the music bin to find them.

You start watching "City Limits," the MuchMusic show devoted to alternative music, and though much of the program is devoted to the Manchester scene (which you're not interested in) and industrial music (which you've already dived headfirst into), you are mortally struck by this video: "Hello Skinny" by The Residents.



Grotesque! Scary! Self-referential! Drug-inspired! Simultaneously visceral and intelligent! Absurdist! A complex mythology involving anonymous guys who wear eyeballs on their heads! Seriously, The Residents were about as obscure and "out there" you could possibly get while still being available and (somewhat) accessible.

You begin to collect their music, spending vast sums of money on whatever you can find. Some of it you love -- and you very much enjoy the IDEA of the group -- but you soon realize that sometimes...well, The Residents SUCK.

Their early days of vim and verve were spectacular. They couldn't play their instruments, but that just forced them to innovate. They spent years making an incredible avant-garde video -- "Whatever Happened to Vileness Fats?" -- which has never been finished (or shown altogether in one place).

Then they got better keyboards, and samplers, and maybe a sequencer or two, and they continued to do crazy stuff. Their concepts were alien and you could never quite believe in what you were hearing...what did they MEAN? Why did they DO that?

But somewhere along the line they discovered MIDI and they began to homogenize, and at the same time their concepts became less inspired. The keyboards got plinky and boring. The stories lost their focus. They put so much effort into their high-minded concepts that they somehow forgot about the MUSIC. At the same time they began to capitalize on their cult status, and by 1990 their CD packages were full of advertisements for watches and T-shirts. There's nothing worse than a cult band who runs around yelling "We're a cult band!" while their ideas and technique recede quickly into the past.

Eventually you give up and you stop buying their stuff. But you still remember what they used to be capable of...



Albums to buy: "Duck Stab" (for the "classic" sound) and "God In Three Persons" (for the "storyteller" sound). Albums to avoid: anything released after 1992. For fans only: their innovative (but kind of dull) CD ROM games, their comics, their watches, their T-shirts...

Dr. Couney's Babies at Coney Island

File this one under "Did you know...WHAT, he DID?"

From 1903 to 1943, Dr. Martin Arthur Couney had a very unusual show at Coney Island: an incubator full of human babies. Dr. Couney would take in premature babies, incubate them in public, and charge money for people to come and watch.

According to the July 6, 1929 issue of The New Yorker, here's how it all started. Previous to Couney's incubator, nobody had figured out how to keep premature babies warm while still providing them with clean air. In Breslau, Silesia, Couney built a tall chimney which could suck in dust-free air from above the rooftops. It worked!

An American exposition was travelling through Europe then...and the manager persuaded him to come to this country to exhibit his invention as a sideshow. He first set up in Omaha, Nebraska. Eventually Fred Thompson, the old showman who started Luna Park, brought him to Coney Island. That was in 1903. He has been there since and saved about six thousand lives.

This location had a surprising benefit.

One lady, expectant, took a ride on a roller-coaster, had her baby prematurely, and was not more than a block away from an incubator. Pretty handy!

How could Couney afford to do this? The way EVERY sideshow performer did.

The gate receipts have always been adequate, and the twenty-five cents which the public pays supports the institution, gives Dr. Couney a profit, and enables him to employ two physicians and eleven nurses and provide free board and lodging for his little red beginners.

I wonder if the nurses wore spangly outfits and, for an encore, juggled the babies.

Some final information that you may find interesting.

Every three hours the babies are taken out and fed. They get only human milk, from wet nurses, and occasionally a drop of whiskey...

The babies are always grateful, but sometimes the parents aren't. One father, seeing his tiny son attracting boardwalk crowds, demanded that he be given a percentage of the gate.

Nineteen-Eighty

The Greyhound Bus From Hell

I really don't mind taking the Greyhound. I'm always stressed about arriving on time, and I'll never understand their "don't board the bus until five minutes before departure" policy, but the trip is relatively comfortable and cheap.

Last week I wrote about the gashed-up razor-eater who skulked around the Toronto terminal until he was ejected. This week...

I took the bus on Saturday morning so I could vote in the TICOT elections. After only fifteen minutes in Toronto I returned to the bus terminal and waited to catch the return trip home.

There was only one other person waiting when I got there. Let's call him "Chatty O'Stink." He was borderline homeless and exuded an amazing stench, which he occasionally made worse by splashing perfume on himself. Mr. O'Stink REALLY wanted to talk to me, asking me all sorts of things about where I lived and why I was in Toronto. When I retreated into my book, he started touching the pages and asking me what I was reading.

