Boo and all that.

Happy Halloween everybody – one of the few times of the year that lets me be me.

And being me I’ve been watching the old Universal Horror line up – Dracula, Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Wolf Man and the Creature of the Black lagoon.

It’s interesting to note, of the five monsters here only two are supernatural in origin – Dracula and The Wolf Man. The invisible man and the Frankenstein Monster are the products of science and The creature of the Black Lagoon is simply something living by itself until a group of scientists start screwing about in its own home. You understand his anger – you’d react the same way.

And the Frankenstein monster is in a lot of way a victim of circumstances – nobody asks to be a reanimated corpse pieced together from the bodies of the dead (if you do you are maximum weird)

The Wolf man doesn’t really do anything to deserve his fate – Larry Talbot tries to save a woman from a wolf and ends up turning into a monster when the moon comes up. One odd note – in the original Wolfman (the 1940 one) you never see the moon. I don’t know why – maybe they forgot.

Still thinking about it, there is a sense of something wrong with Larry Talbot – there’s a sense of vulnerability and instability even before he gets bit – and his inner conflicts contribute to his emotional collapse – granted discovering that you turn into a blood thirsty half man half wolf by the light of the full moon is going to be something tough to deal with but you have to think that a less fragile psyche than Talbot’s might have responded very differently to this. But where would be the fun in that?

Even Bela’s Count Dracula has a sense of being pushed to what he does – the exchange early in the film – where the count says “to be dead to be really dead that must be glorious.” When one of the women makes a comment Bela fixes her with a stare and says “there are far worse things awaiting man (long pause here) than death.”

Not that this inner awareness prevents him from draining the life out of one victim and trying to kill another. The later Hammer “Horror of Dracula” had Van Helsing postulate that a vampire is like a drug addict hating the habit but unable to quit.

Maybe they are just thirsty.

Supernatural horror doesn’t seem to work well these days – at least the traditional ones don’t – the Mummy’s latest incarnation was more of a thrill ride than a horror movies and the vampire has become a short hand for self impressed trendy people who go to clubs a lot (at least it seems that way).

And for some reason Zombie films kind of leave me cold, as do slasher films – the one that didn’t was the first Halloween where there is a hint that there is something more to Michael Meyers than just a serial killer.

One thing that makes the old 30’s films as oddly intense as they are was of course the times they were being made in – the 1930’s were a time of crisis and emotional repression – there was a sense especially in the early 30’s in the utter depths of the depression before FDR was president that society itself was collapsing from its internal rot as the depression grew worse and the only actions anyone could come up with were more of the same things that hadn’t worked. Tack on to that the typical American weirdness about sex (The Hays code took effect in 1930 and condemned married people in movies to years of bead rooms with double beds) and well there’s a lot more going on underneath than what you see.

This could explain why Japanese horror films are so interesting these days – there’s a lot of unspoken tensions and conflicts in Japanese society which emerge in symbolic form in their horror films.

Well more some other time – work and all that.

Peace Love I am Dracula I bid you welcome

A-Rod - a post from The Enemy Below.

Insect Girl is a huge A-rod fan, Alex she like to call him. Her Uncle in-law was the coach of Alex in high-school, and she had a crush on him since a very young girl, watching him as a senior in high school knocking balls out of the park. She moved up to New York with me 3 years ago and became a huge Yankees fan, same as I. As Yankees fans booed A-Rod, She would be in the stands yelling at them to shut up. She would defend him at every turn, and she would be adamant about the fact that someone else on the team was not producing either, when ever A-Rod would strike out or hit into an inning ending double play.

But that was then and this is now. Last night during the 5th inning of the World Series, we were sitting on our couch and waiting for the Rockies to get a hit and start the comeback that would be talked about for ages. Of course, that comeback never came. However, we did hear, in the middle of an at bat, that A-rod had opted out of his contract, and that it had been confirmed. At that point I heard Insect Girl say something that I never thought I would hear her say. "That little S**T," she said, "I was enjoying the game." She went on to go into a angry discourse with herself and I about how this was not the Alex she knew as a kid, about how she was done with him, and about how much money one person needs.

While I did agree with most of her sentiment, I do have to say that I don't agree with it all. None the less, if what he alienated a fan who had the guts to stand up in Yankee stadium and yell at her fellow fans as they booed A-Rod off the field last year, what fans does he have left. She said she is going to write "Sucks" on the back of her A-Rod shirt and buy a Joba Rules shirt. Poor A-Rod, I hope you find support in your new home, because you will never be welcomed back here.

The Enemy Below, NYC

I added the pic - Bob Muir.

Cold, Sox and the lessons learned

First really colder day of the fall – like 40 degrees at night and the heat clicked on last night. My landlord’s mother lives on the same floor as I do and I’ve never had a problem with getting the heat turned on – there may be a connection. I don’t know.

Busy today so not much to say.

The Red Sox have won the World Series. Again. This is a very strange sentence for me to write. Prior to 2004 the Red Sox hadn’t won since 1918 – and now – well they’ve won two since the Yankees last won one.

I remember scaring the living daylights out of a somewhat brittle Yankee fan – we were talking about the Red Sox curse (which I never quite believed in – if it was a curse it was called the curse of buying older players on the down slope and not enough pitching – not some kind of mystic force – Mr. Brady’s inexplicable reason to leave Pedro in notwithstanding) I was saying it only becomes a curse in retrospect.

