Let's Have a Quilting Party Tonight!

Let's have a quilting party tonight in our cute quilted robes from Best's!

Pajama parties after ten will soon be known as quilting parties, for young things off to boarding-school and college are choosing Best's new quilted robes, stitched like the quilts that Grandma used to make.

Miss Shanton and Miss Maurice are having one wild time! But according to the photo captions, Shanton is suffering from "mannish frogs." At first I thought she'd gotten the frogs by cavorting with young Shanton, but now I know that they are "An ornamental looped braid or cord with a button or knot for fastening the front of a garment" and not some type of old-timey venereal disease.

"Cthulhu" and THE GAY!

At Gen-X video they have a special rainbow-coloured sticker that they place on movies with homosexual themes. I'm sure that the primary intent is to inform gay clients that a particular film might interest them, but I can also see the sticker being a type of stigma: if a film has that sticker on it, you're bound to assume that ONLY homosexuals will be interested in it. It doesn't help that most of the rainbow-stickered movies have an overtly sexual theme, to the point where those stickers tend to imply "porn."

So it was weird for me when I picked up "Cthulhu" in the new releases and saw that it had the "gay sticker" on it. What's this? A queer adaptation of a cheesy H.P. Lovecraft story? I would have rented it anyway but the sticker made me doubly curious. I hoped that the movie was one in which the protagonist just HAPPENED to be gay -- as opposed to the type of film I'd expect based on the rainbow sticker -- and I was pleasantly surprised because that's exactly what it was.

The plot of the movie wasn't particularly interesting...if you've read Lovecraft's work and you recognize how it could merge with environmental and political apocalypse, then you won't be surprised. What IS interesting, however, is how the sexuality of the protagonist is generally unimportant; it is not more explicitly "gay" than any other movie is explicitly "straight."

Where a gay theme HAS been introduced, however, is the VERY interesting subject of a gay protagonist "coming home" to the inbred small town he ran away from, as Lovecraft's work tended to use the "coming home" theme as part of the horror. There is also a subplot about the desires of the protagonist's family to produce an heir.

There are two really wonderful things about "Cthulhu": the overall tone (lighting, music) and the totally natural dialog, which is mostly free of cliche. Jason Cottle is an excellent actor, and -- surprisingly for such a low-budget movie -- everybody else is top-notch as well. "Cthulhu" could have been really, really good.

Why isn't it? Because it's disconnected and awkward. The pacing is weird. The ending is too ambiguous. And they simply didn't have the budget for any "pay off" scenes. They did the best thing they could possibly have done to sidle around the need for expensive effects -- relying on mood, uncertainty, and quick edits to sell the story -- but horror movies really DO need a bit more than that.

I listened to some of the commentary and it's disheartening to hear Grant Cogswell and Dan Gildark (the writer and director) be so crushingly disappointed with their own movie. I wanted to call them up and reassure them that the film was FAR better than they'd given it credit for. More disheartening -- but hardly surprisingly -- has been the online reaction to the film, where the usual comment is "Why did they have to make the guy gay? Just to be COOOOL?" They seem to miss the wonderful balancing act that the filmmakers achieved: to have a gay protagonist who ISN'T a token, who ISN'T there just to be cool or attract a gay audience.

That last point is the truly sad thing about "Cthulhu," that it achieved something quite remarkable -- and was a pretty good movie as well -- but it's a little too early for the world, perhaps.

I'd Buy Anything By...Andy Prieboy

I have said previously in this blog that Andy Prieboy is my favourite musician. He's smart and creative and eccentric, and he writes in a style that nobody else does in pop anymore, a sort of extremely wordy musical theatre approach which must be hell to score (and also to remember). Since leaving the reformed Wall of Voodoo in 1991 he has only released two albums and an EP, and his most famous song came right at the beginning: this happy little number called "Tomorrow Wendy" which you may remember.



During that time he was writing and refining "White Trash Wins Lotto," an ambitious musical about the rise and fall of an Axl Rose-style character. Apparently this was a really stellar show, and he would perform it in small L.A. clubs with various talented friends, waiting for a record company to give him a really sweet deal.

But Prieboy has been burned by record companies before, and he wrote scathingly about them on his second album -- and in the book he co-wrote, "The Psycho-Ex Game" -- so I suspect that he'll never go in that direction again. Instead, for the last fourteen years, he's been silent...

