Sir! Playing That Funky Music, Sir!
Now Playing: The Clash--"Lost in the Supermarket"
Monday's radio in Ann Arbor (for me, anyway) ran hot and cold--as anywhere, it's a mess of different stations, some good, some bad, all of which inspire me with imaginings I'm sadly impelled to share with other people.

1. Technically not radio, but my colleague Adelito's 100% Funk CD. One of the more pleasant thoughts I had Monday was that Rick James' "Super Freak" should be made into an opera. I've been getting into opera recently (a drawback of local radio is the intermittent access to CBC Radio 2; Saturday afternoon's broadcast of Mozart's La clemenza di Tito fuzzed in and out with what sounded like a mixture of Jessica Webster's jazz show on the Ypsi NPR station and Ted Nugent--way to go, Nuge! that'll show those opera-lovin' pussies!), and maybe this is the inevitable result. You could cobble a libretto out of the title character's eccentric proclivities (think Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor) and various 80s movie cliches: rugged loner from the wrong side of the tracks loves spoiled rich cutie in leg warmers with secret lunacy issues (eating live squirrels?). It's all really an excuse to see Placido Domingo in full Lohengrin getup take the stage to belt out: "Sheeeee's a veeery kinky girl, the kind you doooooon't take home to maaaaamaaaaa..."

2. I plan to brush up on my knowledge of Proposal 5 well before the election in two weeks, but I'm leaning towards "yes" by the idiotic "no" commercial being run by God knows who. A man and a woman are sitting clinking crockery and silverware together in an unexplained fashion (are they eating? is it breakfast, lunch, or dinner? are the man and woman together, just friends, or in a server-customer relationship? who's who?) and I believe the man brings up Proposal 5 (something to do with financial set-asides and the Detroit teachers' union, apparently). It is hilariously awful. The woman begins to assail him with a variety of contentions that aren't really contentions at all but simple denials with no evidence supporting or refuting them. And why did they include the crockery noises? They add no versimilitude and the thing probably would have been more effective if it had just been the two people shouting. Now, I know that practically all political commercials are artistic pollutants, but this one scratches the chalkboard mainly due to the woman's prissy, hectoring, self-righteous manner. "New classrooms?" the man asks. "Nooooothing in there!" she replies in a voice that sounds like she's being done up the rear by a satyr. The man's pretty funny towards the end when he tries to be righteously indignant: "Why, that's not what they say at all!" Once I find out what "they" say, I'll know more. I'm guessing.

3. I stopped listening to WCBN largely due to the vast stretches of ambient agony that seemed to create their own radio orthodoxy, but also because half the time one can't understand what the DJs are saying. This is particularly true of one or two of the female DJs, who sound like they're ordering the domestic affairs of a dollhouse mansion. I heard one of them Monday night, though, and found her comprehensible and even charming. Maybe I'm the problem.

I certainly have nothing at all against the female voice, but these two happened to converge that day, which was bizarre. I'd grab that for the most exciting weekly event thus far. As for the commercial, it seems intensely trivial, but this is how our political process is organized these days. I wouldn't buy a fucking thing from those people.

Dangerous Soups
Now Playing: The Go! Team--"Huddle Formation"
The curried lentil's got it in for me. But meanwhile...

Dmitri Shostakovich: Symphonies 6 and 11

I hadn't been to an orchestral performance, really, since I heard the AASO play Berlioz' shortly after I moved here. My indiscriminate, wanton listening pleasure from CBC Radio 2 having recently rekindled my love of orchestral music, I decided I should probably take the opportunity--the $10, mezzanine opportunity--to check out a world-famous orchestra when one finally hit town. As a resuly, I decided Friday to go hear Valery Gergiev and the Kirov Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra play Dmitri Shostakovich's Sixth and Eleventh Symphonies (the latter entitled "The Year 1905", in honor of the abortive rebellions against the czarist government) at Hill Auditorium. I've been meaning to go there again for some time, as the local University musical societies often put on shows there. After last night, I suspect I'll become something of a regular visitor.

The Kirov dates from the early 1700s, when Peter the Great put together the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra as part of his westernizing programs. It achieved great prominence in the world of European music (Verdi's La forza del destino premiered there, as did the Russian production of Wagner's Ring cycle) up to and into the Soviet era, when it was renamed the Kirov (presumably after Stalin's "mysteriously" murdered henchman-cum-rival of 1934). Valery Gergiev has been conducting there for some time, having performed some of Shostakovich's other symphonies here last year to great popular acclaim. Many of the stories concerning the maestro focus on his intense, bestubbled appearance, and I'm afraid I can't let it go without observing that he does look like he should be threatening Vin Diesel in a number of straight-to-video minor action masterpieces.

I'm not actually the world's biggest Shostakovich fan, but I was glad I went. With all the orchestral stuff I've been listening to lately, it was good to get a picture of how an orchestra actually works, although the place of the conductor therein is still a bit of a mystery to me. At the last minute, the order was reversed, with the Sixth coming first. Call me cynical, but I suspect it was done in order to prevent mass desertions in the second half, as I believe the Eleventh to be more popular and famous. The Sixth was a sprightly little number with only three movements that tended towards neoclassicism in the lack of a programmatic background or any sort of atonal muckery, and was all right, but it was good to get to the Eleventh. Held in the program and in various musical histories as a ringing condemnation of tyranny everywhere (still up in the air, I understand, whether Shostakovich included his own bosses in the statement), it began with a chilling portrayal of the square in which the "Bloody Sunday" masacre of January 1905 took place, the warm sterility of the music recalling some of the passages from Dune, in which Duke Leto muses to Paul about their new life on Arrakis. The propulsive nature of the ensuing movements (concluding with the "Tocsin," in which a bell is struck repeatedly on stage to end the thing) actually got me moving in my seat like I was dancing at a show, which didn't come as a big surprise as much of the stuff I've been hearing lately includes orchestral arrangements, usually strings. A couple of others were doing the same thing, and it all went down terribly well. There were several curtain calls after it was all over, and I managed to beat the frenzied rush for the exits and move into the increasingly cold night.