"The Diary of Samuel Pepys," I said, knowing I'd never be able to explain this to him.

"I don't have any book-learning," he told me. "Can't even read and write. Didn't realize it until I was forty! Hey, did you know that Alice Cooper is coming to Kitchener?"

Chatty O'Stink wasn't a bad person, I just didn't want to get saddled with him, let alone sit next to his horrible body on the bus. So I stopped answering his questions and he eventually left me alone.

Lucky for me, though, the next arrival was a pre-teen boy with a skateboard who was either mentally handicapped or had just smoked a joint. He was frightened by Chatty O'Stink -- who was now walking around in circles and singing -- so I guess he thought I'd be a good ally against the Big Scary World. He kept turning his huge dilated pupils at me and making truncated observations like "Cold out here" and "That bus is big." He edged closer and closer. So I had to ignore him as well.

There I was, trapped between a guy who stank like the world's dirtiest armpit and a kid on drugs.

Then The Farmer arrived.

The Farmer was a short, stocky guy wearing a straw hat, except that the center portion of the hat was gone, leaving only the brim. He began to talk to Chatty O'Stink, but soon he was yelling in a way that reminded me of a big dog barking. "I DON'T CARE IF THEY DO IT, BUT DO THEY GOTTA BRAG ABOUT IT?" he screamed. "ASSF*CKERS!"

Soon The Farmer was walking up and down the growing line of passengers, by turns calm and agitated ("I HAD A BAD F*CKING DAAAAAAY!!!"). Even Chatty O'Stink became frightened, and he went to find the security guards. "That guy's crazy," said the wide-eyed pre-teen, holding his skateboard like a stuffed toy. "This line is big."

By the time the security guards arrived, The Farmer had disappeared and we'd begun boarding the bus. Chatty O'Stink chose the front seat and I sat far enough back to avoid his smell.

Suddenly, Chatty jumped up and started whispering to the bus driver. "That's him!" he was saying, pointing out the door. "That's the guy in the hat!"

"A seat's a seat," said the bus driver. The next thing we knew The Farmer had boarded the bus...and sat down next to Chatty. Things were tense.

All good things come in threes, of course. Our next wonderful passenger was a drunken red-faced guy wearing sunglasses who sat directly behind The Farmer. This was like an intricate chess problem being constructed, the kind where everybody ends up dying.

The drunk noticed that none of the seats in the bus had headrests. "This is a liability!" he kept saying. "There isn't a single seat in this bus with a head rest!"

"You're talking to the wrong guy," said the bus driver simply.

"Just don't drive like a maniac! I don't wanna get whiplash, man."

"You can get out now if you like."

"Oh, no no no." He kept looking for confirmation from the other passengers that he was making a valid point, turning around and staring and shaking his head. Then he'd get up and wander halfway down the aisle, make a sound of disgust, then come back to his seat again.

He had to make a big show of how much neck support he required, so he clumsily opened the overhead compartment to get his jacket out and make a pillow out of it...

...and he knocked The Farmer's straw hat off.

We froze. All of us were staring. We'd seen The Farmer's level of emotional stability in the terminal and we'd found it lacking. The Farmer picked up his hat, sat back down, and began to flip his head forward and backward, apparently to straighten out his hair. Then his head began to oscillate slowly from side to side as Chatty O'Stinky leaned as far away as possible. I felt very sorry for him.

The bus driver started the bus, and he announced that we'd be making the usual stop in Cambridge on the way to Kitchener. "WHAT?!?" yelled the drunk. "What's this about CAMBRIDGE?!?"

"It's on the schedule" said the bus driver.

"How long's that gonna take?"

"Fifteen minutes or so."

"That's bullsh*t" said the drunk, turning his red face to his fellow passengers to bask in their adulation.

The Farmer turned around and said "You could always walk."

Ooooo. Total silence now. I'm sure I wasn't the only one considering exiting the bus. This could NOT be a happy ending...

...but somehow it WAS. You know how some tough guys sort of half-wilt when their bluff is called, and their derision turns to respect? The driver had been polite and unyielding, and now The Farmer had dealt with him. Somehow this defused all of the drunk's anger. Within fifteen minutes the four of them -- the drunk, the driver, The Farmer, AND Chatty O'Stink -- were deep in a discussion about hockey, though The Farmer kept getting distracted by the voices in his head. He wanted to talk about all the bus rides he'd ever taken. Occasionally the drunk would retreat to the bathroom and come out stinking of booze, rubbing his little red eyes and massaging his unsupported neck.

