New UPhold Song: "Devil Woman!"

I'm having a surprising amount of success resurrecting unfinished songs off my old eMac. Somehow, the roadblocks regarding these projects -- many of them begun in 2003 -- are easily being swept aside through judicious application of fresh ears, soft synths, and sledgehammer editing techniques.

The latest resurrected song is "Devil Woman!" You can listen to it here if you're so inclined. It's based around a sample from "Pelican & Penguin" by The Nits, with a lot of sequencing from the obsessive "Damage" era, plus...well, just give it a try.

If I continue to be happy and easy with these musty old songs then I plan to release them as "Sruel Quay," a collection of rescued projects. Someday...

"Damage" on CD Baby

One of the things I've been doing lately -- instead of blogging -- has been to set up my 2007 CD "Damage" on CD Baby for distribution.

Woo-hoo, it's finally there, and it's very very cheap! You (and that's not "you" specifically, it's the "generic you") can go online and buy either the CD or the MP3s, and have a little bit of Muffy in your own home forever.

I warn you, though, that the CD was made during a particularly acerbic period of my life, when I'd decided it would be socially and emotionally beneficial to live excessively. "Damage" is the only wonderful thing that came out of that period, as it was recorded during moments of anguish, self-doubt, and obsessive twitchiness...and it's definitely apparent.

Still interested? It's here!

The Computer History Museum

Johnniac, Sage, Enigma...the Computer History Museum is where I want to live.

Summer! Summer! Summer!

Today I had planned to take a canoe trip down Guelph's Speed River, as part of the triumphant (possible) return of the Daily Muffy. Unfortunately the forecast rather sketchily called for afternoon thundershowers, and my trip organizer -- who is a professional canoe coach -- said "Lightning + Canoe = Death." And she didn't want to die just for a bunch of goofy photographs. We had to cancel.

So on a beautiful day, with the Co-op car booked and a totally free itinerary ahead of me, I decided to drive to New Hamburg and take my mom out for a surprise lunch.

And it worked! She hadn't eaten! We sat on the empty E.J.'s patio and ate pulled-pork sandwiches and talked about her trip to England. Then we took a long stroll around Baden -- which neither of us have ever walked around -- and chatted with children and played with a small dog. Then we went on the "Castle Kilbride" tour, which was quite beautiful, though I was disappointed we didn't get to REALLY see the basement. And I think that when I accidentally touched the tour guide's hand she thought I was groping her.

A side benefit of this wonderful day -- besides the joyful sponteneity of just making it up as we went along -- was the driving practice I got in. I'm becoming more comfortable with the car and am no longer white-knuckled when I drive it, and with each trip I become more thankful to the Grand River Car Share: they are professional, sensible, and they suit my lifestyle perfectly.

Sigh! Here's to a wonderful summer day! I don't have a "Daily Muffy" to show for it, but I think I ultimately got something better.

The Changeable Changeness of Change

The last three weeks have been bizarre. Nothing in particular has happened, nothing too shocking or surprising, but I can't help feeling that my world is moving pretty rapidly into a new place. What's surprising about this is that I'm pretty comfortable with the idea.

I've never really understood before the Tarot idea where the "Death" card actually means "change." I figured it was just a conceit to keep suburban housewives from screaming when they get their cards read. But when things are changing -- both your environment and you -- it really DOES feel a bit like death: a little bit scary and exciting and a whole lot of wondering.

Some things are going on that I'm not going to talk about here, and they're all interrelated so I can't give a full sense of what's happening on this end, but one of the cruxes involved is: how long am I going to continue doing drag? I've always known that there'd be a time when I'd want to stop, and I figured I'd just wake up one morning and say "No more!", but instead it's been a series of gradual waves of thought during the last few years. Every year I give the idea of quitting more serious consideration, and this year I'm really on the cusp of saying "Yeah, that's it."

Why? One reason is vanity. Each year it gets harder and harder to look good, and the failures are more and more apparent. The pictures of me which look attractive are taken from increasing distances. I keep thinking about the song that goes: "Nice legs, shame about the face," and all it takes is one terrible batch of photos to make me go "Ugh! No more!"

Another reason is reward versus effort, and the rewards are getting smaller. It's not that the WORLD has stopped rewarding me, it's just that those rewards mean less and less to me, and as the effort increases, doing drag starts to lose its point.

A third reason is the sheer pain of doing it. My shoulder isn't getting better and there's a possibility that it never actually will (I'm going to a shoulder specialist soon and will probably be scheduled for surgery). The ability to "look good" in drag involves having access to all those parts of your body that you need to modify, and I don't have access to some of those parts anymore. It's depressing and causes me a lot of anguish.

And finally, I've realized over the years that I'm GOOD at a large number of things, but I'm not GREAT at any of them (except for my job), and the reason is because I haven't focused all my money and energy on a single activity. "Doing drag" competes with all the other interests I have in my life.

But the thing is, drag is such a part of my identity that I've always been TERRIFIED of losing it. Who would I BE? This year, however, I can actually see myself doing without it, and I realize that my life would be a hell of a lot simpler and easier without it.

I'm not going to be one of those people who throws out all their drag stuff on a whim. If I do decide to stop doing drag, it'll be a gradual process, a "letting go." I'm still performing at next week's "OK2BME" Pride Prom, and today we were going to do a Daily Muffy (but it was canceled). What happens will depend entirely on where my life goes from here.

In any case, all this stuff is the major reason why I haven't been blogging lately. When my life becomes unsettled I tend to withdraw from creative pursuits (such as this one) and just do a lot of reading and game-playing (yes, The Sims 2).

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."