Upcoming Guelph Show, Plus Some Ruminations on Drag Performances

The lovable Guelph folks are putting on a drag show called "The Main Drag" on Friday night, and I'll be there to perform! It starts at 9 o'clock at the Grad Lounge in the University of Guelph, which is always a friendly venue as long as you don't drink in the dressing rooms.

There are good reasons for not signing up to do drag shows. I generally weigh the pros and cons: what kind of crowd is it? What's the mood like in the back rooms? How much time do I have to take off work?

I always get twitchy the week before a show because I prefer to have SOME sort of plan. I try to remember which outfits I wore the last few times I was there, and try to come up with something new. I also go over the songs I've done at the venue and do my best to have at least one new one.

The clothes are tough enough -- finding all the matching articles without actually spending the time to try them all on -- but it's the music I really worry about. Picking a song for a drag show is both an art and a science. My preference is for upbeat, somewhat manic numbers with lots of emotion and an obvious storyline (Natasha Richardson's "Don't Tell Mama," for instance). I want a song that *I* would sing (if I could actually sing), something with variety and spice. Spunky and smart and a bit silly. And since I tend to pick songs outside the mainstream, I try to find ones with a storyline that's easy to follow on first listen.

It's harder than you'd think. Ballads are notoriously dull unless the crowd knows them or they have a sizzling emotion to them. The songs people DO know off by heart have already been done a million times, and you need to be a REALLY stellar performer to make people want to watch them again and again.

Fortunately, for a lot of reasons Guelph is a less jaded town than most, so I sometimes successfully "push the envelope," trusting in my own love of the music to hold the attention of others. Sadly, last time I pushed it a bit too far -- I'll never try "The Monkeys Have No Tails in Pago-Pago" again.

My DREAM is to do Kate Bush, and if wigs looked good on me (and if I could find a credible '70s Kate Bush wig) I'd be able to pull off Kate Bush on the basis of it being "Female Impersonation." I've watched her enough to know the stereotypical moves. But I've never plunged into outright impersonation, most people at drag shows don't know who she is, and it's difficult to find an upbeat Kate Bush song, surprisingly...upbeat as in a song that keeps you moving back and forth a lot on stage, without just...well, moving back and forth endlessly for no point.

Anyway, I was at a housewarming party on Saturday night and two people were talking about how they'd re-enacted Kate Bush's "Hammer Horror" video on a drunken dancefloor. This got me thinking: maybe more people DO know who she is, and maybe there's a drag-friendly song I haven't thought of? Armed with a very convenient Kate collection on my iPod, I started evaluating songs.

• Babooshka: Too slow, and the repetition of the word "Babooshka" derails the story for drunken drag show attendees.
• Rocket Man: Sure to charm men and women alike, but...well, slow.
  
• Sensual World: WAY too slow. Can only be done if you're walking through a polystyrene forest. So no.
• Wuthering Heights: This is the best candidate -- since some people know it -- but it's still too languid for comfort, even with the "let me in-a your window-oh-oh-oh" miming.
  
• Hammer Horror: Might work, but again: slow. Also requires a man in bondage gear.
  
• Wow: Cheeky and fun. The only likely candidate.
• December Will Be Magic Again: For holidays only!
  
• Don't Push Your Foot on the Heartbrake: Faster, but has an alienating jangly '70s rock sound. Not as bad as "James and the Cold Gun," though.
  
• Anything from "The Dreaming": Much too strange for the average person.

If you're waiting for a solution, forget it, I haven't found it. None of Kate's upbeat songs tell a coherent story; they tend to degenerate into repetition. So instead I'm retreating into the comfort of Poe and working on "Extraordinary Way." Slow, but intense.

My New Digs: Fancy Couch

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I would LOVE to decorate with animal prints but I know from simply decorating my OWN body that it's difficult -- if not impossible -- to do it in a classy way without going all out. And it's extremely hard to coordinate.

So my mom and I spent an hour hunting for futon covers. Ever since I inherited this gorgeous futon couch/bed from Vanilla I've been making do with a white sheet for a cover. Now I finally have a leopardy -- but not EXACTLY leopard -- couch cover that greets the visitor (and me) with a hearty "how-do!"

Synchronicity: Banned in Boston

A day of coincidence with the radio,
and a word that won't go away...

More about Kate Bush soon, but for now: I've been having bizarre moments of synchronicity lately. A subject comes up that I hadn't been aware of before, and suddenly it's popping up in other parts of my life as well.