What's going on? After fifteen years of trouble-free bus rides, suddenly I'm stuck dealing with crazy people, with the added bonus of a few recent stabbings to keep us on edge. Are they giving bus passes to these people just to get them out of town?

I leave you with The Farmer's favourite joke, which he made up on the spot and seemed to find delightful. While we were stopped in Cambridge, The Farmer wanted to stand up and go for a walk. Chatty O'Stinky told him not to. "They won't let you off, they won't let you off." He said.

"UNLESS YOU COUGH!" yelled The Farmer, and he laughed and laughed and laughed.

Scrutable Poetry Corner: "Ceres"

Here's "Ceres" by Harrison Dowd, from the April 20, 1929 issue of The New Yorker.

I have honestly never seen these "pigeon people," but they appear so often in fiction of all eras that I can only assume they're out there...probably in larger cities.

Little gray woman
Mad as a loon,
Feeding all morning,
All afternoon,

Grain to your pigeons
In your old blue cloak,
How long is it
Since your whole brain broke?

How long ago
Did you first go mad?
Was it drink, or a lover
That you never had?

What day did your mind
In a whir of soft words
Split and scatter
Like scared gray birds?

Harrison Dowd himself -- like many poets from The New Yorker -- has been largely forgotten, but he did write a book that's still remembered: "The Night Air," a "homosexual novel" from the 1950s that sounds pretty interesting. He was apparently a Broadway character actor from the late '20s to the mid '60s.

I guess poetry wasn't his thing.

And This Day

Whooo!

Up, packed, and away to Toronto by 9:30am. Not only have they changed the Greyhound ticket procedure -- requiring you to go outside and buy them from a surly woman wearing wrap-around shades -- but the bus also stops at a giant inflatable bus station near Sportsworld Drive. It's a "Commuter Connection," but it looks like a bouncy castle. Only bus-shaped.

I got the type of seatmate that I usually end up with: the guy who doesn't brush his teeth.

Arrived at Jason & Craig's to gain access to their apartment. The two of them are in the middle of an intensive campaign, and they also have new kittens. Somehow they manage to maintain their composure. I am thrilled that one of the kittens is named "Barrowman," and I bet he's a better actor than his namesake.

In order to let J&C prepare for their first show (of three that day) without the distraction of a visitor, I went for a short downtown Toronto wander. I thrilled myself, walking diagonally across the Yonge/Dundas intersection with the rest of the liberated pedestrians. I bought another book about Objective-C.

Leisurely preparations to attend the last half of the show at Gladaman's; small crowd but fun, and great to see Lady Butterfly with her big pregnant belly. Then a walk back to Zelda's, whose stage and dining room invite a wonderful cabaret atmosphere that I wish I could enjoy more often. In the change room -- which was also the women's bathroom -- a constant stream of mothers came in to change their baby's diapers. "I apologize for what I'm about to unleash," said one as I was touching up my makeup. This was a first.

My numbers went over well, and the crowd was totally into the diversity of the performers. Annie Drogyny showed up, the first time I've seen her in months, and fortunately I was wearing the outfit she made for me. A professional puppeteer gave me tips on how to better handle Schnaaps the Seal: in short, treat him like he's an actual animal, not like he's a mitten on the end of my arm. I thought the mitten-thing was funny, but apparently the animal-thing is even funnier.

A mad-dash rush with Craig back to J&C's house for de-dragging, then a rush to catch the 9:30 bus back home...and the line up was HUGE. Even with a second "backup" bus called to transport the overflow, I still was one of the last ten inside.

But before that, while waiting to get on the bus inside the terminal, an extremely disturbed man put something in his mouth and tried to wash it down with Mountain Dew. After choking it back up again and examining his teeth in the reflective glass, he wandered slowly down the line, bobbing and weaving, and when he passed me I was amazed to see huge gashes on both of his cheeks from his mouth to his ears...like, gashes so wide you could see partway into them. He was removed by security guards shortly afterward.

When I got onto the bus, the guy I sat beside was the guy before whom the disturbed man had staged his performance. This guy in the seat was enormous and daunting, talking on the phone with his girlfriend, saying that the disturbed man had "razors" in his mouth, which he was apparently trying to swallow. We talked a bit and he said that he was absolutely terrified...that after the recent stabbings in Greyhound buses he figured that he'd be the first person to stop the attacks...but when this disturbed man came up to him he just froze.