The Lost Continent (1968)

Every time I see waht I think is the craziest damn movie ever made, I have to revise my opinion a week or so later. Last time it was Zachariah (1970), which I watched to get the Eurosleaze stench of The Sinful Dwarf (1972) and Tintorera (1977) out of my nostrils, with future 80s TV stars John Rubinstein (Crazy Like A Fox)* and Don Johnson (what else?) as hippie gunfighters in the Old West, with a supporting cast including Country Joe and the Fish, Doug Kershaw, Dick Van Patten, and the James Gang. But enough.

The Lost Continent was a good Hammer movie. For someone who loves British horror movies so much, I'm not a big fan of Hammer Films (the words I suspect most aficionados hear when they think "British horror movies"), and think they were at their best when getting away from the tired old Dracula and Frankenstein formulas and coming up with stuff like Quatermass and the Pit (1968), Captain Kronos (1974), and The Lost Continent. The latter is based on the novel Uncharted Seas, by that racist old curmudgeon Dennis Wheatley. His novels are generally awful (he was sort of the fictional equivalent of Paul Johnson) but they had some good stuff made out of them, like this and The Devil Rides Out of the same year. The plot of The Lost Continent sounds like something I might have come up with when I was in my early years of high school (and one may ask why the hell I didn't): A tramp steamer escapes from Sierra Leone with a bunch of sketchy, horny, insane drunk people on board, as well as a cargo of explosives that will detonate when coming into contact with water. A hurricane and a mutiny later, the remaining crew and passangers drift into the Sargasso Sea, encountering bloodsucking vines (the second Hammer effect I've inadvertently copied in one of my short stories), a creature variously described in other synopses as a giant octopus or jellyfish (it doesn't get a lot of screen time, so the question's probably moot), giant crabs and scorpions, a lost "civilization" descended from Spanish conquistador and Inquisitor castaways, and a gutsy female freedom fighter with great Renaissance Fair fashion sense and what I can only describe as Cyclopean cleavage.

It's completely batshit but awesome, and this is all due to the cast. Eric Porter manages to be heroic, thoughtful, and gloriously crass at the same time as the captain, and, while I know he was a big television name in the UK (Soames Forsyte in the first Forsyte Saga, Moriarty in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes, and Count Bronowsky in The Jewel in the Crown), I don't recall seeing any of his film work before (note to self: see Hands of the Ripper). Tony Beckley, as the merry drunk Tyler, gives one of his best performances (and I've seen him opposite Orson Welles' Falstaff in Chimes of Midnight as Ned Poins, Michael Caine's Charlie in The Italian Job as Camp Freddy, and Tom Baker's Doctor in the 1976 Doctor Who story "The Seeds of Doom"--see what I mean about this cast?). The movie's debatably greatest moment arrives with Porter's announcement that the ship is taking on water: Beckley grins cheekily and starts playing the "Dead March" from Saul on the piano (while I almost snorted up my beer, I think one of the characters hits him immediately afterward). Suzanna Leigh, she of the clingy dresses, entices various male crew and passengers, most of whom meet suspiciously sticky ends--the radioman in a comically gruesome termination (The Lost Continent has a fair number of these, some of which foretell Return of the Jedi and Dead Calm) and the sleazy con man Ricaldi (the hilarious--and wonderfully named--Benito Carruthers) being dragged off the screen by the aformentioned unidentified tentacled invertebrate (UTV--it just looks better than UTI--and if it's unidentified, how do we really know it's an invertebrate at all?). Her crass, possessive father, played by Nigel Stock, also gets it at some point. So stay the hell away from her, I guess. Hildegarde Knef, as the past-hampered Eva, brings most of the run-of-the-mill pathos to this movie, but apart from some good scenes with porter, and a healthy, bracing "we have to do something!" ethic throughout the movie, there's not much of that. Jimmy Hanley and a refreshingly spirited James Cossins are wonderful as crew members, and Dana Gillespie is not only gorgeous and well-endowed but also does a good job on the acting front, as she would nine years later in The People That Time Forgot. The whole thing unfolds against a backdrop of eye-catching, mildly psychedelic (alternately impressive and laughable) set design, as well as a soundtrack that oscillates between stiff-upper-lip action-adventure orchestral and organ-laden soft-porn. Great stuff.

This was my first ever Netflix movie, by the way (not counting Quatermass and the Pit, which I ordered earlier this month but which turned out to have an inexplicable gash down the middle); while I'll still probably rent from Liberty Street, I can't deny how great it is to have such a service available. The selection alone makes it worth subscribing, and at $6-10 a month, it's gloriously affordable.

*With Slavic composers still fresh in the mind, I found out that Rubinstein is the son of Arthur Rubinstein, legendary pianist and one of the most iconic interpreters of Chopin.

Marche Macabre
Now Playing: Felix Mendelssohn--Nocturne from A Midsummer Night's Dream
This past weekend I took a little stroll through the worlds of the undead. My thighs still hurt.

Friday evening, Tracy and Dan held a zombie/medical themed party for the latter's birthday, and as an early celebration for Halloween.* I decided to go along, sans costume, having made a quiche provencale for the occasion (I don't know if anyone's used that name yet, but it's a quiche with Dijon mustard, Gruyere, and herbes de provence, so I'm running with it).** Their house lies across the Huron River to the north, an area of town I've been strangely negligent in exploring. I took the bus at first, and walked some way past their house into the further reaches of Jones Drive, set on a ridge above Plymouth Road and concealed by a thick range of trees that give the impression of some far-out suburb (complete with buckyball-style residence towering over the rest), rather than in an actual city. Tracy and Dan dressed up as, respectively, a zombie nurse and a mad scientist, and their house is at once a very well-done, muted celebration of kitsch and a comfortable zone for conversation, dining, and, as I found, partying. I was the only one with no costume, but I took advantage of my Inspector Gadget-style beige overcoat (thank you, Vince) to play the role of Doug's drug dealer (he was dressed as a mental patient, complete with stylized dribble down his shirt). Sara, Amy, and Maria were there (Sara dressed as an undead clown in hospital scrubs), as were several people I'd never met before, but it was a lovely time, and I stayed far longer than I intended. The walk back was very enjoyable, as once again, I'm not too familiar with that part of town, and it's always a treat to find somewhere genuinely new to walk in Ann Arbor. Jones Drive at night, bending towards its southern extremity, has a picturesque Maurice Sendak quality, with dimly-lit houses sparsely placed behind trees, that would probably vanish in daylight.

