Mysterious Glow

Saw the Pogues last night. One of the best shows I’ve ever seen. The opening act was awesome. Nashville guitaritst, Justin Townes Earl, Steve Earle’s kid, played some awesome honkytonk guitar as well as Woody Guthrie style folk songs. He was able to create such a sound with a single acoustic guitar, no effects, that I watched it all with my jaw dropped.

When the Pogues hit the stage, Shane MacGowan had to remind us, “Hey! You’re the town that killed JFK!”* Even though that is a sensitive subjects to we Dallas-ites, I forgive him. I’m convinced that my town has no other history than that. He also violated the strict no-smoking policy of House of Blues, by lighting up a cigarette, but Shane only breathes smoke and not oxygen like your or I. It would have been nice to have subtitles on a video screen, like you see at the opera, because I couldn’t understand a word Shane MacGowan says even if he were stone-cold sober, which he wasn’t.

The band was incredibly tight. I think the line-up was the same as If I Should Fall From Grace With God, which might be my favorite Pogues album. Shane was not too drunk. I was happy with the songs they played, although it would have been nice to hear Fairytale of New York, but maybe that is a Christmas song.

Chris and I were going so bezerk, that we probably should have been in General Admission. Maybe next time, but I suspect there won’t be a next time. The last time the Pogues played in Dallas was twenty years ago.

After the show, Chris and I were going down the stairs, to get out the place. A guy stared at us and said something. I couldn’t hear, so I thought he asked if we liked the show or something. I gave him the “okay” symbol my hands and said, “It was great!”

Chris later said the guy was saying, “Padres…Padres.” That is not even a real slang word. I guess I could imagine someone calling a guy “Padre” but it would be stupid to call my wife a “Father”. In his defense, we were wearing black — but only because we’re cool, — and not because we were entering seminary school.

Perhaps he was looking for someone to confess to and absolve him of sin. If I would have known that I would have given him a quick In nomine Patris et fillii et Spiritus Sancti , ask him if he had Jesus in his heart, touch his private parts, and then send him on his way. Can’t be that difficult to be a priest.

* I would make the case that Dallas isn’t responsible for killing JFK. I won’t get into conspiracy theory, but for sake of argument, let’s say that Lee Harvey Oswald killed the President. He wasn’t fucking from here, ok? He was from Louisiana, so everyone should be mad at them. Horrible Lousianananans. A terrible bunch.

From Metafilter, Oct. 26:

“I am only ashamed that I waited this many months to act. I hereby resign my membership in the Church of Scientology.” In a blistering letter that calls out some church lies, "Crash" director Paul Haggis quits Scientology after 35 years over its support for Prop 8. He says he was also influenced by this acclaimed St Pete Times series. The high level defection comes as ABC began running a multipart expose of the church that included choice video of Scientology spokesman Tommy Davis storming off when asked about the alien lord Xenu.

My comments: It’s hard not to notice the tactic that Scientology spokesman, Tommy Davis, is using. When confronted with their own absurdity, religions have learned to say Oh! I am SOOOO offended. That cuts me to my very soul. I can’t believe you asked me that? I wouldn’t be surprised if Scientology petitions the United Nations to denounce any questions on the Galactic Lord Xenu as blasphemous. Another religion, much more popular than Scientology, is doing similar things on the world stage to stifle criticism.

I recently watched the film Wrong Turn 2. It’s a tasteless and ugly movie about murderous inbred cannibalistic hillbillies. It is so gross, that it almost put me off my dinner. Wrong Turn 2 is a sequel – obviously– to a film I haven’t seen. But I wasn’t lost in its complexities. There a lot of movies like this.

Ya’ll listen up now. This here is some real homespun cultural anthropology and film criticism. I think movies like The Hills Have Eyes, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and the recent Scottish film, Doomsday, are explorations of long held xenophobia and fear of the Other. Country people’s ways and habits are demonized into something grotesque. Cannibalism and incest are worldwide taboos, but horror films would have us believe that rural people are just this close to reverting to a primitive atavistic existence.

