Balm in Gilead? Nah. We got paczkis, though...
Now Playing: Pere Ubu--"Chinese Radiation"
Last night saw a remarkably torrid afternoon in downtown Ann Arbor as I finally got to hear the Great Lakes Myth Society, formerly the Original Brothers and Sisters of Love. They are indeed excellent. I found it a little hard to place their sound, myself. Reading what other people have written and said about them, I was a little surprised at how hard they rocked, maybe expecting introspective little ballads of heartbreak and loss, etc., etc. It was cool, whatever it was. I think that any band with an accordion has a sort of base-level of cool that can't be taken away--that's one of the reasons I like the Decemberists so much (and klezmer music, now that I think about it).

We saw Michael Reeves' The Sorcerers (1967) for Cinema Guild, once more aptly described in British Horror Films as "angry young man made angrier by angry old people" (namely, Boris Karloff and Catherine Lacey). Simply put, an old couple take control of the mind of a young man (the always awesome Ian Ogilvy) and make him do things they "can't allow themselves to do"--kill people, drive really fast on motorcycles, beat people up, etc. It's a lot more fun than it sounds, and the scenes in a nightclub made me think of the Blind Pig the night before. So it was relevant somehow, I guess.

I finished Barnaby Rudge, too. How this book isn't better known is beyond me. The plot's a little weird, and rather simplistic for Dickens, but the characterization and grotesque descriptions of some of the people and events are world-class. The standout is probably the central character of Barnaby, the childlike, mentally disturbed young man with a talking raven who gets caught up in Britain's anti-Catholic Gordon Riots of 1780, where a parliamentary attempt to take away some of the restrictions on Catholics meets with horrifying mob violence. Great stuff, and it reminded me of how awesome Dickens could be (and how much of two minds he was regarding the "common people").