One of the reasons I hadn't come in costume and meant to leave early was to save my energies for Saturday, when Adam and Margot put the (First Annual?) Ann Arbor Zombie Pubcrawl into action. The idea was to dress up as zombies and hit about eighteen different bars in the downtown area, staying around twenty minutes in one spot and then moving on to the next. We ended up with nine people by the end of the night (Adam, Margot, Sara, Maria, Amy, Adam's friends John and Noelle, myself, and this guy John that Margot met at Babs'), which was something of a blessing considering some of the bars we visited (only eight of those, too, as the small number of people meant that we could better adjust to our collective stamina level). I took an old chef shirt of mine, gashed it in a few places with (fittingly) a server key, employed red marker in several strategic locations about my face and torso, wrote "I'm not your fucking server" on my undershirt, donned my chef pants and doo-rag, and probably thereby anticipated my eventual destiny. Everyone else's costumes were cooler, but I'm not really good at that sort of thing.

Starting at Casey's, we gradually worked our way south until hitting Leopold's later that evening, stopping at the /aut/bar, the Heidelberg, Grizzly Peak, the Old Town, the 8-Ball, and Babs'. It was a lot of fun--great conversation, good laughs, meat-and-potatoes style alcohol, an unexpected literary commission of sorts, and the presumed amusement of onlookers. Adam had put a lot of thought into it, bless him, and almost didn't deserve our occasional giggles as he tried to keep amending the schedule as we decided to cut various bars from our itinerary. The only dodgy part occurred when we entered Grizzly Peak at a sensitive moment in the Detroit-Oakland baseball game going on and got al these gimlet stares from the massed horde of sports fans at the tables. We found a relatively secluded spot towards the back and watched the game ourselves, only to be verbally assaulted (in a well-meaning fashion, I'm convinced), by this drunk woman who demanded to know from what sort of wedding we had escaped (I think; Margot was dressed as a blood-spattered bride and Adam was working serious Mr. Peanut mojo in top and tails). Unsatisfied with our answers, she went to pee, saving us a lot of embarrassment (I think). We relaxed afterward at the Old Town with some Stroh's, tasty gossip, and the effects of a lovely sunset visible through the window, the game forming a sort of audiovisual wallpaper in the background. I chatted with Amy and Maria (zombie lumberjack and lunchlady, respectively) at the 8-Ball while Adam and Sara (God knew what, really; she bore a slight resemblance to Clara Keller in The Sinful Dwarf--and no, you don't want to know what that means--except for "Sweetums," the open-brained, undead pooch with a slight resemblance of its own, this time to "Triumph, the Insult Comic Dog") played darts, all of us witnessing the game's glorious climax as Tiger batter Magglio Ordonez hit a home run in the bottom of the ninth, sending two more of his own across the plate and stealing the game from under the As' noses. I now like Babs'--it took a while for me to get used to the loss of the old dive on Liberty Street (now the lackluster Alley Bar; the fuckers didn't even bother to give it a name)--but the new place has its own kind of faux-sophisticate charm, and the happy hour apparently lasts all week. By Leopold's, I found my stamina flagging (heaven knows what would have happened had we decided to hit all eighteen original bars), and left after a glass of IPA, taking care to snag some of the delicious smoked Gouda on my way out.

I got home to find Ted and Gloria watching The Aviator and went to bed. The next day, Lou showed Abel Gance's Le Grand Amour de Beethoven (1936) at Cinema Guild, pretty much the epitome of the silly, self-important biopic--whenever Beethoven has some grandiose turning point, the opening bars of the Fifth Symphony play with a brutal lack of subtlety that I now find funny. If you just watch it for the visuals, it's pretty good. Harry Baur is terrific in the title role ("Beethoven," not the "grand amour") although the movie's nowhere near as good as Gance's earlier Napoleon (1927).

*I'm not sure how I'll be celebrating the actual holiday. I've no idea if trick-or-treaters come around my neighborhood. They'll all probably be at parent-approved, state-licensed candy-dispensing houses in the early afternoon run by religious organizations or Amway, but I'll still put out a jack-o'lantern.

** The full name is "Provencal Tart with Gruyere and Herbes de Provence," from Frank Mentesana and Jerome Audureau's Once Upon A Tart... Soups, Salads, Muffins, and More (New York: Knopf, 2003), a cookbook the people who lived on Spring Street before I did left behind.

Bootstrap Blues
Now Playing: Margot and the Nuclear So-and-Sos--"Barfight revolution, power violence"
One of my least favorite things to do in the world is to seek employment. As the only jobs I seem to be able to find are restaurant jobs, the situation grows doubly depressing. There are, however, a number of factors that lighten my load in this instance. 1. I don't really need the job; I already have one, and I'm hardly starving or anything. 2. I'm having a fairly good life otherwise: I hang out with friends every now and again, I've been writing my ass off, I've been published, and it's relatively likely that I'll be so again either at the end of this year or the beginning of the next. 3. While filling out this particular application, I realize that all three of the places I worked previous to my present "posting" no longer exist, which I find grimly amusing. I am become death, etc. etc.

Because of point 1, I was able to relax a little while filling out the application, as it's hardly a matter of life or death. I suspect some cultural anthropologist wil one day bust a gut (if they haven't already) at our employment applications. I remember a Sunday morning conversation at the Fleetwood some time back in which Kathy and Aviva discussed the hilarious "why do you want to work here?" question (usually begging the answer "because I need a fucking job" rather than "I expect to find great spiritual and material fulfillment scrubbing pots or scraping the gum off parking lots"). Sadly, on this present specimen, it's been left off somehow. There's also the "what is your greatest strength/weakness?" question. The expected answer (and the one I suspect practically everyone else puts, as do I) is "I get along well with people and am a good worker, but I'm also kind of a perfectionist and am too hard on myself." All right, I didn't put that second part on there. Once I get another one of those, and if I don't need the job, I've composed an alternate response: "well, over the years, I've come to hate people to the point where I've grown into a borderline sociopath, but at the same time, I'm pathologically lazy, so there's not really a whole lot I can do about it--one way or the other." Not really true, but it has a certain contrapuntal charm in this case, and maybe someone'll get a good laugh out of it.

