The Double-SLICE..Double-SIDE..Double-QUICK TOASTER

As of June 15, 1929, Edicraft has discovered how to keep marriages intact!

MR. HORACE SNOOPY PEEK, late of the Prohibition Enforcement Squad has been doing a bit of research.

According to Mr. Peek's charts and graphs, most marriages are wrecked at the breakfast table. "Cold, burned or slow-to-make toast causes young husbands to look up telephone numbers," reads his report. "Only in homes equipped with the Edicraft Speed Automatic Toaster does marriage remain stable."

And can you wonder? Even the most inexperienced of brides can turn out crisp, golden, hot on both sides toast with an Edicraft while making snappy conversation that will keep hubby's morning paper unopened--yes, unnoticed.

Slip two slices of bread in the Edicraft, turn on the switch, and a few moments later you are gently interrupted with two temptingly browned toast nuggets, done to a turn on both sides. No watching, no chance of burning, all you have to do is reach for them in a bored, well-bred manner.

There's no word on how the "inexperienced" brides could keep their husbands distracted for the REST of the day -- toast for dinner? toast in bed? -- but I suppose this was a good start.

PS: If the pages of The New Yorker are any indication, the Edicraft and the Toastmaster were battling for supremacy in 1929. Who will finally win? I'll keep reading, and when I find out I'll let you know.

From Moses to Wicker Furniture

From the June 15, 1929 New Yorker, we get the most desperate advertisement ever.

Little did Pharoah's daughter know, on finding Moses in his basket in the bulrushes, that she had seen wicker furniture in its earliest form.

Pardon me, W.& J. Sloane, but that's probably the worst segue I've ever seen. From Moses to "colorful, cool, comfortable" wicker chairs...all because of that little basket. Wow!

I'd Buy Anything By...The Pain Teens

Somehow, during the early '90s, serial killers became cool. American Psycho, Natural Born Killers, Kalifornia, Silence of the Lambs...suddenly us nice wannabe alternative college kids were buying serial killer trading cards and -- for some inexplicable reason -- becoming slightly obsessed with the whole scene.

I was no exception. When I was in university I pretty much wallowed in morbidity, drinking great big gulps of all the world's nastiness. I certainly didn't want to perpetrate wicked deeds, but I DID want to KNOW about them, and I avidly bought Lydia Lunch CDs and followed every scrap of Karla Homolka news. Sad post-adolescent revolution? Maybe, but I like to think I was just exploring...learning about the ugly stuff that -- previously -- people didn't like to talk about.

The Pain Teens were part of this obsession. Essentially a duo of Austin-based Scott Ayers and Bliss Blood, they released lo-fi, sludgy albums with an emphasis on serial killers, child abuse, and violent sexuality. The music sounded like a slower, sloppier, more experimental Butthole Surfers mixed with samples and bizarre effects, with Bliss warbling over the top in her deadpan (and not entirely in tune) way.

Typical of their music is "The Basement," about the torture and murder of Sylvia Likens. Here's the video, but it's extremely unpleasant and definitely NOT work friendly.



Looking back on it now I can't believe that I ever thought this was "cool." I suppose that at the time it was popular to be nihilistic and to view the world in as dark a way as possible. Bands like The Pain Teens exemplified that aesthetic in its most cheap and humourless form, right up there with the "Faces of Death" videos and the bootleg recordings of the Jonestown massacre, the fake-snuff of Genesis P. Orridge and the dead-animal-robot battles of Survival Research Laboratories. It was done without irony or introspection or analysis. It was, at its root, childish and sensationalistic and dumb...but still an expression of what needed to be said, a reaction against the idea that smalltown America's working stiffs were a bunch of jolly folks who brought up their kids in the best way possible.

Sigh.

But I still love The Pain Teens. They still sound great! Put "Shallow Hole" in your CD player and play it loud. They made some of the sludgiest and most ecclectic music ever. Even if I can no longer relate to their torture-porn image I can still appreciate their music, and I can also appreciate their position at the time they were making that music. It was sensible then. Now this type of music is made by people in silly costumes...it's something different now.

Also very different these days is Bliss Blood, who now sings and plays ukulele in a trio that specializes in '20s and '30s jazz standards. A more abrupt change of direction cannot be imagined.



Most albums by The Pain Teens are pretty obscure these days. I highly recommend "Stimulation Festival" as the most focused and varied album; you might also enjoy the more primitive two-in-one CD "Born in Blood/Case Histories." Less wonderful is the much more commercial "Destroy Me Lover," which suffers from slick production but DOES have a heartrending version of Leonard Cohen's "The Story of Isaac." For fans only: I suppose all those tapes they released in the '80s...the ones I'd love to hear someday.