“for example” I said (the Yankees had just lost to the Diamond Backs in the series) “let’s say the Yankees don’t win for the next few years, then George stops running the team and the folks after him decide to squeeze all the dollars they can out of the team and they end up spending years in the middle and lower reaches of the American league. After some years of that they would start talking about the curse of the Mets. (The last team the Yankees beat in a world series by the way). But it’s not a real curse just the way things fell out”

He, to put it mildly, freaked. “He’ll never allow that” I can only assume he was talking about George. At that point I realized there was no point mentioning that George had presided over the longest Yankee championship dry spell since Babe Ruth joined the team.

I have no idea how George Steinbrenner managed to get the rep he has. Granted the man has a fierce devotion to winning but I have a fierce devotion to women who have nothing to do with me – that doesn’t make me a ladies man anymore than George’s desire to win makes him a winner. You need results you know. Trophies, nights of wild sex, bottle caps, whatever.

Apropos of nothing, these days when I’m talking to a woman I think is attractive, I find it harder and harder to keep the words “I’d like to kiss you full on the mouth.” from finding their way from the random phrase generator that lives in my brain, to my vocal cords and then out past my lips into midair where the woman I’m talking to could hear them. At best I figure I’d get ignored in chilly but polite way, at worst, pepper spray.

This really needs to be a much longer post but let’s try and make it short and sweet.

As much as I love baseball I understand it really isn’t that important – if it never existed, with the exception of Jackie Robinson and maybe Babe Ruth, American History would be pretty much what it was without baseball.

That said, I’ve been along time fan of both the Mets and the Red Sox. Why? I’ve thought about this for a while and the best I can come up with is one you don’t pick your teams your teams pick you. And two while the Mets are the team of my youth when all could be and magic (1969) existed. The Red Sox were more the team of my adult years – teaching me more than anything how to deal with heart shattering disappointments, get up and carry on in some kind of masochistic combination of pure cussedness (which I was assured was pure Irish stubbornness) and Calvinistic determinism, it was simple really, you are special type of loser, the almost but not quite type a special kind of doomed.

Then they won in 2004 – I was really unprepared for that. It’s hard to explain but I felt something deep inside just shift – thoughts like “maybe you’re not quite the damn loser you keep telling yourself” popped up – and now with this win – it’s like – there is a voice saying “hey schmuck – you have a lot going for you - accept that and get on with it – nothing worse than wasted talent”

This needs more thought I think – but that’s what coming through.

Tomorrow some more band stuff – we’re working on a press kit. And recording and other news (is there a plural of news? Like newes? Probably not – doesn’t’ bear thinking about).

Peace Love I’d like to kiss you full on the mouth

Diana Rigg (of course)

water boarding, Claw DVD and band stuff

What the hell have we become?
First the president’s nominee to take over the Attorney General’s office from his incompetent boot licking toady says he can’t comment on whether water boarding is torture and now Rudy – as unwelcome a member of Red Sox Nation as there ever was – says he isn’t sure if it’s torture either.

Let me put it this way – the fucking Khmer Rouge were dead certain it was torture and used it and used it a lot.

This namby pamby bullshit about water boarding is symptomatic of the rot that exists in the center of the current power structure. That a candidate for president can issue such a mush mouthed opinion about a horrible practice – and not be shunned by human beings for the rest of his life speaks volumes to the depths that we have sunk. (I misspelled that suck when I first wrote it but almost makes a much sense).

On a slightly lighter note Rudy said the “I took a city that was known for pornography and licked it” .

You can’t make that up – nor can I think of anything snide to say.

I have to say that in it’s new DVD format the Giant Claw is just a stupid as it was in vcr format and when I first saw it on TV. A real problem is that I watched that right after watching Seven Samurai (which I think is one of the best films ever made) – and the effect was like listening to the Beethoven’s 5th done by the New York Philharmonic then listening to someone pound out a Brittney Spears song on a badly tuned piano. It just made it worse. The static camera shots, the dull back rounds, the badly composed frames, the lack of depth to the world being created just make me hurt – then fall asleep.

Meantime the band will be heading into the studio soon, the recordings we’ve gotten back haven’t been what we really need now that the band is well the band so – into the studio again – looks like we’re going to try and record the deal live – as a punk band would (and we kind of are a punk band if we are anything) and then just mix the stuff down. We’re talking 5-8 hours all told followed by massive fistfights and the band breaking up over who gets top billing. No not really.

Got to go more stuff to do.

peace, love, licking things

Aware, Rudy’s for the Red Sox and Recording

It is apparently islamofacism awareness week – and other than crude attempts to intimidate professors who say things that these folks disagree with (I mean this used to be America right? “I disagree with what you say but I’ll defend to the death your right to say it” America yes?) There doesn’t seem to be much happening. Not even a parade or a public access telethon.

I mean I’m so far out of the loop these days that when I first heard of this silly thing I wondered if the organizers were for or against islmaofacism. It wasn’t clear.

Anyway the phrase Islamofacsim is a red herring a way to up the ante to make guys in caves and guys making bombs out of artillery shells and cell phones into World War 3 or 4 or maybe 5 (I lose track of things so quickly these days).