Previously I was being dogged by the "French Phone." Next it was "Madagascar." And now? "Banned in Boston," that is, a catchphrase from Boston's traditional and archaic crusades against "vice" up until the '60s.

This was a particular issue in the late 1920's, (which is why I keep running into it while reading The New Yorker). Thanks to a shockingly oppressive set of laws in the municipal books, and to the uneasy jostling between merchant's organizations and the Watch and Ward Society, the late '20s saw a spate of high-profile magazines and books get banned in the city (bans which were generally overturned in the courts).

What was one of the most vehemently banned books in Boston? You guessed it: Elmer Gantry.

So tonight I'm listening to an episode of "The Big Show" from March 18, 1951. Despite my intense dislike of Meredith Willson's music -- everything he does is simultaneously overblown and ultra-conservative -- I'm looking forward to Fred Allen, Portland Hoffa, and Ella Fitzgerald later in the program.

Early on, Ethel Waters enacts a scene from "Mamba's Daughter," a play that seems better left forgotten (Waters quit the radio show "Beulah" because of its stereotypical nature, but her character in "Mamba's Daughter" doesn't seem much better). Anyway, Talullah Bankhead (the glamorous, unpredictable) banters with Ethel Waters about autobiographies. Talullah says she's working on an autobiography about her fiery romances...but she's not done it yet, and -- ha! -- she "mostly works on it at night."

Ethel says she hopes the book has a fireproof cover, and Talullah replies that she can't wait to travel around America, just to see the book being sold in every city. (Pause for effect). "But I never go to Boston anyway."

The audience loves it.

Odorono

...dozens of times you've noticed it. The climax of a long evening...a cabaret, crowded, warm...a merry party sitting close...bodies twist, necks crane to watch the entertainers. Something unpleasant creeps in. Under the arms, dampness...stains...inevitably, odor. Nature's sure reaction! But Nature never catches you off guard. Twice a week you, like millions of men and women the world over, use your Odorono for checking excessive perspiration and odor. That's what gives you your assurance--which soap and water can never give--of constant after-the-bath freshness, of continuous daintiness.

The New Yorker, June 11, 1927

"Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis

How can I say everything I want to say about "religion" in a blog post, let alone one that's also a book review? I guess I can say -- by way of introduction -- that I see a great deal of goodness in organized religion: it builds strong social bonds, often has some connection with charity, gives people hope and purpose when they can't find it anywhere else...in short, organized (and in this case I mean Christian) religion SHOULD be a win-win situation.

Except for two basic problems. First off, the Bible is a vague, symbolic, and contradictory document. Christians all believe certain limited things about Christ -- which is what Christianity should be about, you'd think -- but for some reason they elevate picky details ABOVE Christ. And since they tend to insist on a (totally impossible) "literal" interpretation of a vague Bible, ANY deviation is enough to cause a schism, and when athiests, Jews, and Muslims aren't strong enough opponents of the Christian church, they historically end up killing each other over the stupidest of things.

The second basic problem is that Christianity (for one) turns essential (or at least pervasive) human drives -- lust, anger, envy, curiosity, quest for knowledge -- and turns them not just into UNDESIREABLE traits, but actual SINS that must be eradicated and are more important than most things Jesus Christ ever supposedly said. People are kept beholden to their church because they need to be SAVED from these sins -- many of which they can NEVER be reasonably saved from -- and -- worst of all -- priests are expected to be even MORE perfect that the people they serve. They aren't allowed any vices, and somehow their followers can convince themselves that Oral Roberts and Jim Bakker are incorruptable. They are held to an impossible standard of "goodness." They can't just be like Doctor Phil and say "I guess I SHOULD be a better person." They MUST be better people...they must be better people than it is even POSSIBLE for a human to be.

Which brings me to "Elmer Gantry" by Sinclair Lewis, a book about how priests survive in the toxic, impossible environment created by Christianity in its more literal form. Some of the priests acknowledge that their dogma is flawed -- they can't reconcile the Bible with the things they see around them, especially not in the early 1920's when science, sociology, and technology are stripping away the superstitions that religion was built on. But they STILL see the GOOD that they can do in their churches: supporting people, educating people, keeping people away from "vice.

So these priests just decide to stay quiet, view the Bible as a work full of symbols intended to help people, and work towards "liberalization from the inside."