Eyeing the Intestines

A few nights ago I was amazed to discover a pile of viscera in the middle of my carpet. There were intestines, and a miniature liver, and other little bits and pieces all tucked inside that I couldn't really see.

My first thought was that Zsa Zsa had finally started vomiting up her own entrails, but these were far too small to have come from a cat. They were...mouse size.

As far as I know this is the sixth mouse that Zsa Zsa has caught. As though to express the changeability of her moods, every mouse is devoured in a totally different way; the first was left totally uneaten, the second was swallowed in a single gulp, the third was chewed and savoured in a leisurely way, the fourth was bitten into two pieces with only the top half eaten, the fifth was entirely devoured except for a tiny back foot...

...but this is the first time she's eaten everything BUT the entrails, which seems strange to me; why would she favour the fur and bones and tail, but leave the "choice bits" behind?

I wonder if there isn't some truth to that half-baked idea that cats sometimes treat humans as really useless kittens. Maybe Zsa Zsa left a pile of juicy mouse-organs for me because she thought I'd appreciate them, and she knows I could never catch a mouse if my life depended on it.

Even stranger, however, was how CLEAN and SELF-CONTAINED the viscera was. I've always assumed that such things were sticky and messy and gelatinous, but not THESE mouse guts; they were damp but coherent, a whole entity unto themselves, almost as though they could pull themselves back together and saunter off into the night.

I think it's wonderful that Zsa Zsa -- who now resembles Death's Own Pussycat -- still has the vigour to stalk, capture, and eat the resident mice.

Guelph-Squared

Now that my shoulder pain has momentarily ebbed to a dull throb (more on that in a bit), here's an overview of "Ten Days of Fear," also known as "Two Days In Guelph."

March 20th was the Guelph Queer Equality Drag Show. Performing at this event meant driving to the University of Guelph Campus Centre, in the dark, in the co-op car which I have only previously driven in once. Besides being a well-attended and well-promoted show during which I dare not screw up, it was also an experiment in car operation AND my first drag show since my shoulder injury...a "test" of my recovery so far.

There are so many wonderful -- WONDERFUL! -- things about the car co-op, but you do pay a small price. Besides the money you expend for actually taking the car out, you also need to go through a "ritual" before and after using it, which involves a complex series of key-and-passcode stuff, and a bit of paperwork, and then figuring out the state that the LAST person left the car in.

Whoever used the car before me had left the parking brake on, and I was delayed for ten minutes pulling various levers trying to find it, until realizing it was exactly where it was when I used to drive in the early '90s: between the front seats. By the time I'd disengaged it and closed all the hatches that had opened during my exploration, I then needed to back the car out onto busy Park Street, and I've never been particularly good at backing up.

So needless to say I was already frazzled by the time I left the city...and then I realized that, contrary to co-op protocol, the car DIDN'T have at least half a tank of gas in it, so I'd need to stop at a gas station on the way home.

All this was on my mind when I arrived -- mostly uneventfully -- in freezing cold Guelph. Fortunately the hospitality was top-notch and there was even a paid bar, so I got through my numbers quite well, thank-you-very-much. Here's a picture from "They Don't Know," taken by M.S.:


The show in general was AMAZING. Somehow, whenever Guelph organizers put together a show, they always manage to find top-notch performers in a wide variety of idioms. So we saw a fantastic (and spunky) drag juggler, and a full-on performance by Green Go, and Alberta folk singer Amy Bronson -- who you should DEFINITELY see next time she performs -- and...

The Nigel Gough dance troupe. Just about every time a do a drag show in Guelph, Gough has prepared a hilarious routine that sends the crowd absolutely wild. I have managed through the years to avoid needing to follow him -- NOBODY wants to go on after Nigel -- but more on that soon.

Anyway, the GQE drag show was a huge success, and I even got a little mention in the campus newspaper:

Popular drag queen Muffy St. Bernard graced the audience with her presence, travelling from Kitchener to perform at the show. Muffy put on a fun and sexy performance, teasing the crowd with her playful yet classically conservative antics.

"Classically conservative?" I'm still wondering what that means -- it sounds euphemistic -- but it may mean that my "antics" aren't of the over-the-top-sexy type, but they still have a playful "coyness" that evokes '40s musicals. Or maybe that's just what I WANT it to mean.