It’s all hype – as someone pointed out Iran (the current evilest people on the planet) has an economy the size of Finland’s and is viewed with suspicion by many if not all of its neighbors. To suspect they are attempting to recreate the Caliphate or the Ottoman Empire is just lunacy.

By the by the heirs or descendants of the Ottoman Empire, the Turks, are about to send troops into northern Iraq (where the Kurds are) due to attacks on Turkish troops by guerillas who then flee across the border into northern Iraq. I mean just when you think things can’t get any worse there – you find out they can.

Wake me when they get back to celebrating Lesbian sex. Now that’s a week you can get behind.

Rudy proving he’s utterly shameless has said he’ll be pulling for the Red Sox. Speaking as a long time (1973) Red Sox fan – let me just say “Rudy don’t bother, really”. My friends who are staunch Yankee fans are one and all pulling for the Rockies. My friends who are Met fans still haven’t quite recovered enough from the crash to even care about what happens (that applies to me as well – while I’d like to see a sox win – it’s not a burning issue for me – well wait until after tonight – baseball to me is like malaria to me – one minute I’m fine next minute I’m in complete knots watching the last inning of a game and cursing the fact I quit smoking).

That’s a picture of Yaz by the by. He made the last out in 1967, 1975 and 1978. And yet didn’t shoot himself.

Why so many of my athletic heroes and teams had to deal with heartbreaking losses not once but again and again is something I’d rather not think too much about today.

Going to try and record the full band soon – it doesn’t look like the recordings we did back in Feb are going to do the trick. Not with a full band playing anyway.

Going to try and grab the Giant Claw on DVD tonight – I was going someplace but work has just busted me.

Peace Love Claws.

More pics from zee gig.

Insect girl and The Enemy Below


S-Dog - Bob Muir, Traflagar, Insect Girl, the Dude, The Enemy Below


Nothing like pretty girls in Insect Masks to give follks the creeps.


Why you should come to every show we do and bring all your firends. This is why you should make this band your life - Traflagar and Insect Girl.


They say this is a good picture of me - I'll let their judgement stand - I never think there are any good pictures of me.

Pics from the gig! Yeah!

Just Before the show - From left to right - in front -Trafalgar (like the Square), S-Dog. Back row - The Enemy Below; Bob Muir; Insect Girl and THE DUDE! Note we are in band gear - which you can get at cafe press -


The biggest playa of the group - S- Dog.


From Sorry I ate your brain I think.


Tired of being Insane.

Monkeys, the gig, Devil Bats

Things you never expect to read.

It seems the deputy mayor of Delhi in India was killed by monkeys.

Let me write that again – killed by monkeys.

You probably will never see your obituary – I presume after you die either that’s it or you move on to something else that hopefully isn’t more of the damn same. One of my nightmares about the after life is that we all end up in this huge room at a desk with hundreds of number two pencils a huge stack of paper in front of you and a voice saying “Please fill the form out exactly as I have explained it to you”.

Still you’d hate to think the phrase “killed by monkeys” would be in your obit.

Did some checking the unfortunate man apparently fell from his balcony while trying to fight off the monkeys.

Per the same report one idea being broached to curb the menace of the monkeys is to introduce bands of larger Langur monkey to attack the smaller Rhesus monkeys who are causing the problems.

And once the Rhesus monkeys are suppressed as it where what next? Well bands of even bigger monkeys roaming Delhi and causing havoc. So what then? I mean what eats Langur monkeys? Leopards and Tigers do I presume but I see a problem with introducing large numbers of them into a major city. Well

Gig went well last night –actually we played as well as we ever have - fabulous indeed. Not as many people showed up as we wanted but it was Sunday. But I have to say that everybody who missed this missed our best show ever. Like ever.

I feel bad for the band – they all worked very very hard on this – and I feel like I failed to get enough people to come to the gig – hell I didn’t get anybody to come. It’s disappointing at the very least. I need to look into more and better promotion techniques and well try and view this from a more rational marketing perspective I think.

It’s a bit galling right now – this is a very very good as in oh wow good band – the music is tight it’s funny as well and loaded with hooks – hell even the headline band that night cited Stacy (they mangled the name a bit but hell when you impress the headliner – who didn’t draw that many folks either – you know you’re doing something right.

Meantime – Devil bat .

After Bela Lugosi’s brief time as a big name star – he vanished into the world of the Hollywood ghetto and z level producers – this happened pretty quickly – by the 1940’s he was doing junk like this and playing bit parts like Igor in the later Frankenstein films – hell the didn’t even let him do Dracula in the House of Dracula, House of Frankenstein series – they had John Carridine (who one assumes was willing to work for a whole lot less) do it.

Anyway Devil Bat features Bela as Dr. Caruthers who is a) the town doctor – check that the beloved town doctor and also a brilliant scientist – a barking mad scientist. It seems that some years ago – he developed some kind of cold cream which served as the basis of the fortune of the Heath Family and the Morton Family – Bela – who simply took cash on the nose rather than a share in the profits no bears a grudge for the Morton and the Heaths wealth – still he manages to have a pretty fancy spread himself complete with secret passages – which lead to other hidden doors with made no real sense to me while I was watching it – I mean Bela you’ve already hidden the entrance to the place –why do you have to hide the exit as well? Made no sense to me.