Fortunately, there's always the cinema.

Deathdream (1972): Also--blasphemously--known as Dead of Night, but only shares an alternate title with that British horror classic. I as intrigued to learn that the movie was written by Alan Ormsby, who wrote and starred in the contemporaneous Children Shouldn't Play With Dead Things, already discussed in this forum. Andy (Richard Backus), reported killed in Vietnam, returns home to his surprised family, who begin to fear that something is wrong once people and animals turn up horribly killed in the vicinity. Light years ahead of Children (which had its own goofy charm), Deathdream was somewhat groundbreaking, as it portrayed the effect of the Vietnam War on the homefront in a compellingly sensitive and poignant way for what's basically a combination vampire and zombie movie. Backus is excellent as the moribund Andy (he would play another returned veteran, this time of the First World War, in the PBS American Short Stories production of Hemingway's "Soldier's Home", with Nancy Marchand, four years later), and John Marley (the horse's-head guy in The Godfather) and Lynn Carlin (Cassavetes' Faces, also with Marley) play his parents in a way that suggests Andy's problems began well before he enlisted (Carlin in particular; her creepy possessive feelings for her son drive a lot of the tension). A few Children alums show up: Jane Daly (Terri) is charmingly annoying as ever as Andy's loopy girlfriend Joanne, and I was delighted to see Anya Ormsby (Anya) as Andy's sweet, knowing sister Cathy. The quality chasm between Deathdream and Children piques my curiosity to see Ormsby's Deranged, about serial killer Ed Gein. Maybe one of these days...

Soakin' It All Up For Your Blog, Dude??
Now Playing: Don McLean--"Vincent"
Hello Stranger is coming to the Blind Pig on the 19th of September, 2006. Until a few days ago, I didn't understand what exactly "that" entailed. I've now heard their eponymous debut, and can safely say that they make the Beatles look like Warrant. Brian Wilson look like Jim Stafford. Goya like Boris Vallejo. Hogarth like Bill Keane... in all seriousness, though, they're pretty damn good if I say so myself. My friend and Planned Parenthood volunteer coordinator Jessica Ross knows the guitarist, listed on the album as "Jared Nelson Smith," and enlisted me in flyering duties last weekend, so I decided to acquaint myself with their oeuvre.

The band also includes singer Juliette Commagere and drummer Joachim Cooder, both of whom split keyboard duties. Moving past the album cover, which looks like a cross between Nicolai Roerich's haunting oil landscapes of Soviet Central Asia and one of those demented dawbs found in Saddam Hussein's palace, we have a collection of songs that was actually much better than I expected. There's lots of keyboard, which comes close to making this an 80s-retro thing. Fortunately, Hello Stranger manage to combine this seeming fondness for older music with a very fresh, danceable, hook-laden sound. I hate to use the device of incorporating other bands via tortuous relationships in order to describe a group, but it really can't be helped.* They remind me a little of the Casionauts with a little more melody and a lot less thrash, with a throaty female lead vocalist. I want to say that Commagere's voice reminds me of Neko Case, but I'm not sure that's right.** It's a good'un, though, no doubt about it. The songs range from the fast-paced lure of "Robody" to the slow lament of "Kubrick Eyes" to the Spanish language nuevo-disco of "Es Tu Vida." As I said, they're playing in a week with the Great Fiction and Woodward, so it'll be interesting to find if Hello Stranger rise to the recorded level of this terrific debut.

*"Okay, so it's like Elliott Smith and Prince are getting stoned and watching Royal Tenenbaums in Rilo Kiley's apartment, and Maurice Jarrre's paying the pizza guy--and the pizza guy's Doug Kershaw!! If that happened, it'd be a lot like Hello Stranger. Or not."

**And leads to those associational atrocities again--"Flavor of Neko Case with smoky hints of Beth Orton and just a suggestion of Vashti Bunyan"--you get the idea.

Friday Night Baking
Now Playing: Black Keys--"Grown So Ugly"
Well, it might have been if I hadn't been so tired. I chose to forgo the inaugural Halfass show of the season (Dabenport, playing with the highly-regarded The Recital and the Dollfaces, the latter in their final performance) so that I could sleep early and rise likewise, in order to get the baking for work done. I'd planned on doing it Friday night but was way too exhausted to do much of anything besides sleep. The party hounds living on either side of our house woke me at about midnight. I really do not understand beer pong. I reminds me more than anything of the old "Grand Prize Game" on The Bozo Show, so I guess it's encouraging to see it continue its existence in such a sozzled form. I don't understand the obviously strong emotions of joy it apparently evokes in people when they score (however they do so), and I still can't believe I witnessed a fight break out over a game a couple of years back (from the shouts and yelling, the dispute apparently revolved around "respect" or some such). Two of my housemates were up and doing God knew what in their rooms--I think Gary was watching television while drinking (somehow I missed the beginning of college football season this year) and Roman's activities remain a total mystery. While nonplussed to find, on trying to take a shower at four in the morning, that someone else was using the bathroom, I read my way out of it.*

I like working alone. By "alone," I mean "without my boss." It helped that I walked to work at four-thirty this morning, not a soul in the streets, in possibly perfect weather. The stars were still out and the clouds on offer turned the sky into a melange of violets, a light breeze completing the ensemble. My job was to fill the quota of muffin mixes, quiche crusts, and cookie doughs for the next week; it took me about three hours, all told. I made sure to provide the soundtrack--Bowie, the Black Keys, Pretty Girls Make Graves (not really that into them, but they were somehow on the tape), Rocket From The Tombs, and Starling Electric. It always helps to give the place a psychic cleansing of sorts after so much 107.1 FM, "The Same Variety All The Time." There are few more enjoyable experiences I've found than working alone in a downtown kitchen at five-thirty on a Saturday morning (the day's important, too--I suspect it's a hangover from Saturday morning cartoons) with good music and no pressure. It actually feels like I'm working, and not just "being employed."