...until now. His website has been reactivated and a series of virtual EPs have trickled out. Brand new songs, each and every one of them a masterpiece! If you've ever seen a bunch of drunk idiots harass a donut store employee, this song ("Hearty Drinking Men") will thrill you (careful, virgin ears...there's some cussin').



Prieboy's musical output is slow and deliberate and his records disappear into obscurity immediately after their release. For this reason, scour the used bins for copies of his albums ("Montezuma was a Man of Faith," "...Upon My Wicked Son," and the absolutely brilliant "Sins of Our Fathers"), and then go to his site and pick up whatever .mp3s you can. One of the new songs -- "Shine" even contains harmonica by Stan Ridgway, another of my "I'd Buy Anything" artists and -- more interestingly -- the man who Prieboy replaced when he joined Wall of Voodoo long ago.

Dr. Seuss and Flit: "Aeronaught Edition"

Dr. Seuss was nothing if not imaginative, and he certainly knew how to work the current fads into his advertisements. But none have been so faddish as this one.

Immediately after Charles Lindbergh flew his famous 1927 flight, The New Yorker began covering every aspect of the airplane phenomenon. They tried to be cynical and reluctant about it, but that didn't stop them reporting about the latest airports, and the latest enhancements, and even sending one of their reporters in a flight over Manhattan.

By the time of this Dr. Seuss cartoon -- August 31, 1929 -- the fad had reached its height. The New Yorker was FULL of advertisements for $2000 personal planes; they even outnumbered the car and cigarette ads!

I'm not sure when the dream of "an airplane in every home" came crashing down. The depression probably killed it, as did the realization that businessmen didn't like having to FLY THEMSELVES to the office, and it would take a while for a really comfortable passenger plane to appear.

"Attraction" by Muffy St. Bernard

The man with the grey toque leaned against her, using her shoulder to support himself. He could come no closer because there were too many people around the bar.

"I'm attracted to you," he said.

She thanked him for saying so.

"It's strange, this attraction I have, because I'm gay. It's not obvious to anybody. Even my friends don't know! They're back there." He gestured. His friends were at the end of the bar, lounging, staring, interested.

"Would you know that I'm gay if I didn't tell you first?" asked the man.

She said no, she wouldn't have guessed. He pushed his toque down to hide his hair and then he smiled. "I want you to keep this a secret," he said, "just between you and me. Don't tell anybody what I just told you. About me being gay."

She said she wouldn't tell anybody. She promised. There were so many people around that she couldn't uncross her legs without hitting somebody.

The man with the toque kept bumping her shoulder, swayed by the moving crowd, bumping and bumping, but he didn't seem to care. "This is significant for me because I'm not actually attracted to women, I just pretend, I do it all for show...but you're the first woman I've ever been attracted to and I wonder what that means. I wonder if it's important?"

She said she didn't know if it was important or not. He put his hand on the shoulder he'd been bumping.

"Will you make this a special night and sleep with me?"

She said no. She said she was sad that he had to hide his homosexuality from his friends but that she was simply not interested in having sex with him. She said that there was no chance of him ever having sex with her.

He didn't remove his hand. When one of her male friends brought her a drink, the man in the toque said "So that's how it is, is it?" and he scowled bitterly, but he didn't remove his hand.

He was silent for a while, bumping. "It would mean a lot to me, if we could have sex," he said finally. "Since I'm gay and this is significant."

She said no, and he said "Kiss me," and he tried to pull her away from her stool and she sat back again forcibly. "Kiss me please." He pulled her face towards his. "It would be special. My friends are watching." And they were; they were taking pictures with their cel phones.

She pushed him away. He sneered. "I can't believe I told you about my sexuality and you're just rejecting me," he said. "I can't believe I confessed my biggest secret to you, and you're not going to have sex with me. That's awful. It's like you really don't care."

Her male friend intervened, pushed his way in and telling the man to cool it. She finally managed to uncross her legs and she drank her drink behind the barrier of her friend's arm.

The man with the toque stretched across from the other side, hissing. "I can't believe this," he said. "I told you my biggest secret and then you got your boyfriend to attack me. I can't believe you'd do this to me. I can't believe you'd betray me like that."

Wednesday Morning Scrutable Poetry: "Girl in a Tree"

Her legs were long
And scratched with thistle.
She had a deft,
Enchanting whistle.

Her hands were slim
But strong for lifting
Herself to trees
When winds were shifting.

And there she'd sit
And watch the birds,
And nibble twigs,
And juggle words.

And there she'd lean
And whistle clearly,
'Till she was God--
Or very nearly.

By Frances M. Frost, now largely forgotten.