At any rate when Bela isn’t working on cosmetics – he is growing a huge fake looking bat (the Devil Bat of the Title) – which he has trained or just hates a certain scent – a scent Bela then puts into an ‘experimental shaving lotion’ which he then persuades his various victims to put on the “tender part of your throat” his victims being members of the Heath family - the first two times they put the lotion on in Bela’s presence and then leave shaking hands with Bela – which somehow doesn’t put the scent on Bela’s hand – they say good night and Bela says “good bye” in a tone of voice that would make anyone other than the nitwits in this film suspicious. When they leave Bela then releases the amazingly big utterly fake looking bat which driven mad by the scent on the victims throat – although not Bela’s hand - tears the throat out of the victim.

This all seems rather baroque way of doing things – but this is the way of mad scientists – a less mad person might offer his services to another cosmetic company this time with a percentage of the profits being part of the package – which might even have opened up the Heath and Morton’s wallets a bit. Or hell just shooting them - but death by devil bat it is.

The scene then shifts to a newspaper where the bane of many a film in the 30’s and 40’s is introduced as the male lead – the wise cracking reporter along with the not funny comic relief – the photographer – who’s nickname is one-shot (if this was a snide reference to William One Shot Beaudine – maker of such utter dreck as Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla or Billy the Kid vs. Dracula – that shows a heck of a lot more intelligence than the rest of the film does).

The Newspaper reporter has to be informed on who the Heaths in a piece of pretty damn embarrassing dialogue “didn’t the girl you dated smell nice” no she was a skank crack whore shit who the hell else would I date with the money I make here? – Which leads him to be told that the Heaths make all the perfume in the world. Okay fine he’s a dumb ass.

He goes to the police who tell him everything – including giving him access to the morgue report and interview with the coroner who tells him that they found what look like mouse hairs on the victims – which he knows bat’s hair looks like mouse hair under the microscope. This he knows. The largest perfume manufacturer in the country he doesn’t know. Go figure.

After this there is some tedious backing and forthing with the female lead falling in love with the male lead, the comic relief doing not very funny things – then after more people die with after applying the lotion to the tender parts of their throat the male lead manages to kill the bat before it kills the comic relief (to the disappointment of most of the people watching the film. Comic reliefs were a bane of 30-40’s cheap horror films and one of the things that made them so awful was they weren’t funny. Not a bit).

Not to be deterred Bela builds another bat, with the same aversion to the lotion scent. He then kills the elder Heath with the bat after pretty much giving the game away to him. (Again why not just opt to go to another company? I never get this) – then time he manages – and how does anybody really know or care – to put it in the perfume of the female lead – who avoids getting killed by DB II by a screen over the window. At this point the male lead who is little brighter than the rest of the cast – that’s not saying much – a flock of drug addled sheep are sharper than this crew – figures Bela is the killer and manages to ensnare him in simple trap that ensures the bat tears out his throat (oh the irony)

It’s a dull and silly film – and the comic relief makes you want to hurt yourself with a fork but it was successful enough to spawn a sequel – the devil bat’s daughter what wasn’t really a sequel and there was a remake some years later – The Feathered Serpent where instead of a fake looking bat, it’s a fake looking snake with wings.

Go figure.

Peace Love Devil Bats.

pics later - I promise.

Busy, odd books, Robot Monster

Been pretty insane so no time for leisurely rambling – I’m stealing moments as I do this.

I had been in a bit of a slanging fight with my cable TV provider – so I just said the hell with it for a while. Then yesterday I figured well let’s get this settled now. And now per the same cable company there isn’t a problem.

Would that more of my life work like that.

Anyway between weird books for the moment – just finished the Jesus Papers which is pretty much covers the territory that was first mined by this Author in Holy Blood Holy Grail and the a lot of others as the years went by – until the publication of the Da Vinci Code – it depressed me a bit that the in the scene where the female lead is reading book titles in the guy who turns out to be the bad guy’s library, I’d actually read most of those titles.

And I didn’t think to do anything with it. As a plot device for something. I remember my dad saying after we saw the film Blue Water White Death (about a search to film a Great White Shark underwater) “you know – if you could get the right story a movie about a great white would make millions” And of course next year Jaws came out.

So what do I think? Did Jesus marry Mary Magdalene, and did Mary later move to France of one of the other variations of this tale?

How the hell should I know? While I find this interesting I do take in all with a grain of salt – I’m not really a conventional believer either but anybody who feels threatened by this or by the shroud of Turin being a fake really doesn’t have that secure a faith to begin with and has other things they need to deal with rather than getting in a twist about a book (or a movie).

Rehearsal tonight – we’ll see how we all come together the second time we’ve all played together.

Why I’m think I’m probably going to spend my twilight years alone: I was looking in J&R music world and while I was there I picked up Robot Monster. Yes that one the guy with the diving helmet and the ape costume. A horrible film that I have already seen 5 times (and god that’s so much more than anybody ever needs to – once is too many). So why did I buy it. So I have it – so if someone asks me if I have the worst movie not titled Manos and not made by Ed Wood I can say yes here it is.

I don’t know why I’m not beating women off with a stick – not that I ever would but that’s what the expression says and I’m too shagged to care.