A minority of the priests -- personified by Frank Shallard -- can't reconcile even this...and what's more they believe that there ARE no simple answers, not even from Christ himself. A fair section of the book is devoted to these sorts of soul-searching, agonizing crises of faith:

"Just what are the teachings of Christ? Did he come to bring peace or more war? He says both. Did he approve earhtly monarchies or rebel against them? He says both. Did he ever -- think of it, God himself, taking on human form to help the earth -- did he ever suggest sanitation, which would have saved millions of plagues?

"...There's just one thing that does stand out clearly and uncontradicted in Jesus' teaching. He advocated a system of economics whereby no one saved money or stored up wheat or did anything but live like a tramp. If this teahing of his had been accepted, the world would have starved in twenty years after his death!"

So which priests actually THRIVE in this environment? Hypocrites, in the form of Elmer Gantry. These people KNOW they're lying, and actually lie to get ahead, become cozier with politicians and businessmen, earn bigger profits, and -- in the case of Elmer Gantry -- hold more people in thrall. Elmer loves the money but what he loves MOST is power over others. During the course of the book he embraces hooliganism, Baptism, Revivalism, New Ageism, and finally Methodism, whichever route promises him a bigger and more adoring audience.

On the way he ruthlessly destroys everybody in his path, and also anybody he no longer has a use for. He particularly likes to "out" doubting priests like Frank Shallard, because doing so makes him appear even more dedicated and virtuous (the same way he goes on periodic "stamp out vice" sprees which accomplish absolutely nothing but victimizing a few average people).

The ultimate fate for Frank is horrifying, made even more shocking by the otherwise distant, flippant tone of the book: Sinclair Lewis is DEEPLY cynical and sarcastic, and even though he's herding the characters through an obvious round of tricks, the irony is so understated that it's up to the reader to keep up with it all: to recognize that Gantry has been rehashing the same pointless sermon for thirty years, to notice the gradual embellishments of his past, tailor-made for his audience. But when Frank Shallard is tortured and disfigured by a small-town mob who objects to his support for Darwinism, it's almost like the book has given you a physical shock. Don't read while eating.

Sinclair Lewis doesn't like Elmer Gantry, and he has little patience for people who lie and demonize even in the service of noble ends. He has nailed the character of Elmer Gantry perfectly: a man who experiences intense love for unattainable people, but utter disdain for those he's finally caught...especially women. Even his love for his mother, which seems credible at the beginning of the novel, is sidelined in his quest to head the largest anti-vice squad in the country -- a quest that he obviously attains at the end, propelled by the very people he's cheated and lied to all his life.

And does Gantry believe in God? At the beginning he is slightly AFRAID of God, but by the end God doesn't enter into the equation. He TALKS about God a lot, but that's as far as it goes. As with many powerful religious people, God becomes a tool for Elmer as opposed to an ideal. People like Elmer know how to use that tool beautifully, and through the extensive research he did for this novel, Sinclair Lewis understands how they do it too. And he uses this weighty novel to tell us about it.

So should you read the book? It's topical, written shortly after the Scopes monkey trial, and now we have our own monkey trials going on all over again. It's well-written, though you tend to share the same dislike for the characters that Sinclair Lewis has. It often feels a bit encyclopedic and dry, though it has plenty of moments of dry, hilarious, and bitterly sad black humour. I'd like to read more of his work -- Lewis even name-drops himself near the end, when a character makes fun of one of his earlier novels -- but unless you're up for a bleak study of human beings at their worst -- ala Nathaniel West's "Day of the Locust" -- stay far, far away.

What about the movie? I'm watching it now, and BOY do I have lots to say.

Marcia Baila

The United States had MTV. In Canada we had MuchMusic. But if you were a REALLY adventurous (or masochistic) Canadian you also watched MusiquePlus, the Canadian Quebecois music channel.

As a kid who basically flunked French in highschool, I didn't verbally understand much that happened on MusiquePlus, but I sure as hell knew that they had a significantly BROADER field of interest than plain-old, provincial MuchMusic. Crazier videos (usually from Europe), weirder production values, more beautiful women...it was a joy. Among other obsessions that this station instilled in me (both big and small), I include Niagara, "Two Men, a Drum Machine, and a Trumpet," and Nits.

Not to mention Mitsou, who I'll get into some other time.