He wanted to know what was going on in the world. This obviously upset him, and I agree, it was absolutely surreal. I put off giving myself an insulin injection until he'd calmed down a bit. I was afraid he'd take it as an incipient attack and break my neck.

More Vaudeville Cats, Plus Special JJ Synchronicity Bonus!

I've just finished Douglas Gilbert's "American Vaudeville." It really is an exceptional book. Sloppy, yes, full of asides and written almost like a journal, but if you pay close attention you get a real sense of the interconnectedness of vaudeville; the stage hands, the performers, the booking agents, the theatre chain owners, the critics.

But of course you want to hear about the vaudeville cats.

The domestic feline--the writer, who adores them, regrets to say--never graduated with high honors in vaudeville although there were a number of successful cat acts. Of course, these cats are not dangerous, but they are unreliable, merely because they are supreme individualists, preferring to do the thing they want at the time they want to do it; which should be understandable...

Yet even [Tetchow] could get from his pets, for indeed they were that, but one trick each. His star performer was a tom who ran from the wings, scrambled up a rope hanging from the proscenium arch, got into a basket attached to a parachute and came floating down to the stage.

Heck, my cat could do that. Or at least she would if there was a toilet up there to drink out of.

It may be unnecessary to say that goats are difficult to work with and more unreliable than cats.

So no goats in baskets.

Special synchronicity bonus for reader jj! He mentioned this act last week, and what did I find on page 247?

Willie [Hammerstein] combed the museums and side shows for his freaks. In Philadelphia he found the wonderful Sober Sue...A number of the best comics of the period tried [to make her laugh]--Sam Bernard, Willie Collier, Eddie Leonard, Louis Mann. All failed. But the customers kept coming, not to see Sober Sue, but the comedians who (without salary) were contributing thousands of dollars in prestige and box-office take... When the engagement terminated it was discovered that her facial muscles were paralyzed and it was physically impossible for her to laugh.

Apparently Sober Sue suffered from the very odd Mobius syndrome, and her real name was Susan Kelly.

Creepy Pedro Reviews Some Movies

Fans of "der Creepy" will be pleased to know that, regardless of the limbo-state of his latest radio play, Mr. Pedro will be appearing in Genxine on a regular basis (in issue #7 you'll find his reviews of "Performance" and "Michael Palin's Himalaya.")

Eeko and Iko

Considering the revived (and generally posthumous) fame that sideshow freaks achieved during the grungy Jim Rose '90s, it's surprising to run across a pair of freaks that do NOT seem to be mentioned (let alone meticulously studied) on the internet.

But in the November 5, 1927 issue of The New Yorker there are a few paragraphs about the mysterious Eeko and Iko:

Even out of season, circus freaks are a major interest with us, none more so than Eeko and Iko... The two strange twins have been billed as "ambassadors from Mars..."

We have been acquainted with the pair for several seasons, and they were good examples of contented freaks... It had been their happy fate always to wear full evening dress with a brilliant red ribbon across their shirt fronts. This alone would have sufficiently amused and contented them.

With Eeko and Iko their unusual flaxen hair was their principal distinction. It looked like cotton and grew in conical clumps. They were said to shed it from time to time, as a chicken moults. Scientists pronounced them subnormal; their reflexes were slack, and they dithered as they walked. Their eyes didn't quite focus. They appeared to be Albino negroes, although it was intimated that they were picked up on the slopes of Mount Everest, or thereabouts.

Mount Everest? Shed their hair? Yeah right. Still, I'm fascinated by the strange spot that freaks held in society during the first half of the 20th century: respected and in some ways admired as long as they stayed in their tents.

By the way, I've never heard the word "dither" used in this way. I'm familiar with it meaning a sort of indecisive wandering, and apparently it can also be a sort of shiver/shake action. Did Eeko and Iko shiver as they walked?

Update
The early morning time-crunch and a misspelled "Eko" in The New Yorker kept me from finding what Morgan James discovered today: "Eko and Iko" are by no means forgotten. The Human Marvels can tell you everything you need to know about "The Sheep-Headed Men."

Curiously, their career was temporarily ended when their long-lost mother finally tracked them down. This article in The New Yorker was prompted by that very incident (which is why they keep being referred to in the past tense). So while Eko and Iko may not be the mysteries I thought they were, this article at least is commenting on a significant moment in their careers.