Peace Love Ape Suits

Fall, Memories, Moods, Radio and Lobo

Well it is the first real day of the fall – long time coming – the leaves have begun to turn and the temperature is now not 80 degrees for the first time since oh June sometime.

It’s Monday and maybe that is why I’m strangely not gloomy perhaps that is too strong a word – perhaps the change in the weather has triggered a mood of melancholy – I remember a woman I was involved with kept comparing our relationship to November – with its fragile light and sense of endings and more even happy talk – we actually lasted about another year but well the writing was on the wall right there.

I wonder these days why I didn’t walk right then – I knew we weren’t going anywhere and it was only going to hurt but no – I stuck it out. Like I believed that if I just hung in there things would – despite every single sign pointing otherwise – work out.

It was like the moment in The Man with Two Brains – where Steve Martin says to the painting of his late wife – that if there was a reason he shouldn’t marry the woman he was seeing, please please give him a sign. At that the painting spins, the candles burst into massive flames, a voice screams ‘NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!’ and a wind rises filling the room with papers off Steve’s desk.

And when the tumult subsides, Steve says “really just any sign at all.”

I’m not saying that all human beings are totally incapable of seeing that the relationship they are in is going to be a disaster; I’m just saying that I was. (And more than likely still am – my relationship track record being what it is).

No I don’t know why my mind is going this way – so let’s just let go that way. I have things to do.

Did the Bill in NYC internet radio show over the weekend (Gothamradio.org)– I think it will be up and running say Wednesday but I’m not sure – as soon as I know I’ll let you know. We chatted with Bill a bit and performed our two new songs – Scottish Love Song and The Oral Sex Celebration Anthem Sing along – to my eternal regret I didn’t try to get Bill and the engineer sing along with us on the chorus. That would have been something special.

Cher song I head over the weekend pissed me off for some reason – she was singing and I can’t even quite remember the chorus but it went something like “I know I will love again” or some such.

The reason it pissed me off is well – the song might as well be ‘I’ll fall for another jerk’ - there was no sense a lesson learned no sense of growth or anything in the song – I got the sense that once the pain subsided a bit – she was going to pretty much fall into the same pit she just got out of.

More on this as I brood on it.

Anyway over the weekend I saw Ed Wood’s Night of the Ghouls – this film is not as famous as say Plan Nine or Bride of the Monster or Glen or Glenda for a couple of reasons – one – while bad isn’t quite the utter cosmic mind job that Plan Nine is or the sense of this is how reality looks from the outside that is Glen or Glenda.

The film was intended to be a sequel to Bride of the Monster – where Bela Lugosi was eaten by a fake octopus – by the by while the scene about that in the movie Ed Wood is very good – Bela is standing knee deep in very cold water and talking about how he turned down the part of the Frankenstein Monster - someone pointed out that if Bela had actually turned down the Monster part – it would have been the only time in his life he turned down a part – which if true makes it all the more ironic.

Anyway this film takes place some years after the Bride Film – and again “strange things” – to quote Criswell whose demented narration dominates the film – are happening at the house on Willow Lake – which has been built.

Or something – with an Ed Wood Film – you don’t really know – because well I think Ed didn’t know. We start off with a woman in black wandering around – she kills some people – who are promptly never mentioned again – an old couple describe their horrific experience – which consists mostly of the old man moving the wheel of the car way too much while the back projection shows the car going quite smoothly – they meet a woman in white – no we don’t know what’s going on – and in an Ed Wood film you never do.

The police chose Lt. Bradford (Duke More who played the same role in Plan 9 and Bride of the Monster) to investigate – he chooses Patrolman Paul Kelton (Paul Marcos) who also played the same role in those two films – Marcos actually has an almost funny meltdown when informed of the assignment “Aliens! Monsters! And now Ghosts! Why me?”

Bradford meets the current owner of the house – a medium by the name of Dr. Acula (yes that’s the name – about as stupid a joke as you can get really ) who it turns out is a swindler who is tricking people with about the phoniest looking tricks ever – there is for example a floating trumpet that looks even dumber than the flying saucers in Plan 9 – and as a topper – for maybe the only time in film history – a floating trumpet Mute – the meaning of the trumpet is never explained – at least in crossing over with John Edwards there is some attempt to link his impressions with some person. In an Ed Wood film – things just kind of a happen without much cause or explanation – so just let the mute float in midair.

There is also a sheet that floats about and a man in what looks like black face that spouts gibberish – pretty painful to watch.

We are treated later to Tor Johnson as a badly burned Lobo – he some how survived the house blowing up in the Bride of the Monster – who does some wandering about and hitting people at the mediums command. .

Bradford and Marcos discover the scam but as they close in on Dr. Acula (god I can’t even type that name without cringing) it turns out that the good doctor is a real medium and has in the course of his affairs has actually called back people from the dead – and they, led by Criswell – kill him. I assume the dead don’t like to be disturbed – I’ve always wondered why the dead are so damn touchy – I can be pretty pissed if I get woken up too early but kill folks? Nah.

All in all this film has a weird sense of nostalgia – I guess it’s the references to Bride and Plan 9 that do that. Also this was Ed’s last Sci-fi film – and almost his last mainstream film – soon after this he’d be writing and/or directing low grade nudie cuties – and drinking himself to death in 1978.