An outdoor breakfast at the Fleetwood afterwards finished off a perfect morning. The server saw me bring my dishes in from the outside.

"You work in a restaurant, don't you?"

"How'd you guess?"

*I realize that such tales open my blog to accusations of petty navel-gazing, of the sort that so exercises national and regional journalists as to the self-absorption and destined-for-hell status of younger people and particularly bloggers. To these I say "fuck you," especially as they should probably be more worried about the shitty state of their own media, its corporate dominance, and its repulsive subservience to the present state of things. Thank you.

In any case, I love this guy.

Dandelion Kill
Now Playing: David Bowie--"Width of a Circle"
Labor Day Weekend: Much less eventful than last, but not much less enjoyable.

After taking a break from writing for the past week (I wrote three whole stories in August--a personal record--so I was ready for one), I'm ready to go at it again. On what I'm not sure, other than my library school statement of purpose, in which I'm trying to fit career goals, social conscience, and previous experience. There's that and then there'll be a story concerning the undead. Shawn, the filmmaker contracted to capture Madisonfest on video last weekend, took leave of me by suggesting we work on a zombie flick at some point in the future. I'm going to assume, however cavalierly, that he wasn't joking and write some sort of necrophagous barnburner if at all possible. It's a good excuse, anyway, and it'll keep me going until a more serious topic crops up.

My house is now chock-full of people, every room occupied, and a more pleasant little Spanish-Peruvian-indeterminate Slavic-American place you can't imagine. Gloria's from Murcia, Virginia's from Cuzco, Ted's from... somewhere in Michigan, and I'm guessing Gary's the same. He used to live on State Street, anyway. As for Roman, the guy who lives next door to me, we see very, very little of him. Does he walk the streets at night like a lame bat, I wonder? My guess is that he's Polish, but I have very little to go on. Gloria speaks rudimentary English, and Virginia even less, so it'll be fun (for me, anyway) to navigate the linguistic minefields for a while. It's even more pleasant when I think of the yahoos who used to live with me (they thankfully lasted about four months of my moving in; the Mormon kid left for undisclosed reasons, Sed got sick of Tim, Tim was evicted, and the crackhead who worked at Gratzi--Gratzi! Maybe I should apply there!--foolishly got himself caught "feeding the beast" in the basement bathroom, an event I sadly wasn't present to witness).

Sunday, we actually had an impromptu movie night! I'd just finished watching Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore (1974) as Gloria came in to eat. Ted showed up and wanted to watch What About Bob? (1991). We had no problem with that (I hadn't seen it) and watched for about an hour until Virginia walked in. So all four of us watched What About Bob?, I reading Philip K. Dick's Our Friends From Frolix 8 (1970) in the meantime. It was a really nice, homey gathering, with some lively Spanglish conversation. I've been known to enjoy my solitude, but it's always nice to have friendly people to watch movies with you. Alice? Scorsese successfully pulls off a gentle, slice-of-life comedy-drama and inspires a beloved 70s sitcom along the way. I wasn't old enough to know if Ellen Burstyn was a genuine star back in those days, but she should have been (and I'm too big a man to care that she's playing the Christopher Lee role in that Wicker Man remake). Bob? Personally, I'm a little skeptical of the whole Bill Murray career-reinvention hype, but he's undeniably delightful as the panaphobic Bob. Dreyfuss is perfect as his tightassed psychiatrist nemesis. Frolix 8? Bemused by the Dick cult, I read his late 1950s novel The Cosmic Puppets a few months ago, and wasn't impressed; it seemed like a middling Outer Limits episode. Frolix 8 is an absolute stunner, the story of an oppressed, drug- and television-sedated America in the mid-22nd century in which apparently intelligent people are relegated to menial occupations by the more genetically advanced via standardized testing and educational placement. A resistance force builds up, but is powerless until the return of its exiled leader from space, accompanied by his new, super-advanced pal, a glop of protoplasm weighing ninety tons. Quirky, action-packed, and thought-provoking, Frolix was an instant favorite (the humor was right up my alley), and encouraged me to pursue more of Dick's work.

Monday morning, I rose bright and early and ventured into the "wilderness" (um, the parks bordering the Huron River), something I really haven't been doing very much lately. Intending to trek through Argo and Bandemer Parks, along the western Ann Arbor stretches of the river, I wound up exploring Barton Nature Area, accessible from Bandemer by walking northwest along the train tracks of the Michigan Central. It's always a treat to find part of Ann Arbor that I haven't seen yet (I've been here over four years now and there are still major blind spots). Barton's gorgeous: a mix of dark undergrowth admitting little or no sun, pleasantly wooded riverbanks, and light-drenched meadow. The weather was splendid, a perfect and paradoxical mix of spring and autumn, best enjoyed by the various path openings onto the river itself, where you can observe the steep rise of the south bank to Huron River Drive. There were a couple of transcendent moments, two of which punctuated by great music: working my way up a hill in Argo, woods all around me, the rising sun poking its way through the canopy, to Starling Electric's "She Goes Through Phases," and then amid a prairie patch of tall grass (along a twisting series of paths that reversed themselves about five times) to the Super Furry Animals' "Gathering Moss." At one point I nearly stepped on a tree frog (which didn't seem to realize how close it had approached extinction) and I believe I actually saw a cardinal (something else I haven't done in a long time), although it may have just been an unnaturally red other bird.

The best part was finding Barton Dam, possibly the most picturesque spot I've yet seen on the Huron. The Barton trail eventually brought me to the Huron's effluence from a higher elevation, managed by the dam, which I reached through a path that led past the stately old Barton Powerhouse (c. 1912). To my right lay the still-rising sun (it was only about ten-thirty) through the trees, and a green expanse of rolling pasture and farmland, with little houses along a dirt road lined with dusty mailboxes that turned into Barton Shore Drive. To my left was Barton Pond, the dam's child, its surface rippling with a faint breeze and a path continuing to lead northwest, following the river. A more compelling evocation of Americana I haven't seen in years (outside of Madison House season finales); it was almost intoxicatingly bucolic and agrarian. The path northwest along the pond, according to the phonebook map, goes much further than I had, almost to the end of Maple Road, and fairly close to the Huron River Drive bridge, which continues on into the mysteriously named village of "Delhi Mills," midway between Ann Arbor and Dexter. If I can make it to Gallup, I can make it there, without the aid of a bicycle, too. Next weekend, or the next...