A similar demonization of the Other can be seen in the various blood libels that people accuse each other of participating in. It was common to accuse Jews, different denominations of Christianity, gypsies, American Indians, et al. of cannibalism and using the blood of children for mysterious rites. In the 1980s, the United States went through the so-called Satanic Panic, and these weird stories of infanticide and cannibalism crept up again. Thank goodness that human beings don’t do these kind of things.

The first story I can think of that is about rural, inbred savages, is the myth of Scottish murderer Sawney Bean, who with his murderous family, kidnapped and ate travelers. This legend inspired Wes Craven to write an American version, The Hills Have Eyes. His inbred hillbillies got that way from atomic testing. I think Sawney Bean got that way from being Scottish.

Deliverance and the very brutal Belgian film, Calvaire, – which is about Belgium hillbillies if you can believe such a thing – are not about incest, but other sexual taboos. These films are a demonization of rural life, which is depicted as nasty and crude, as opposed to civilization, which is clean and warm.

I think the Jerry Springer show plays on society’s fears of rural white people. It is a form of this Hick Horror. A lot of the participants on that show are out-and-out frauds, but nevertheless Jerry Springer will parade some redneck type out and ask him why he is here. “Well Jerry, it’s like this. For the past couple of months, I’ve been sleeping with my sister.” The crowd erupts in jeers, and the redneck guy, who will lose his shirt by the end of the show, will get up and scream back, “Ya’ll don’t know me!”

Fear of the Other is not just limited to country areas. The evil actions in the H.P. Lovecraft short story, The Horror at Red Hook, are caused entirely by immigrants and their strange culture. Lovecraft, who was a frail, tweedy intellectual, describes Italian and other immigrants in frightening tones, he must have been clearly afraid of them in life. China Miéville, who is a brilliant writer, talks briefly about Lovecraft’s “fever dream of prejudice” in this small clip. Note: Are you reading China Miéville? If not, then what the hell is wrong with you?

William Faulkner’s Southern family, The Snopes, are terrible people, but they never started eating people. It is time for horror and suspense writers of movies and books, to stop using “inbred cannibalistic hillbillies” as a trope. I quite like rural people and if these writers would take the time to talk to these Others, they wouldn’t seem so scary.

This weekend we went to Cross Plains, Texas, to visit the home of one of Texas’ most famous authors, Robert E. Howard. Howard is most famous for his character, Conan the Barbarian. Bow-hunting season had just opened up, and most of the locals were dressed head-to-toe in camouflage.

He was a young writer. At the time of his suicide, he was only a mere thirty years old. One of the reasons I wanted to make this trip is to explore a bit of Cross Plains and to see what influence that had on him. Just as in Howard’s time, there really isn’t much out there. In the Depression-era, I imagine it would be even duller. There is nothing about the landscape, which is really beautiful, that would give rise to the blood and thunder of Conan, Kull, Red Sonja and Solomon Kane. I could see someone trying to do another Leaves of Grass here, but not Conan.

Talking to the Robert E. Hoard Museum curator, who was a charming elderly woman who was just a little girl during R.E. Howard’s life, I still get the sense that the people of Cross Plains are embarrassed of their most famous son. Some of the older residents demanded that more recognition be paid to Robert’s father, who was a doctor, and a pillar of the community. When the museum was being formed, one old lady said she, “couldn’t understand all the fuss being paid to that weird kid – his daddy was the doctor.”

The truth is, the people of Cross Plains thought he was soft and effete. It’s always easy – and a bad idea – to psychoanalyze authors, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to say that his interest in weight lifting and boxing was a reaction to his peers in Cross Plains. It could also be argued that the hyper-masculine character of Conan in particular, is also an exercise in wish fulfillment.

But apparently he was every bit the Mama’s Boy they said he was. After his mother died, he went to his driveway, and shot himself in the nice car he bought with the money he got from selling stories to Weird Tales. Thirty is a young age for any good author, most people don’t have anything to say worth reading in their twenties. It would be nice to read a mature Robert E. Howard, and tragically we will never know.