Peace Love Lobo

Clouds, Moby Dick, Big Chickens, and band stuff

First real fall day it seems – this is one of the times I wish I could paint – I was waiting for the train this morning on and Elevated line – you have a nice view of the Tri-borough and the Hell gate bridge from there and today the view was quite dramatic – the light from the low sun make everything look sharp and dramatic – the clouds were all different shades – dark gray, white, some both as they scudded across the sky – it was a painting waiting to be painted but I didn’t have the skills or actually the time (I was on my way to work) to do it – I grabbed a shot with my digital camera but that wont really capture the way things looked, the hugeness of the sky this morning. I’m not sure painting would either but it has a better shot.

Tired and shagged – it’s been a busy week and my Friday is looking pretty much like most of them do only more so. Left my reading glasses at home in a brilliant maneuver so I’ve got my regular glasses balanced on the end of my nose and I’ve got my head at a weird angle as I’m typing this – it looks pretty damn odd I have to say.

Pavarotti – would have been 72 years old today – that doesn’t seem that old to me now – cause well my dad and my aunts and uncles. Probably listen to him a bit tonight.

Rehearsed a drummer and a bass player last night (3 hours worth) and between that yoga and work I’m utterly shagged out.
Which may explain this bizarre piece of dialogue that popped into my head as I waited for someone else’s huge print job to finish (lord the trees we do kill).

Studio guy: so what’s the big project?
Producer: A Sequel to Moby Dick.
SG: A sequel
P: Yes
SG: To Moby Dick.
P: Yes.
SG: You mean the book.
P: It was a book?
SG (rubbing his forehead as if in pain): never mind. How does this work?
P: Well at the end of Moby Dick Ishmael survives, yes?
SG: Yes.
P: So we flash forward a few years. Ishmael is down and out. He’s hit bottom.
SG: Okay.
P: And then he gets a mysterious message. He goes to the meeting and…
SG: Please go on – I can’t wait.
P: A woman wants to hire him on as sailor.
SG: A woman
P: On a whaling voyage – to kill Moby Dick – It’s like Aliens he’s getting a chance to get his manhood back.
SG: (now rubbing his temples): like the film Aliens yes – go on.
P: So it turns out that she is
SG: Ahab’s wife right?
P: No she’d be too old – this is Ahab’s Daughter –
SG: Ahab’s daughter.
P: His really hot daughter
SG: Really hot daughter
P: And she’s signed on all the wives and daughters of the folks killed by Moby Dick
SG: I presume they are all hot as well
P: Of course, but the need Ishmael.
SG: Why?’
P: Because he knows Moby Dick – he is the only one who can. So they sail off on a whaling to hunt down Moby Dick – him and a ship full of women.
SG: (resisting urge to pound head on desk): One guy and ship full of women –
P: Yeah – I figure we can have a shower scene or two, maybe some lesbian scenes – women kissing maybe more - depends on how hard an R rating you want.
SG: You know if someone had told me when I woke up this morning I was going to hear the word lesbian in the same conversation as the words Moby Dick I would have told them they were crazy even for Hollywood. I would have been wrong.
P: So
SG: So what?
P: I think I can get Russell Crow pretty cheap – he hasn’t had a hit lately and he’s very excited about the idea.
SG: I don’t doubt it for a minute.
P: So
SG: please go away – just go away.

Alas I think to be continued.

Read in the paper that Nancy Pelosi is upset about the folks on her side walk protesting the war – what got me was the snippy tone she have ‘we’re leaders” said (referring to congress) “they are just advocates”.

Sorry Nancy – you are not a leader if you let W say jump and you ask how high – that is not being a leader. It is not being a leader giving him everything he wants including a cover for attacking Iran, that’s not leader ship that’s following the lemmings over the cliff.

I swear to god the Democrats in congress are the biggest chickens in the world – even bigger than the picture above. (from Burt I Gordan’s Food of the Gods).

In band notes it looks like we have a new drummer at least for the next gig and a new bass player too – this was the drummer’s second rehearsal with us and the bass player’s first – both are good. The drummer was in oddly enough a comedy rock band in Israel – which seems just perfect for out gig – the bass player seemed a little quiet but it was the first time and he didn’t just storm out of the room as we did the Scottish love song – which is sick as hell and funny too.

So now we merely have to get a drum set symbols and a guitar amp and we are good to go. We’re going to be rehearsing like dogs this next week so I’m planning on doing a lot of nothing this weekend.

Will watch at least one Ed Wood Film this weekend – haven’t done a bad movie in a while.

Later

Peace Love Big Chickens

Sorry, Don G, Wetsuits and Robyn H.

Sorry

Haven’t blogged much – things have been busy and I’ve been dealing with stuff that well doesn’t quite lend itself to blogging about. At least not in a band blog. Anyway things are not quite as hectic – although still quite mad so here goes.

Saw an opera over the weekend. Now when I tell people I like the opera I noticed there is a half beat pause where folks aren’t quite sure what to make of that – seeing as I also sing things like people with insect heads – but that’s their look out.

Anyway I saw Mozart’s Don Giovanni which while good did leave me a bit well not quite satisfied. It wasn’t the singing or the actual music – Mozart never wrote a wrong note in his life were as say Beethoven (my personal favorite about the major composers) did have off nights from time to time – as much as I have tried I am unable to get all way through Wellington’s Victory – Beethoven was deaf when he composed it but this is one of the few times he produced a piece of music that sounds like a deaf man wrote it.