Kings To Me, Fernand
Now Playing: Super Furry Animals--"Don't Be A Fool, Billy"
"...There are not many childrens' books... that involve a... serial poisoner, two cases of infanticide, a stabbing and three suicides; an extended scene of torture and execution; drug-induced sexual fantasies, illegitimacy, transvestism and lesbianism; a display of the author's classical learning, and his knowledge of modern European history, the customs and diet of the Italians, the effects of hashish... the length would, in any case, disqualify it from inclusion in any modern series of books for children."

Of course, it's been my favorite novel since I was a child. Robin Buss, in the introduction to his translation of Alexandre Dumas pere's The Count of Monte Cristo (1844-45), manfully tries to correct the impression many "serious' critics have of this outrageously entertaining and exciting piece of literature. I've read it in the tiny pocket Moby Books "Illustrated Classics" edition in the mid-1980s, the Bantam Classics abridged version in the late 1980s, and found Buss' Penguin Classics translation for five bucks at the Ann Arbor Book Fair last year. This last, to my knowledge the first truly unabridged English-translation ever, restores several scenes that fill out the story, adding depth and color I never thought it needed.

The bare bones of the plot, if you're unlucky enough not to have read it: Edmond Dantes, a young sailor from Marseille, returns home from a sea voyage in 1815, during the first Bourbon restoration, to marry his Catalan fiancee Mercedes. Framed for treason by two jealous "friends" and a public prosecutor with a guilty secret, he's thrown into the horrible Chateau d'If prison to rot for the rest of his life. Escaping with the help of an old Italian priest, he signs on board a smuggling ship, finds buried treasure, and uses it over the next decade as "the Count of Monte Cristo," exacting an elaborate and delicious revenge on the people who put him in jail. This summary does tremendous injustice to even the synopsis of a wonderfully rich and adventurous plot, one that had an incalculable effect on my growing imagination.

It's been filmed several times, as you might expect, and after watching the prestigious 1998 miniseries made by the Bravo network, in association with French television, I've come to the conclusion that it will never be properly portrayed on celluloid. I suspected that going in, and that's a good thing. I've never seen the 1934 version with Robert Donat (who I love; pretty surprising), or the 1961 version with Louis Jourdan (an ideal actor for the Count, if not Edmond). I have seen the sunny 1975 TV movie with Richard Chamberlain and the surprisingly entertaining 2002 movie from former Kevin Costner henchman Kevin Reynolds, with Jim Caviezel as the Count. Of this last, I remember my friend Karen freaking out as to its awfulness, mainly due to departures from the book. I think these are fine, as long as they produce a good movie (if you're going to make a movie version utterly faithful to the book, why make it at all?). I think all three versions of Graham Greene's The Quiet American--the novel, the 1958 Joseph Mankiewicz movie with Michael Redgrave and Audie Murphy, and the 2002 Philip Noyce movie with Michael Caine and Brendan Fraser--work very well, and they're all rather different. Caviezel was good in The Thin Red Line, Ride With The Devil and, yes, The Passion of the Christ, but no freaking way was I buying him as the Count of Monte Cristo (he was all right as Dantes). I did find his miscasting more entertaining than anything else, and Guy Pearce and Luis Guzman were genuinely great fun as the villainous Fernand and loyal sidekick Jacopo.

The miniseries looked expensive and sumptuous, in French with English subtitles, and it ran longer than two hours (eight or so, it turned out), which meant that it might get at some of the more specatcular plot twists (check your skepticism at the door, by the way) that other versions missed. I'm now familiar with some of the cast I might not have known when it was first broadcast (Jean Rochefort as Fernand, for example), but there was one player who actually made me want to stay away when it was first shown: Gerard Depardieu as the Count of Monte Cristo. The Count of Monte Cristo is a dark, saturnine figure whose public image calls to mind a vampire in at least one character's fevered imagination. Gerard Depardieu... isn't. He's a fantastic actor, the reputed De Niro of France (I actually wondered what the young, 60s or 70s De Niro might have made of this role), and I've loved his work in such historical flicks as The Return of Martin Guerre, Danton, and (best of all) Cyrano de Bergerac. He also looks like a boulder with shaggy blond hair, enough to play Obelix in the Asterix movie that was made not too long ago. As I watched, though, through the first episode, I came to realize that maybe I should see it as opera. Take La Boheme: you'd never actually mistake Luciano Pavarotti for Rodolfo (among other things, the latter probably hasn't seen a crust for a couple of days). Depardieu made me look past the physical, just as a good opera singer would have.

The rest of the cast does a pretty good job. As with Reynolds' film, the roles of Jacopo and Bertuccio are wisely blended, this time into Bertuccio; Sergio Rubini is the wiseass sidekick every good hero needs. The most interesting character in the novel, the public prosecutor Villefort, is wonderfully rendered by Pierre Arditi, who brings to life the character's haunted hypocrisy. Rochefort's Fernand chews as much scenery as time will allow; I could watch the scene unmasking his villainy in front of the entire National Assembly again and again. Flash Gordon's own Princess Aura, Ornella Muti, does well in a difficult role as the older Mercedes. The female characters in the book are mostly rather hysterical or vapid (one of the few strong women in the book doesn't even show up onscreen), but the actresses manage to make up for it. Depardieu's stunning daughter Julie, as Valentine de Villefort, brings a substance and even ballsiness to the character that was totally lacking in the novel.