But this post is dedicated to Les Rita Mitsouko, a French band that blew my little mind when I first saw them on MusiquePlus:



I would like to post their song "Andy" -- my first Les Rita Mitsouko exposure, and still the funkiest, fartiest New Wave song ever -- but instead I present "Marcia Baila." I'm doing this as a public service since people who weren't actually CONSCIOUS during the '80s have some misconceptions about what it was really like. The best way to describe how a culture was SUPPOSED to look during a specific time is to examine how OTHER cultures interpreted that look. In short, this video is what the arty side of the '80s WANTED to be in terms of fashion and sensibility.

What did the '80s REALLY look like? Unless you were Jane Siberry, not like this, unfortunately. But just watch the video and revel in every bit of beautiful, over-the-top, French oddness that Catherine Ringer and Fred Chichin indulge in. Goregous, gorgeous, gorgeous. And these two geniuses are still making music today, by the way.

Radio Curiosities: "Dinah"

I'm going to start an informal tradition of posting notable or odd songs that I come across while listening to old radio programs. I already have seven CDs chock full of discoveries -- so I'll never run short of material -- but I'm always finding new stuff that makes me say "wow!"

Today's offering is "Dinah," broadcast on November 29, 1942, during the "Command Performance" show. Notable in its ability to draw the biggest names, "Command Performance" is a great place to dig up musical gems from the past.

"Dinah" is an old standby, but take a look at the performers on this version:

• Tommy Dorsey: Trombone
• Count Basie: Piano
• Lionel Hampton: Vibraphone
• Spike Jones: Drums
• Dinah Shore: Vocals

How often do you think THOSE people got together to jam? Throw in Bob Burns playing his "bazooka" and you have a performance simultaneously sublime and ridiculous.

The Bridle

Someone has brought up the question of obsolete gestures, among them the Ogle. This calls to mind the conventional response to the Ogle--the Bridle.

Not long ago I thought a gentleman ogled me, and so I responded with what I thought was a Bridgle. But instead of following at a discreet distance, as oglers are said to have done, this gentleman came up to me at once and said: "Didn't I meet you last Saturday night at a party on West End Avenue?"

Something, you can readily see, was wrong. I began to wonder if I had bridled incorrectly. In order to find my mistake, I asked my friends to bridle.

Most of them thought, as I had, that bridling was a self-conscious recognition of wicked admiration, involving, of course, pleasurable sensations.

We thought it was akin to smirking or simpering, and had something to do with edging nearer without quite losing one's niceness. We may have confused the Bridle in some way with the Sidle.

We were wrong. Webster defines the Bridle as an indignant Toss of the head, as of a bridled horse. Can you EE-magine?

Now if some kind gentleman will Ogle me or Insult me in the good old-fashioned way, I shall be glad to bridle properly. It has taken practice to acquire the gesture, I must confess, for without the old spirit to inspire me I can achieve only the outward observance. But given the proper stimulus, who knows how well I can do?

--Josie Turner (The New Yorker, May 28, 1927)

When somebody ogles me, I don't bridle...I ignore. Or I walk away a slight distance, hoping they'll follow. This is my way of saying either "you don't know what you're getting into," or "yes, I'm interested...but I'm not doing ANYTHING unless you're more obvious about it."

In nightclubs, at least, the Ogle still exists, but it has been partially replaced with the butt-grab. I think most women in clubs tend not to Bridle, they tend to slightly isolate themselves (but not so much as to be alone) and wait to see if the Ogler approaches.

The unfortunate female version of the Ogle seems to be the Lesbo Routine, which involves grinding with another girl as though the two were lesbians, but actually doing it to attract MALE attention, which I think is unsavoury on so many levels both social and political. It works...but at what cost, ladies?

Atari 2600 (Computer #1)

I get moments of gut-wrenching, heart-squeezing sentimentality when I think of the computers I grew up with. Not because I was a nerd (though I was), but because computers were a wonderful escape into new worlds and -- later, when they became more sophisticated -- they allowed me to created my OWN new worlds, which is something I still love to do.

The beginning, for me, was the Atari 2600. I was probably 8 years old. I vividly remember the smell of the rubber joysticks which everybody chewed but few admit it. I'd sometimes play unsatisfyingly abstract games of Breakout, but my imagination was held most by the maze games we had: "Adventure" and "Maze Craze." I must have been a bit autistic because I was ENTHRALLED by mazes, I used to draw them and imagine them and write about them all the time. To this day I still get a thrill looking at a maze, and I have absolutely no idea why. Someday, to illustrate my mania, I'll post a picture of the ridiculous multi-page maze I spent months drawing in public school. You'll understand why my mating pool is so small.