By the by I find the late String Quartets by Ludwig to be inexpressibly moving. I find them profoundly moving in a way that does not adequately lend itself to verbal description – which is part of the reason music exists to say things that words can’t or don’t.

That said back to Mozart – well Don Giovanni is the story of well Don Giovanni a utterly amoral nobleman who spends his time bedding down every woman he can (his servant carries around a book with the names – it’s a big book. Mine wouldn’t be so big) whether by standard seduction or just flat out assault. The opera opens with a masked Don foiled in his attempt to rape a young woman. He is them confronted by the woman’s father who the Don promptly kills. Well okay pretty grim stuff in the first five minutes.

Looking back at it now – my problem is that for the rest of the time – it’s acted mostly like a bedroom farce – the don is after a newly married peasant girl, there’s a former conquest of the Don’s following him around and warning all the other women he talks to – there is the woman he tried to rape and her fiancée trailing about after him. It really plays like farce – and the music goes along with it – very well – but there is that dead guy in the first scene – and maybe I’m all fashioned but attempted rape is hardly the basis of a comedy (unless it’s a real dark one)

So it goes on in this vain – with another attempted rape (the peasant girl) and then at the end Don G is sent to hell by the living statue of the man he killed (In the opera I was worried about the singer playing the part – he had no mobility and he looked just a bit less graceful than Boris Karloff in Frankenstein – which when the hole in the stage opened up – all the better to drag the Don to hell with I was a bit worried for the actor.

And it was pretty damn long – even for an opera it was long – I suppose in the old days they showed up late (plowed to the gills as well) and then left early. (At any singing of Handel’s messiah there is a mad scramble to leave after the second act – which features the halleluiah chorus - it’s kind of amusing.).

Other matters. Police have declared that there was no foul play in the death of a conservative Minster who was found apparently self strangled, tied up, and wearing among other things two wet suits – two? The hell? There are other more lurid details but I’m not going to bother to look deeper into it – other than wonder you have to wonder if every single damn preacher who storms about gays and sex and the immorality of human beings isn’t a massive closet case. The evidence seems to point to that.

Been listening an obsessive way (do I ever do anything in less than an obsessive way? Even I wonder) to Robyn Hitchcock again. I am in a strange emotional state and Robyn is good for what ails me here – he really seems to be one of those guys who’s best lyrics are the ones that come off the top of his head – he’s not too afraid to sound foolish in pursuit of getting it right – he’s called songs a kind of dream so it would make sense he’d be more comfortable with the off the top of the subconscious writing style. Glass Hotel (a personal highpoint) is a song about well something quite moving – sometimes I think it’s the memory of a love affair, sometimes I think it’s about someone dying – but there is a real depth to the emotion – and a beauty to is that moves me enormously He’s also got a thing about fish – he keeps naming them in songs. He’s all in all a pretty weird guy.

Honestly I wouldn’t have written people with insect heads in quite the way I did without his voice in my head.

Peace, Love, Glass Hotels

Busy, Silly, and Mets Thoughts

Things have been far too hectic for even minor blogging – sorry – I’m pretty bunt out right now but a few things.

One – people have taken to referring to the inside the beltway word as “The Village” which reminds me of the old TV series “The Prisoner” and makes some sense as well. The village was in every show a hot bed of mindless conformity to whatever the leaders said they were to confirm to. The villagers tended to march and follow a brass band a lot.

I get that sense now – we are skittering sleepwalking in an unreal sort of way to bombing Iran an idea from the same people who still think Iraq is going well.

This is a sequel to a film nobody wanted in the first place. But there in the village they are worried about being in the parade not where the parade is going – which is right now straight over a cliff.

Silliest thing I’ve see on the internet lately:

CTHULHU FHTAGN CHEEZBURGER

It’s from lolcthulhu.com – which features a lot of weird jokes which depend on a) knowing about the lol Cats and b) lovecraft. The glory of the internet is that there are people like that (me for one).

I’d have to say, so far, the Phillies performance in the playoffs is taking a bit of the sting out of the Mets’ meltdown (just a bit mind you – it still hurts).

I wonder if the Indians, having gotten the win in the first game will be quite as kind and generous as the Red Sox were to the Yankees all year (who after knocking the Yanks to the canvas would help them up and give them some tea). I suspect not. The Indians strike me as personally a much meaner bunch of guys than the on again off again Bosox.

There is a heartening defense of being a Met fan in http://alicublog.blogspot.com/ - some folks made an odd comment that ‘when your team has more than 45 years history come and call me.” To which I’d like to reply.

Fuck you.

The Mets exist because the Dodgers and the Giants left New York. Had the dodgers stayed they would have just finished their 117th year in New York. And the Giants their 114th - although to give the devil his due I think if a team needed to leave New York for other climes it was the Giants. San Francisco may not have been the best choice but that is another story.

After the Dodgers and Giants left – A group of New Yorkers (who wanted National League baseball back in New York) led by William Shea managed to by moral argument and threatening to start a third baseball league to get the lords of baseball to agree to an expansion of the leagues.