Most of the plot's there; my favorite scene gets compressed a lot, but I can deal. The writers did a great job of switching up the plot points so that they're still there, but in more easily filmable forms. The surrounding events generally imply the late 1830s (Halley's comet, Queen Victoria's accession in Britain, Meyerbeer's premiere of Les Huguenots, the July Monarchy of Louis-Philippe, and so on). The atmosphere is appropriately moody and brooding--plenty of mist, darkness, and at least one incredibly creepy scene that would do your average horror movie proud, all set to an effective score by Bruno Coulais. I was glad I got to check this out, and I'd advise others to do the same, but make sure you get your hands on the real deal first. Thankfully, the miniseries still doesn't come close to the original for all its opulence, nor should it. If I wanted the original novel... I'd read it.

Triumphs of Hydraulic Glory
Now Playing: Manuel de Falla--"En El Generalife" from Noches en los jardines de Espana
I came dangerously close to snapping at my boss a couple of days ago, in a real-life "kitchen-sink drama." Ha! I'll continue my usual practice of leaving the location anonymous, even though many of you know where I work and some of you have even eaten there (sometimes with annoying co-workers yourselves). Our dishwasher has given us no end of trouble through my time on the job. It's a relatively primitive model, with a single washing "chamber" (I don't know if that's the actual term, but it worryingly pleases me to think of the dishwasher as a ballistic weapon) that can only fit one rack of dishes. Besides cooking soups and fixing up sauces and dressings, I also do most of the bussing and dishwashing (as Pacino or Kristen Bell might say, "just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in again!"), so I probably use the dishwasher most. When washing dishes in the sink before using the machine, I use a plastic standup colander to prevent most of the debris from draining into the plumbing. The latter possibility is more fraught with danger than in most restaurants, even in Ann Arbor. Our restaurant stands in an allegedly--therefore, officially--historic block of downtown Ann Arbor (the claim is that performing any sort of alteration whatsoever to the buildings will not only spoil the ambience but will also prevent "walkability," the sort of argument only someone who spends most of their time sitting in offices and driving cars and forgetting how to walk could make), along with several other restuarants, whith which it shares a complex, almost incestuous set of relationships, generally in terms of past or present co-workers. We're located directly above one of these restaurants, a particularly classy and elegant establishment which, though frequently pretentious, has a genuinely sweet happy hour, one I've often enjoyed. When something goes wrong with our pipes, they suffer.

The last time we had a major leak, the building manager took me (identified, once again, as the de facto "dishwasher expert") down below to look at the rather picturesque crusting and shit that clogged up one pipe they were trying to clear out. He wasned me to make sure no debris got into the system. I didn't tell him that I always made sure that was the case, and that once I wasn't at the sink, other workers, usually La Jefa, took over and acted like rabid children with attention-deficit disorder, throwing the colander aside like it was Play-Doh in which they'd lost all interest and doing ther same with the pots, pans, and dishes, until the latter were all gone, and one sink was stopped up and overflowing with scummy water (while doubtlessly leaking debris into the pipes below). I tried to warn my co-workers to use the colander or, if they resented that particular item for some reason (backsass, maybe), to use something else. After the eighth or ninth time I stopped caring. I'd get blamed for it in any case and I'm really not getting paid enough to take "ownership," as La Jefa puts it. This is hardly the worst restaurant I've ever worked (at my last one, one of the bartenders got actual shit all over his shirt after cleaning out an overflowing gutter in the basement). I just sat back, embraced the path of least resistance with grateful lust, and waited for the next big water crisis.

It wasn't really all that big, but it did strike home that I was basically living in the Flint, Michigan, of Wonderland. The pipe opening that takes in excess flow from the dishwasher somehow got clogged up and had been overflowing for the past two days. I showed her the overflow that day at about ten, and then she saw it again later. At the end of the day, she asked me if the overflow continued.

"Oh, yeah," I said. "It's been going on all day. Not anything catastrophic; I was able to mop it up."

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked, with a manipulative, almost betrayed look in her eyes, of the kind I've learned to resist from any source, "forgetting" that I had showed her earlier that morning.

I opened my mouth and didn't make a sound; this was kind of a waste, so I closed it again. I should have kept it there. "Well, I did. It was overflowing yesterday, wasn't it? Were we able to get it fixed?"

"No."

"Well, see, it's overflowing today." Many will probably find this simple cause and effect stuff. I wasn't pissed off, mind you. I had just come off one of the best weekends of my life, as previously described. If anything, I found it rather funny. It was a bemused, wondrous exasperation--why wasnt' she seeing this? In my mind, I was rapping her sharply on the forehead and asking "McFly" if anyone was home.

"Okay, I'll call the guy and see if he can take a look at it tomorrow," she moaned like a hurt puppy, as if this had all been my fault. I just drifted off into the rest of the day, wondering at my circumstances.

The next day, of course, she advised me, among other things, not to let the sink overflow. I had the temerity to let the gargoyle "I cannot believe she just fucking said that" smirk in my head touch my face very briefly. She left off her admonitions, pondering my face for a second.

"You're looking at me real condescending." If there's one thing condescending people hate, it's people being condescending to them (similarly, if you negatively react to a person's snobbery or bigotry, you're apt to be called a snob or bigot yourself): real pot-kettle-black stuff I hadn't encountered in a long time.

I got out of it with "I just don't understand" (which was also true on a certain level where I might have cared), but should have said "that's condescending-ly." Under the circumstances, it might well have been the funniest thing I'd ever said in my life.

I expect it also would have gotten me fired, but I'm not that reckless. My spirits are still high, too. I just thought I'd give everyone a nice little service-industry snapshot before I go into partial hibernation this weekend in order to make up for last weekend.

Red, Red River Roar
Now Playing: Franz Schubert--"Tranenregen" from Die Schoene Muellerin (I don't know how to do umlauts on this thing)
Goodbye, Madison House.

This past weekend saw the MadisonFest, three days of the best music in Michigan as a salute to the end of summer and the departure of Brandon Zwagerman for New York. Brandon, some of you will know, is the booster sans peur et sans reproche for the local music world, arranging and promoting shows in every conceivable place for the past couple of years. I met him over Ann Arbor Is Overrated, bonded over fondness for such local bands as the Avatars and Saturday Looks Good To Me, and attended nearly every show he put on at the Madison House and many elsewhere. It's safe to say that he enabled a social and artistic revolution in my Ann Arbor life; I wouldn't know nine-tenths of the people or local music I presently enjoy without his zeal, and this city would probably have turned into a fucking hell for me otherwise. That's just what he did for me, too; viewing it in terms of the local arts scene, his achievement is so much more impressive. Brandon, thank you from the bottom of my heart, and the best of luck in the future. This place will definitely be poorer without you, but will also be much better for your efforts.