Anyway, as much fun as I was having, I was unable to forget that I needed to drive back to Kitchener...and I was absolutely white-knuckled all the way. Besides pumping gas in a crinoline at 1am -- YOU try to make sure the gasoline doesn't drip on you in such a situation -- I spent the whole time thinking "I'm a terrible driver, I'm going to get in an accident, I suck." By the time I'd reached Kitchener I was a nervous wreck, and actually pulled into TWO DIFFERENT DRIVEWAYS before discovering the one I was supposed to use.

In short, my show was good but my driving was awful.

So I spent all week flirting with driving schools, and grilling co-workers about their driving techniques. Workmate Dave -- who put up with the worst of my whining -- walked me through the typical back-up steps, and in doing so he put his arm across the imaginary passenger seat and turned his head around.

"Why are you doing that?" I asked.

"Because that's the only way to back up," he said...and it was a REVELATION. I don't think I was ever taught to actually LOOK BEHIND ME while backing up...I've always just looked in the rearview mirrors. Dave revealed that if he was driving behind me he'd probably want to shoot me in the head.

In the meantime I was getting ready for the NEXT show: the Gender Martini on March 25th, ALSO in Guelph. I would be ending both sets...and in the second set I was FOLLOWING NIGEL GOUGH.

First off, you can't end a set with a whimper; the song must bring people to some sort of closure. It cannot communicate that somebody is coming up next, it must say "That's it, you're satisfied, now go get a drink!"

What's more, if you're following a fantastic slam-bang performance like Nigel Gough and his troupe, you should not try to "one-up" them by doing anything even remotely like they did. If you don't think you can BEAT the previous performer, your best bet is to do a complete 180 and subvert their expectations.

I was still mulling over these things when the night finally arrived, warm but rainy. I got into the co-op car and did the paperwork without feeling any stress whatsoever. I immediately located the parking brake and disengaged it. I put my arm across the back of the passenger seat, shifted into Reverse...

...and backed effortlessly out onto Park Street! It was perfect! Now that I had discovered the secret of backing up, nothing could stop me!

To further allay my driving fears I was also taking drag stand-up artist D. to the show (I'm not protecting her identity, that's actually "D.," as in "D. Licious"), and she served as my navigator and company. We arrived at the eBar and were once again enveloped in sweet hospitality, and I found myself back in the same "green room" that I'd been in the last time I perfromed at the eBar.

This was me at the eBar in 2004:


...and me in exactly the same place five years later:


In other words, if you've got a good joke, keep using it.

The show was PACKED. We actually needed to be escorted onto the stage to get around the clustered crowd of event-hungry people. Again, Amy Bronson was amazing, and so were the other performers I managed to see (but whose names I've forgotten): the hula-hooping burlesque queen, the trio of dancers from Toronto, Mr. Gough and his dancers on a significantly smaller stage, Victoria Park triumphant as always.

Since it was a "Gender Martini" I decided to end the first set with "Love is the Darndest Thing," a bizarre reflection of love and resentment by Betty Hutton ("...what every young girl wants is wedded bliss.") This number requires Schnapps the Seal, and it always either succeeds brilliantly or flops terribly.

Thanks to a professional puppeteer who coached me after the last time I did this song (at Zelda's), I tried holding Schnapps as though he were a real animal -- as opposed to "a thing on the end of my arm" -- and I took her advice to let him behave independently of my own actions...and it worked! It was gratifying to hear the crowd laugh not just at the absurd lyrics, but also at the upstaging antics of Schnapps.

In order to shift gears and try to "blow out" after Nigel Gough in the second set, I resurrected Dalbello's "Gonna Get Close To You," which I think worked passably well as a way of closing things down.

Unfortunately both of these numbers require shoulder-destroying outfits. I was lucky to have lots of help in the back room getting them on and off, but by the time it came to drive home my shoulder was already aching in a "now you've done it" sort of way. When D. and I found ourselves totally lost on the way home -- due to an attempt to be clever about our route -- I learned what workmate Dave has subsequently said so wisely: "You cannot fight Guelph."

So for the last few days my shoulder has been in agony, keeping me awake all night and requiring constant icing; getting in and out of those outfits, plus waving my arms around on stage, plus driving 60km, have set my rehabilitation back a bit. Fortunately my MRI has finally been scheduled for May, and guess where I have to go to get it? GUELPH.

But there's fun stuff to look forward to. The entire Gender Martini show was recorded and eventually I'll be able to relive it...the best way to evaluate and improve your performance is to watch yourself on stage (so said Miss Drew eight years ago, and it's true). I was also mysteriously interviewed outside the eBar's theatre by a man who promises to post it to YouTube...one of the benefits of driving a car is the inability to drink more than a token amount, so I expect my conduct was better than usual (perhaps "classically conservative" even)?