Personally while the Mets have the NY from the New York Giants on their caps – it seems they have taken the psychic place of the Brooklyn Dodgers – who, if one remembers had the nickname of “the bums” and it was not an affectionate nickname. While their best years were 1947 on, before that there were long long stretches of bad teams (Casey Stengel briefly managed them and did so badly that at one point he told a barber “don’t cut my throat, I might want to do that myself”) and heartbreaking loses and of course “the shot heard round the world”

Speaking of that – I remember my dad telling me the story that here he was based in the State of Washington in a military Hospital as a medical technician (he handed sponges scalpels and what not to the doctors) and this was the height of the Korean War, and casualties were pouring in in the thousands. It was a horrible time, my dad was up to his armpits in blood and death and what really upset him were the Dodgers. That was tragedy.

An uncle of mine would leave the room when ever the call of the Thompson home run came on.

My mother who never said an ill word about anybody said upon learning of Walter O’Malley’s death “Good I hope he rots in hell” As far a shock value when it was on par with hearing the Dali Lama call someone a motherfucker.

That is what the Mets have inherited – and what they are - a team of staggering highs and heartbreaking lows. It’s a very New York thing, a Met fan. There are Yankee fans in every city in every state of the union – for the same reason Manchester United has fans all over the world - rich famous successful who could not follow them.

We for one – we sit in the upper deck of our unlovely ball park (which is to be torn down after next year, with a smaller corporate named ball park waiting in the wings) – and we do not care. We root for who we root for and if they take us to hell, well we signed up for the trip didn’t we?

Well enough of this. More some other time

Peace Love, baseball.

Busy and I'd rather be sad than bitter

Been running about like a lunatic all day – no time for even just random stuff.

Just to note – the Philly fans I have spoken to recently seem to be more interested in carping about how bad the Mets suck (something I won’t deny) than in being happy their team won. I suspect it’s what comes from rooting for the phillies through all those years of bad teams and worse management decisions and then more bad teams and more bad management decisions until your heart is full of angry bitterness. Someone once wrote how on off days Philly fans went to the airport to boo bad landings.

Makes me glad I’m a Met’s fan – better sorrow and disappointment than a heart full of hate.

So now my wish for the Philles is – Three and out – see how good that tastes after working all year to get there.

Meantime in other cheery news they are holding hearings on Blackwater. I have to say 1) about time and 2) what the hell is the US doing using mercenaries in the first place? Especially Merchs who seem to just shoot at anything that moves – and then use tax dollars to bribe people to shut up after they gunned down their father or brother or whoever. (And they also had discussions on what was the least they could play them).

Enough to make you gag it is. Especially with the tools in congress saying that the Democrats don’t like companies to do well (this is a quote from the hearing) well since 90% of the money blackwater gets is from government contracts I think it is the duty of congress to make sure they aren’t just using tax dollars as a feed bag yes? And screwing up in the process? Hmmm?

Well – more things to do showed up – end the quarter and all that.

Peace love no bitterness

I Don't Wanna Talk About it Now

I don’t have much to say today. Other than it was a sick feeling to watch the Mets play the worst game of the year – and for Tom Glaven to have his worst outing as a pitcher on a day when they needed something special.

But the way the team played this year, it seemed fitting.

Even when things were going well I never had the feeling about this team that I did about the 2006 team. The 2007 model kept blowing games they really shouldn’t have even early in the season. There was this finish them off sense from the 2006 unit – 2007 not so much. But to be fair the 2006 unit also started to wear down towards the end of the season as well.

I expect some massive personnel moves after the dust settles. Glavin won’t be back (which will make a friend of mine happy – he has never accepted Glavin as a Met and after yesterdays meltdown he has little reason to do so) most of the relief staff – the inexplicable Green, the bench and so on. Wright, Reyes, Beltran, Mildrge and Pedro (because there is another year in his deal) stay, the rest – probably should be gone.

I have a blank feeling thinking about this team to day – I’m still a bit in a state of shock really not quite believing that I did see what I just saw.

And now there is nothing but the long wait until February and the road begins again. It’s a long way off and doesn’t’ at this moment hold out much hope for the future. Cause if I have to watch this team do this again I’m going to gouge my eyes out with a plastic fork and settle for listening to it on the radio.

I’m always like this when the season ends – more so this time because of the ugly way it went but still there is this hole in my day to day life where the season used to be. It’s a loss – not a huge one as cosmic terms are measure but it is still a loss and it hurts.

I’ve put away my Mets hats and hung up the shirts and the jackets and the Again with the way it ended it is going to be hard to get my hopes for the new season up – at least opening day tickets should be easier to get next year.

Random Neural Firings:

Had the first rehearsal read through of the musical in while and this time with the guy we’d like to direct the puppy along with a new actress for one of the parts. It was interesting both the new actress and the director asked us (The enemy below, Insect Girl and me) a few questions about why we wrote things the way we did. We alas aren’t deep so the only reason we could give was “we thought it was funny”

Which true – we’re not that deep with stuff – now there may be on some Meta level a sense of dealing with real issues but even there – we’ll go for the joke every time.

Looking to try out new drummer and new bass player this Friday – wish us luck. The one thing that I’ve found interesting about this process that it’s easier to find players when you have a band going rather than trying to start the damn thing up from scratch.

Peace, love, wait till next year.