I suffer from Night Terrors, which is an unpleasant sleep disorder. I usually have one episode at least once a week. I’m about to be laid off from work this week, and so I feel that is acting as a “trigger” to these episodes. I’ve been having them almost every night.

It’s not a nightmare, but something different. There are no bad dreams to remember. It usually hits me in early sleep. Without any warning –and I realize this sounds absurd and looney — I will wake up screaming and terrified. I am breathing hard and hyperventilating and there is a distinct feeling of being smothered or choked. My ritual is to run to the bathroom sink and drink water. It feels like being awakened to your own murder. My wife is used to this by now, and will ask me if I’m okay, which I never answer, because I’m far from being okay.

The two most famous sufferers of this annoying disorder are horror author H.P. Lovecraft and the Swiss artist, H.R. Giger. Think about that for a minute. It doesn’t take a genius to see a connection with their work and their sleep problems.

I’m not sure what I can do about this. I have no desire to fiddle with my neurochemistry, which is one route. I guess I will endeavor to create happiness in my daily life, which will hopefully spill over into the other half of my life, the night.

The other day a friend and I were discussing –perhaps arguing, I’m often contentious– about Michael Moorcock’s essay and critique of J.R.R. Tolkein, Epic Pooh. It’s a famous and influential essay, well worth the read, where Moorcock compares Tolkein’s prose to that of A.A. Milne’s Winne-The-Pooh. In other words, it is fiction designed to comfort, not to challenge the reader

Moorcock also skewers the other grand patriarch of genre fiction, Robert Heinlein, with his essay, Starship Stormtroopers, where he argues that Heinlein’s books creepily fetishize the military and are intrinsically fascistic in nature. I still love Star Trek but I think Moorcock’s premise is right. Just why does most SF take place on military vessels full of good guys who never abuse their destructive power ? The re-imagined Battlestar Galactica deconstructed these themes.

Moorcock’s own Elric of Melinoboné books were the His Dark Materials / The Golden Compass of their day. They were intentionally opposite of what Moorcock perceived as the old-fashioned Tory values of Tolkein and C.S. Lewis. As a kid I never knew that any of the Elric books had a reactionary, anarchist agenda. I loved them, as much as I loved Tolkein, and would draw pictures of Elric and his Black Sword, a weapon far worse than the One True Ring.

But re-reading those essays, which are a little dated, I think they still contain valuable things to consider. Fantasy /SF and especially Star Wars fans should ponder the behavior of their cherished heroes.

From Starship Stormtroopers:

An anarchist is not a wild child, but a mature, realistic adult imposing laws upon the self and modifying them according to an experience of life, an interpretation of the world. A ‘rebel’, certainly, he or she does not assume ‘rebellious charm’ in order to placate authority (which is what the rebel heroes of all these genre stories do). There always comes the depressing point where Robin Hood doffs a respectful cap to King Richard, having clobbered the rival king. This sort of implicit paternalism is seen in high relief in the currently popular Star Wars series which also presents a somewhat disturbing anti-rationalism in its quasi-religious ‘Force’ which unites the Jedi Knights (are we back to Wellsian ’samurai’ again?) and upon whose power they can draw, like some holy brotherhood, some band of Knights Templar. Star Wars is a pure example of the genre (in that it is a compendium of other people’s ideas) in its implicit structure — quasi-children, fighting for a paternalistic authority, win through in the end and stand bashfully before the princess while medals are placed around their necks.

I was reminded of Michael Moorcock’s work after reading this interview with Richard K. Morgan, author of The Steel Remains

From the interview at io9.com

Why does fantasy lend itself to noir themes?
Well, I imagine there are many – not least among the core fantasy readership – who’d say it doesn’t; but then again those are the same people who can apparently read stories of noble warrior kings and peasants without ever thinking about the social implications of a world in which power is either hereditary or derived from brute force and steel. For me, any fiction of nobles and swords necessarily HAS to be a story of corruption, injustice and savagely violent conflict – because any other treatment is going to have all the heft and realistic honesty of a bedtime fairy tale for five year olds. Noir is above all an ADULT form. It’s a narrative technique which deals in the ubiquitous nature of humanity’s failings under pressure – and there are few places you’d see those failings so luridly played out as in the pre-modern societies so beloved of most epic fantasy. Forget Chandler’s nineteen thirties LA mean streets – what do you think the mean streets of your average feudal city state would have looked like? And what would you have to go through to extract some modicum of justice from that reeking mess?