It was, as John told me at Leopolds', a bittersweet weekend. It passed in random images, which shouldn't be much of a surprise. I'm still a little dazed myself: Sari Brown and Annie Palmer at West Park Friday, Great Lakes Myth Society later that night at the Blind Pig; cooking and a nap Saturday, then door duty at the Madison (where I stunned myself with my own enthusiasm; I had no idea it was possible for me to be that chipper while taking money and stamping hands), then music, music, music, and drinking, drinking, drinking, from the Madison to Arbor Vitae for the afterparty and home again; more cooking Sunday morning and a deceptive stealth hangover, lots of leisurely strolls, more music, a standing ovation for the Madison and Mr. Zwagerman, then a rollicking afterparty at Leopold Brothers' to close out a wonderful time that will always remain precious in my memory.

Random images:

--Passing by a bike-jousting tournament on the way to the West Park bandshell Friday evening; bike-jousting's entertaining enough, but when you couple it with musical accompaniment (in this case a guy on accordion pumping out "The Girl I Left Behind Me"), it gets so much better. Also, anyone who uses the exclamation "huzza!" in regular palaver is already halfway to heaven in my book.

--Running into Jess and Ricardo at the Great Lakes Myth Society show at the Blind Pig later that night. I had barely started drinking yet, but was in such a nostalgic mood (and was still so chuffed after getting my First BHF Book of Horror Stories in the mail) that I grabbed them both in a huge bear hug, which I think might have bemused Ricardo. I'm extremely proud of my volunteer work for Planned Parenthood, but it's always good to see her out on the social circuit.

--A couple of lovely little ending flourishes from some of the bands: the bassist for Dabenport ending their set with the opening lines to the Barney Miller theme tune, and Tania closing a song for Great Lakes Myth Society on her violin with the music for Pac-Man.

--The Madison front porch finger puppet show, starring Sara, Kristy, and Tania. I think there's actually film of it somewhere.*

--Stopping off at Village Corner on the way to the Arbor Vitae afterparty. Chris Bathgate had asked people for dance music, and I went home first to get some (the Go! Team, the Faces, the Pretty Things, and the Undertones). Figuring I might as well do some grocery shopping on the way and save some time Sunday, I grossly overestimated my capacity for recovery and grabbed a bottle of wine, imagining I'd "need" it the next day. I couldn't even look at a beer can without feeling queasy for much of Sunday afternoon.

--"Glen," the mysterious intruder of the Arbor Vitae afterparty Saturday night. This dapper young chap escaped from a nearby wedding dressed to the nines, stank like a French cathouse, and somehow worked his way into the Arbor Vitae loft. Curious, that, as it lies up a forbidding flight of stairs from either State Street or the back alley. He initially accosted Adam and I, taking us for a gay couple, and either (a) asked us for weed, (b) tried to "horn in on it," as it were (I only found out about that one the next day), or (c) both. The best part is that Adam's actually getting married this weekend (not to me, although I really want to check out Toronto). We never found out which of us was the "better half," by the way (his answer almost certainly would have been whichever of us looked more "street valuable"). Not taking no for an answer, he followed us around, and then other likelies, and capped his exploits by grabbing beer from Bathgate's fridge, a fatal error which apparently led to his discovery as an interloper. Hey, at least it wasn't dull.

--Finally properly hanging out with Ryan Balderas at the same party. I've been a fan for some time (Ryan was keyboardist and vocalist for the Casionauts), and we had a great conversation, ranging across film and music and eventually taking in the issue of his friend, who was attempting to generate romantic interest in a yong lady who had come down with them from Lansing. My "advice" (worth every penny, I guess, from someone who hasn't been in a relationship for at least six years) led to the fellow calling me sensei, which was cute.

--The smells from my house Sunday morning. As a going-away present for Brandon (famously proud of his Batavian heritage), I tried my hand at olliebollen, a literal "Dutch treat" from dough flavored with cinnamon, nutmeg and raisins and then fried in oil. I was planning to try frying, but hadn't done it before and didn't want to essay it while nursing a hangover. I went ahead and just baked the things, measuring them out with a spoon. They seemed to turn out well; I didn't see any left at the end of the night (they'd been "marketed" with Caleb's fruit, which he sliced at the table). After I finished baking, the first floor filled with the scent of warm cinnamon. Just upstairs lay the aroma of my housemate's shampoo, a weirdly pleasing olfactory schizophrenia.

--Sunday afternoon strolls through the Old West Side, in between (and often during) acts, smelling the trees, picking up walnuts, kicking them, sniffing them, throwing them at toddlers (not really), occasionally placing a finger to the sticky pine sap on my back (I'd sat against a tree in the front yard that turned out to be "sweating"), and reveling in the unaccustomed August cool.

--The final set ever played at the Madison, Bathgate's (ending with "We Die Most Every Night," to which just about everyone sang along in accordance with tradition), found me sitting on the rear banister, watching the lighted backyard with its packed crowd, filled with people and stilled activity, and then turning a glance to the sky, where one could see a plane far above, its lights blinking, coursing through the moon, the stars and a few stray clouds on its way to Detroit or Toronto. It was a lovely contrast: the homespun quilt of warmth, feeling and heartbreak on the ground, and then the vast violet blanket of the night and the ant of a tiny metal flying machine, all calling out the cold invitation of space beyond. Madness.

--The Howes family in general, and Maria in particular. Just fabulous; I've known her now for a few months, and she and her twin brother Tommy in effect formed their own sub-party for much of the night. We all had a splendid afterparty at Leopolds' (with nothing in me but a Coke), and... words fail me, really. Y'all are awesome.

I suppose what I'm trying to say is thank you, everyone, for everything. It was the best weekend in at least a year and definitely one of the absolute best on record.

*Pictures other than my terrifying Marjoe Gortner-like countenance Saturday evening will be made available for the curious once I learn the links.