In summary, the shows in Guelph were even better than expected -- and the bar is really high for these shows to begin with -- and I had a wonderful time, and I met wonderful people. But judging by my shoulder's outrage I don't think I'll be doing any drag shows at Club Renaissance any time soon...

Jack Donahue's Tap Dancing Jokes

I know what you're craving...you want to hear some tap-dancing jokes from 1929! Fortunately I just ran across this advertisement for the Jack Donahue / John Boyle school.


Jack -- the guy in the picture -- was known as an eccentric...a tap dancing comedian! He was so convinced that tap dancing was fun that he packed his advertisement full of stinky jokes! He even wrote them himself! No ghost-writer!

MRS. C. CLARK, of Park Avenue, has formed a new beginners' class with some friends. She and a couple of gentlemen were running over the class work while dressed for the street. One of our teachers said, "You can't enjoy that work with high heels." "They're not heels," sez she, "they're nice young fellers."

Really! Mrs. Clark actually sez that! Here's another.

MARILYN MILLER, Warner Bros.' star in coming production of "Sally," who has been working two and three hours a day on step creations by Johnny Boyle, stops a minute and asks, "If, when I get to California, I forget one of these steps, what'll I do?" "Call me up," sez Boyle. "I'll put the phone on the floor and do the taps for you." "Won't we be pinched for tapping the wires?" asks Marilyn?

A joke so good they went all the way to California to get the punch line!

Fortunately, Donahue is aware of his own failings:

That's old, but so is dancing which gets better all the time and that's more than you can say for fish...

WHAT? Jackie-boy, you tap dancing eccentric...WHAT?

Anyway, the jokes are terrible, but the REAL punchline for the advertisement is the picture of Donahue's partner John Boyle, who looks like he's about to murder somebody...probably somebody who always tells stupid jokes and grins like a loon.

(From the June 15, 1929 New Yorker)

Spring 2009?

In the past few years, my method of determining the TRUE arrival of spring was to observe the melting of Mount Hussey. When it melted, spring was OFFICIALLY here, with no fear of a cold snap or another dumping of snow.

This worked well in 2007 and 2008 (spring arrived on April 20th and April 14th respectively), but the bizarre thaws of the last few weeks have totally blown my predictions for this year: Mount Hussey has already melted but we're still getting wintry weather.

I'm sad about the weather, but I'm also sad that my much-touted, pseudo-scientific approach will not become enshrined in the Farmer's Almanac. We must return to our more logical and empirical methods of predicting spring.

Groundhogs.

Stereotypes Come True

Jesus Christ. Just LOOK at them.

(From the July, 1985 issue of Antic Magazine)

"The Beothucks or Red Indians"

As children, we Canadians are taught a bizarre and shameful footnote to our history: immediately after settling in Newfoundland, our ancestors began a three-century project of informal extermination. And I'm not talking about the auks, I'm talking about the Beothuks.

Their story is a sad one of brutality, stupidity, missed opportunities, and belated reparations. The Beothuks (called "red Indians" because they covered themselves with red ocher) were the dominant tribe on the island, living mainly in the interior but coming to the coasts during the summer in order to fish.

European settlers began to arrive in the 15th century, and though there are some stories of goodwill between the cultures, the Beothuks and the settlers REALLY got off on the wrong foot. The Beothuks, probably angry about incursions into their fishing grounds, stole the possessions of the settlers, and the settlers -- meanwhile -- were shooting Beothuks out of some combination of fear, hatred, and sport.

In addition, the French were giving guns to the Mi'kmaq in Labrador, resulting in a serious military imbalance with the Beothuks. Attacked on two fronts, the Beothuks became increasingly evasive, retreating almost entirely to the interior by the 19th century.

It was around this time that philanthropic groups were organized to try to make belated peace with the Beothuks, but the European powers-that-be had a bit of a credibility gap, especially since settlers were still quietly killing Indians. Ultimately the plan of the philanthropists was to find out where the Beothuk were hiding, give them presents, convince one of them to return to town with them, and show the Indian all the joys of civilization. It was thought that when the Indian returned to his tribe, he'd gush about how wonderful the settlers were, and everybody would smoke a peace pipe and get down to some serious fur-trading.

Twenty years later and all the Beothuck had quietly disappeared. Forever.

Right now I'm reading "The Beothucks or Red Indians" by James P. Howley, originally published in 1915. It was Howley's attempt to gather all the information about the Beothuck as possible, and it's basically a reprint of the letters, journals, and proclamations he found.