I wouldn’t be surprised if we are witnessing a literary movement taking off. A fantasy movement that is cynical of any kind of noble quests. I’m excited about this direction.

My wife and I like to drive to small towns in Texas. A place I’ve never been to, but will probably go by the end of the year, is Cross Plains, TX. What’s there? Not one thing, except intense hay fever. However, it was the home of Texas writer, Robert E. Howard, the young creator of Conan the Barbarian, who lived there until his profound sadness caused him to commit suicide.

A biographical film about Robert E. Howard which I really like, that is unknown to most, and I really don’t know why, is The Whole Wide World. It is one of Renee Zelwegger’s earlier movies. It is about a small-town girl who falls for the town oddball, Bob Howard. She sees in him something fascinating and he is a bit of bright color in an otherwise bland Depression-era Texas town. In the film, he is depicted as a cry-baby mama’s boy, who despite his outward hyper-masculine posing, was actually a fragile soul. This is probably not dramatic license. He was too sensitive for his own good. He did try to kill himself after a favorite dog died, and finally managed to take his final exit after his mother died.

To do this road trip, I think I’m going to have to re-read the Conan novels. When I was a kid, obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, I really liked those, but I never thought they were as good as the covers by Frank Frazetta. I’m also a fan of the first movie, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, which has a great script by Oliver Stone and an even better orchestral soundtrack by Basil Poledouris.

My favorite Robert E. Howard writing is also his least read. He wrote fan letters to H.P. Lovecraft, and Lovecraft was kind enough to write back and give the youthful writer some criticism and praise. Lovecraft also had a kind of ‘open source’ approach to the so-called ‘Cthulhu Mythos’, a term Lovecraft never used. Lovecraft encouraged other pulp writers to use his characters and dead alien gods. Lovecraft also encouraged a young Fritz Leiber who is hand’s down my favorite pulp writer. I think Robert E. Howard does a better job of writing Cthulhu stories than his Conan and sword and sorcery stuff.

I’m enjoying this season’s television program, L.A. Ink, but for all the wrong reasons.

I think the point of a show about a tattoo shop, is to highlight the artistry of tattooing. L.A. Ink, a spin-off of Miami Ink, features Kat Von D, who specializes in making portraits of loved-ones and pets, in the medium of tattooing. There are moments of genuine pathos, where people bring in photographs of deceased children and loved ones, and they are forever marked with these images. The people usually tell a story about what these people, and at times animal companions, meant to them. Kat doesn’t seem to have a way with words, and usually says, “That is like, so cool.” But I imagine she must feel some pride in this kind of sentimental tattooing.

My hat is off to Kat Von D who has now made herself into something of a celebrity, in a town and country full of would-be celebs, she now has her own tv show. All this from humble beginnings of scratching home-made Misfits tattoos on herself and her friends. She has parlayed the decidedly low-end art form of tattooing and her glamorous pin-up style good looks into what Madison Avenue douchebag types would call her very own “brand.”

As much as I admire the carefree yet jet-setting lifestyle of Kat, there is something on the show, that has nothing to do with tattooing, which is irritating – a manipulative presence known as Aubrey. Aubrey, who has no visible tattoos, is hired by Kat’s little brother, while Kat is away on business. This is an obvious producer decision by the producers to make the show more interesting. This person was previously a ‘contestant’ on Rock of Love, a reality show where skanky girls compete to out-maneuver each other to sleep with Brett Michaels. Brett being a former and has-been rock star. Porn stars have more dignity that these girls.