I also get a thrill thinking about the Atari 2600. I haven't played one in about 25 years, so -- after some depressing auctions of the original article -- I've settled on an "Atari Flashback 2." It's pretty much the real thing with all the original quirks, and it's certainly more tangible than an emulator. I want to play these games on my TV...while chewing the joysticks.

And now, with experience in broadcast signals and assembly language, I better understand the terrifying process that went into creating these 4K games. I also understand why the Pac-Man ghosts flickered so horribly, and why the playfields tended to be horizontally symmetrical.

I don't have it yet, and maybe I'll be bitterly disappointed when I get it, and it will probably sit unused after the first few weeks...but I'd rather spend a small amount of energy and money on a throw-away toy than continue feeling my heart get squeezed like this.

My New Digs: The Puppy

So I've already made it clear that I love my apartment but the "make-or-break" issue is the volume level of my neighbours across the wall. They're quiet so I'm not constantly disturbed...but if they were loud I'd need to leave.

Today I got home -- bad mood, high blood sugar, big pores -- and entered my front door. Instantly I heard the incessant, punctuated yapping of a very small dog next door. Barking and barking and barking. For fifteen minutes. Sounding as though it were sitting right at my feet.

I went into panic mode. This was it. My neighbours got a puppy which can't handle being left alone. Time to move.

When I'm this upset (panicked, actually) I feel the need to take INSTANT action. I feel like if I just sit and wait awhile I'll literally explode. Since my neighbours weren't home, I called one of the landlords and basically tattled. I didn't consciously INTEND to tattle; what I really wanted to know was whether they knew if the dog was a temporary thing -- like, were they dog-sitting for a week? -- or if this was going to be a daily issue. I said I couldn't handle a yapping dog. The landlord was annoyed that the dog arrived without them being told. He said he'd take it up with the other landlords. I hung up the phone and realized: jeez, I just ratted on my neighbours without even giving them a chance to explain themselves, I've maybe just started a WAR.

So I sat on my couch, twitching. I leafed through a book ("Pictures Showing What Happens On Every Page of Thomas Pynchon's Novel Gravity's Rainbow") without actually paying attention to it. One of the neighbours came home. I didn't hear the dog, I didn't hear the phone ring. I agonized and agonized and agonized.

I called the landlord back and implored him to PLEASE not address the issue. I said that I'd like to wait and see if it continues to be a problem, and that if I felt it was a problem I'd talk to them myself first. I feel that's the responsible, adult, considerate, and most effective thing to do. He agreed, and I was relieved, but I couldn't help thinking that they'd end up telling my neighbour I was a tattle-tale eventually. How could the landlords pretend to not know about a dog that the tenant isn't supposed to have?

Later, lying on the couch and reading "Elmer Gantry" (and no longer twitching), my neighbour knocked on my door. She wanted to tell me that she'd bought a puppy, and for illustrative purposes she actually brought the puppy over, and it's one of those small dogs with elastics in its hair. She apologized about the dog barking that morning, which I hadn't heard because I wasn't home at the time. She said that she wanted to give the dog a chance to calm down, but that she would give it up if it was a problem, and if I was EVER bothered about it I should go over and tell her right away, and she also said she felt bad for not telling me the day before.

I confessed, standing in my kitchen in a bathrobe and with white pore minimizer all over my swollen nose. I told her I'd called the landlord in a panic but I'd told him I'd only follow up if it was a problem. She was a bit unnerved but understood that I'd been listening to the mystery dog barking. I said that I understood that dogs get lonely, but most of them can be taught not to bark when they're lonely, and I hoped that would be the case. I also told her that I REALLY appreciated her telling me about it, and that knowing she was open to complaints would make it MUCH easier to tolerate any barking in the future. I also, for some reason, offered to walk the dog occasionally. I suppose this was due to guilt about telling the landlords.

Happy ending? Well, I probably sounded a little nuts, and I still feel slimy (a feeling that I either need to "own" or to justify by saying "she should have told me earlier") but it was definitely an establishment of an "open door policy" for any issues we might have. It's my firm belief that western countries need an informal ritual: after living beside each other for six weeks, new neighbours should get drunk together and talk about their hopes and concerns. It would make ME happier, and I'd spend less time sitting and brooding and twitching.