This format isn't entirely successful. Decades go by without a single update, and then a hundred pages are devoted to material from just a year or two. If an expedition to the Newfoundland interior involved more than one person, he prints ALL their journals about the trip...and then he prints the recollections of people who HEARD about the trip...and then he prints newspaper articles written about the trip a few years later.

It's annoying to read the same thing over and over again, but it does illustrate the unreliability of memory and biography. Everybody describes the situations differently, and as time goes by the stories get more and more inflated. Howley sidesteps this aspect of his book -- simply pointing out in a footnote when somebody is "unclear about" or "misunderstood" the history -- but it's one of the many ironies that a modern reader is able to pick up on.

Another odd thing about the book is how absolutely bungled the whole philanthropic enterprise was. The do-gooders would march into the woods, scare the heck out of some Beothuck by sneaking up on them, accidentally kill one or two, and then kidnap one or more women. They'd spend a year showering the women with gifts. Then, just before returning them to their tribes, the women would die of consumption.

Hey fellas, A+ for effort, but WHAT THE HECK DO YOU IMAGINE THE BEOTHUCK THOUGHT ABOUT THIS? And while acknowledging that the tribe was in danger of complete extinction, did it not occur to anybody that STEALING WOMEN OF CHILDBEARING AGE was the worst thing they could do?

To be fair it seems they really WANTED to kidnap a man, but the women were just easier to catch.

I'd feel more charitably about these heartfelt schemes if the people involved -- even at their most idealistic -- didn't qualify their "reconciliation" plan with the need to "bring the poor brutes to civilization." In the first meeting of the surprisingly liberal 1827 Beothuck Institution, the participants speak highly of the Indian's right to life and land...but they always slip in the verb "to civilize," as though the Beothuck were unable to decide for themselves.

But none of that mattered anyway because the tribe was already dying (if not dead).

Some of the most interesting parts of the book are the vivid accounts of Shanawdithit and Demasduit, two of the captured females who responded to European life in a somewhat delightful way (before dropping dead).

MOST fascinating, however, is the apparently complete narrative of William E. Cormack's east-west journey across Newfoundland. Over several hellish months he pushed through parts of the island that even the Indians wouldn't stray into, and his descriptions are engrossing: every detail about the geography, botany, wildlife, weather, and inhabitants during a trip that nobody had ever taken before, and no sane person would ever do again.

I don't have romantic ideas about Indians OR Europeans, and in this case especially their relationship seemed doomed from the start. Reading this book, though, I'm getting a strangely haunting impression of the situation as seen by both peoples. To the European settlers, living precarious lives in an enormous unmapped wilderness, the Beothuck must have seemed almost devilish, the way they disappeared into the interior, leaving behind deserted wigwams and tumble-down storehouses, coming back only to steal things silently in the night.

And imagine what the Beothuck thought, hiding in the interior that they knew so well, always aware that more and more settlers were living on the fringe. Occasionally the settlers would intrude down the rivers, and the Beothuck would quietly slip away, leaving their villages deserted and starting up elsewhere, further and further from the resources they required.

Eventually, undetected, the last Beothuck died in the middle of all that uncharted forest, and nobody else ever knew.

PS: As I said, this is a romantic impression based on a book written in 1915. Reality suggests that some of the Beothuck DID survive, mainly by mingling with settlers and other tribles.

I'd Buy Anything By...OMD

For many years I was a fan of the more popular songs by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, and I even owned (and cherished) their "Pacific Age" album. When I bought their "best of" as part of my 80s-DJ fodder I certainly enjoyed it all, but I still thought of them as just another '80s band.

What finally pushed them into "I'd Buy Anything" territory was when I bought "Dazzle Ships" on a whim, and I understood that their early albums contained thematically-linked hit songs AND experimental weirdness. This was enough to pique my curiosity, and I have continued to enjoy (and puzzle over) every subsequent album I've found.

But all this only adds depth to their parade of hits. Lush and odd, a combination of Moody Blues melodies and Depeche Mode staccato, with two lead singers whose voices melt the heart, OMD has a distinct sound that has never been replicated.

The song which sums this up perfectly is "Tesla Girls." It never fails to make me happy, but in the video you have the added bonus of "how preppy women were supposed to present themselves (and dance) in 1984," with parachute pants and inappropriate high heels. It's all so Bryan Ferry. I absolutely, positively love this song.



And here's one of the most beautiful songs ever written -- "Forever Live and Die" -- recorded during their 2007 tour and proving that they've still got it.



I won't do the usual "albums to buy and avoid" conclusion because I've never BOUGHT all their albums. I pick them up whenever I find them used. So until the day when I HAVE bought everything, perhaps YOU can make some recommendations?