Aubrey immediately gets to work on the cast with her manipulation. She repeatedly makes statements to show that she is powerless and not a threat to anyone. She says things like “If I make a mistake, just hit me in the head.” She admits that she knows nothing, but is, “willing to learn.” Since tattooing could be a vector for spreading infectious disease, the shop has very strict and sensible policy in regards to the handling of materials. Aubrey doesn’t understand this or pretends not to. She contaminates work areas. To make sure that people imagine her as incompetent she asks one of her fellow employees to write “Clean” and “Dirty” on her left and right hand.

So the question that comes up with me is, “Is Aubrey really stupid or is she playing dumb?” It is very possible that Aubrey is simply as stupid as she says she is. But I think that something else is going on. Pretending to be “dumber than your mark” is a classic con. Not all con artists come around with a pencil-thin moustache and are fast talking grifters. A more insidious con artist is the “dummy.” Convincing others that they have nothing to fear, because they are smarter and the con artist is dumber, is a great way for the con to get people to lower their guard. Then the manipulator can impose their real agenda.

I think a clear example of this is displayed by Aubrey when she decides to ‘decorate her area.’ Kat is away, and so the mouse does play. She does little things to annoy the rest of the shop, like burn fragrant candles and puts flowers in her area. These stunts are to test the limits of what she can get away with. She then takes a painting off the wall, a gift to Kat from an artist friend, puts it on the ground in the hallway, and puts an erotic picture of herself in its place. She then makes the claim that Kat will be delighted with this. As expected, Kat is furious with this and after much mascara is cried off of Aubrey’s face, Aubrey apologizes. Later, feeling some pity for poor little Aubrey always the victim, Kat makes the mistake of putting up Aubrey’s picture elsewhere in the shop. Which I suspect was Aubrey’s calculation all along. It is crystal-clear to me that Aubrey is seeking attention and fame. Having her picture up in a shop that gets national TV exposure is quite a coup for her.

I recommend watching an episode or two. Aubrey’s actions could be an instructional course on coat-tail riding and the fast track to fame, without doing any work of one’s own. Never ever let anyone like this into your life.

Lot’s of guys have ‘man caves’ which are usually a room or garage that the wife allows the man to decorate any way they want. Guys usually do sports memorabilia and have a pool table if they have the room. If they’re geeky, they do Star Wars.

That’s what normal people do with their garages, but I’m thinking about making my upstairs office, my so-called ‘man cave’, into an interior design homage to the movie, The Abominable Dr. Phibes.

Here is a clip of the main ballroom with Dr. Phibes’ glamourous little helper, Vulnavia. Quick aside: I suspect that Vulnavia is actually a clockwork creation, much like Dr. Phibes’ band of robot musicians. She doesn’t talk and has no human compunctions about participating in Dr. Phibes’ ghoulish revenge schemes. There is something very, very wrong with Vulnavia.

I’m going to have to move some furniture around, including a few large bookcases, but I think I can re-create the feel of this, even though my office is much smaller than Phibe’s master ballroom. With a few screen shots I think can make a template to paint the Art Deco/ Vienna Secession interiors. I told my wife that I expect her to dress up as Vulnavia at least once a month while I put on a Phibes costume. I don’t have a large, futuristic looking pipe organ, but with some plexi-glass next to my computer, I think can still pay homage to this. Those are some funky color schemes, and that is the only real deal-breaker.

After I thought of this idea, I Googled Dr. Phibes Interior Design and someone has already done this. Probably much better than I could do. This person has decorated her office with this very theme. Caution: Parts of her website are NSFW, but this page is ok. If one had not seen the movie, the giant unicorn statue, the cage full of stuffed animal bats, etc, would not make sense.

“Kill them all. For God knows His own.” Today is the 800th anniversary of the massacre of the inhabitants of the town of Beziers in Languedoc, in the south of France, known by the Romans as Gallia Narbonensis. Beziers was the first town to be sacked in the Albigensian Crusades to extirpate the Christian heresy of Catharism, which flourished in Languedoc. The Albigensian Crusades represented the initial application in Europe of religious warfare sanctioned by the resurgent medieval Papacy, and led directly to the institution of the Inquisition and rise of the Dominican Order.

Via:Metafilter.