Wednesday Morning Humour

(By the always-odd Peter Arno).

"The Roaring Talkies"

In the August 24, 1929 issue of The New Yorker, James Thurber complains about the strange "resonance" and "clangor" of the voices in the talkies. Assuming that such things are here to stay, he proposes a plot which uses this audio problem to good effect.

[The Banker] is on his knees by the bathtub, scouring it out. Mrs. Brundage is in the kitchen cleaning out the breadbox. "Hello, dear," he calls--his head far down into the tub. "Hello, dear," she answers--her head deep in the breadbox. In the next scene, they go to the attic to straighten up there. The wife finds a couple of old megaphones that her husband used when he was a college cheerleader. Playfully, they talk through these. "Let's give a megaphone party," says the wife, through hers. "All the guests to talk through megaphones!" "Splendid, dear," he croons, through his.

The plot moves to the back of an armored truck, then into a laboratory.

At the laboratory, he picks up a hollow brass cylinder. "This hollow brass cylinder," he explains, talking into it, "is contrived to intensify musical tones and designed for the study and analysis of complex sounds." Mrs. Brundage takes it from him and sings the picture's theme song into it.

The next scene takes place in a bank vault, and then inside an empty diving-tank, followed by the lower level of Grand Central station. After the husband and wife have a fight, "She sobs brokenly into the goldfish bowl, 'Little fish, bring him back.' (Which also could easily have been the theme song.)"

I'd Buy Anything By...Pink Floyd

I've already talked enough about Pink Floyd in this blog, and you already know enough about them.

Let's just say that I've been immersed in their music since I was (literally) an infant.

"Dark Side of the Moon" was on regular rotation in our house.

I spent countless hours listening to "Wish You Were Here" and staring at the red blowing scarf on the back cover. When I saw that Arabic numbers were used to designate each part of the title song, I was so in awe that I filled an entire three-ring notebook with all the Arabic numbers up to two thousand.

"Animals" scared me and I brought it to my grade three class so the other kids could listen. I trained myself to make my letters "g" and "a" exactly the way they were on the lyric sheet, a habit that persists to this day.

"The Wall" was the first album I consciously bought for myself. I remember the joy of discovering and deciphering the secret message.

Instead of having separate copies of "The Piper at the Gates of Dawn" and "A Saucer Full of Secrets," we owned the double-album combination called "A Nice Pair," complete with Doctor Fang's name and the censored breasts. I loved watching the psychedelic Harvest Records label spin around.

David Gilmour's feedback squeaks during "Echoes" used to give me nightmares, and when I asked my dad how the noises were made, he said "Probably by ghosts."

The cover of "Ummagumma" was more magical than "Alice Through the Looking Glass," partly because of the woodsy hippie tinge. I discovered if you slowed "Several Species of Small Furry Animals" down that most of the noises were coughs. I assumed that the wooden gnomes behind David Gilmour's head were the creatures that made those squeaky sounds during "Echoes." I marveled at the amount of time it must have taken to set all their equipment out for that photograph. I still marvel.

"The Final Cut" confused me and it took many years before I learned to love it. I had no idea who that "Maggie" person was. When I asked my dad what "nips" were, he said "Probably nipples."

I saw the "Delicate Sound of Thunder" tour twice when I was sixteen. The first time I went with my aunt Julie, a hard-rocking super-fox who -- when the joint was passed our way -- said "We don't need drugs to have fun!" Two enormous rednecks stole our seats, and they heckled Julie when she asked them to leave, so she said she'd throw them right the f*ck off the f*cking balcony if they didn't move their f*cking *sses, and if she couldn't do it herself she could easily find ten guys who'd be willing to, and they said "Okay, okay, lady, jeez!"

By the time of "The Division Bell" I'd already spent twenty-two years listening to Pink Floyd. It wasn't too bad an album, but nothing more. Pink Floyd will always be "Wish You Were Here" and "Animals" to me.

Fovea Hex: "Don't These Windows Open"

A few months ago I mentioned the creepy, ethereal joy that is Fovea Hex. Not only do they have a new album coming out soon-ish, but I just found this wonderful clip of a live performance.

Belaying their super-seriousness, Clodagh Simonds starts by singing "Somebody unplugged my laptop," which is why they crack up a bit at the beginning. But it quickly comes together again and they perform "Don't These Windows Open."



I assume the other vocalists are Laura Sheeran and Lydia Sasse, with Cora Venus Lunny on cello...but I don't know for sure.