Friendly Reminders…

I’m sitting on a bunch of “friend invites” right now. I’m not sure how to deal with them. For the most part, they fall into the gray area of what I will usually accept. In almost all cases, I keep asking myself: “What do I have in common with this person?” or  “Why is this person interested in me?” This is, in part, because of a lack of information on their 360 pages, the use of Yahoo’s canned introduction, or a combination of both. There ARE people in my invite queue who have a face picture and some information on their blogs, but who have never contacted me otherwise and don’t seem to share the same interests as I do, except maybe for an interest in crossdressing. Lately, I’m not much interested in crossdressing as an end in itself so much as I am in crossdressing as a mode of identity expression (gender identity and otherwise). That sounds a bit vague, but if you know what I’m talking about, chances are I’ll be able to tell in a heartbeat once I interact with you. What’s the difference? I can’t say, but I know it when I see it.

And then there are the hot young lesbians. I continue to get invites from hot young lesbians, which I don’t understand. Because I’m so NOT hot–and so not a lesbian–myself. Don’t get me wrong: I like a world full of hot young lesbians, and if I have something in common with them, whether it’s a taste in movies or a love of books or  a similar fashion sense or whatever, I’m happy to have hot young lesbians as friends. But these girls don’t seem to have anything in common with me. I don’t get it.

And so, I have a page full of invites just sitting there. Eventually, some of them will just expire while I ponder them. If you’re waiting on me, I’m sorry. If you read this and realize that you’re waiting on me, send me a note or post a comment here telling me why I should accept your invite. If you do, I’ll probably do it.

Best….Thanksgiving….Ever….

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone…

And now…for something completely different…

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Well, maybe not that different…

Courtesy Helen Boyd\’s blog, I find that the porn industry has put out a four hour porno pirate movie. Actually, I had heard of it before, but I didn\’t realize the epic scope of the thing. I think I\’ll pass on it. I don\’t really need it. I got MY pirate porn in the mail last week in the form of the Errol Flynn DVD box. Errol Flynn is the actor that convinced me that I really really rrrrrreeeeallly like men. Oh, he\’s a manly man; just look at all those westerns he made. But he cut such a dashing figure as a pirate that he fueled a plethora of onanistic pirate fantasies in my fevered young-adult mind. While other male children or male teens would imagine themselves as Flynn himself, perhaps as Robin Hood, I would imagine myself in the Olivia De Havilland role. Or, more to the point, in the Brenda Marshall role in The Sea Hawk, a noblewoman captured by the dashing pirate on the high seas. Only, my fantasy Flynn was never as chaste as the screen Flynn. The screen Flynn was chivalrous to a fault and would never think of ravishing his captive. Well, when I cast myself as the English noblewoman while I watch a Flynn pirate epic, I always wind up ravished by the dashing pirate. Roughly, long and hard and multiple times, while wearing elaborate gowns and corsets. And panting for more…

So you can keep your fake imaginings of what a porno Anne Bonney and Mary Reed might have been like–fake tits and fake orgasms in all their fake Sapphic glory. I\’ll take the rakish classical pirate of my fondest nocturnal fantasies.

As an aside, I know full well that real pirates were nothing like the Flynn of Hollywood\’s imagination. But neither were the noblewomen of the era Olivia De Havilland or Maureen O\’ Hara. I would run in terror from a pirate like Bartholomew Roberts (the REAL Dread Pirate Roberts) or Edward Teach. For an account of what these guys were like, I recommend Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.  Some fantasies are farther from reality than others…

And now…for something completely different…

src=\”http://dunyazad.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/1164059656-hr-829.jpg\”

Well, maybe not that different…

Courtesy Helen Boyd\’s blog, I find that the porn industry has put out a four hour porno pirate movie. Actually, I had heard of it before, but I didn\’t realize the epic scope of the thing. I think I\’ll pass on it. I don\’t really need it. I got MY pirate porn in the mail last week in the form of the Errol Flynn DVD box. Errol Flynn is the actor that convinced me that I really really rrrrrreeeeallly like men. Oh, he\’s a manly man; just look at all those westerns he made. But he cut such a dashing figure as a pirate that he fueled a plethora of onanistic pirate fantasies in my fevered young-adult mind. While other male children or male teens would imagine themselves as Flynn himself, perhaps as Robin Hood, I would imagine myself in the Olivia De Havilland role. Or, more to the point, in the Brenda Marshall role in The Sea Hawk, a noblewoman captured by the dashing pirate on the high seas. Only, my fantasy Flynn was never as chaste as the screen Flynn. The screen Flynn was chivalrous to a fault and would never think of ravishing his captive. Well, when I cast myself as the English noblewoman while I watch a Flynn pirate epic, I always wind up ravished by the dashing pirate. Roughly, long and hard and multiple times, while wearing elaborate gowns and corsets. And panting for more…

So you can keep your fake imaginings of what a porno Anne Bonney and Mary Reed might have been like–fake tits and fake orgasms in all their fake Sapphic glory. I\’ll take the rakish classical pirate of my fondest nocturnal fantasies.

As an aside, I know full well that real pirates were nothing like the Flynn of Hollywood\’s imagination. But neither were the noblewomen of the era Olivia De Havilland or Maureen O\’ Hara. I would run in terror from a pirate like Bartholomew Roberts (the REAL Dread Pirate Roberts) or Edward Teach. For an account of what these guys were like, I recommend Under the Black Flag by David Cordingly.  Some fantasies are farther from reality than others…

Favorite Song Lyrics–Tranny edition

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I once made a compilation tape–this was in the dark days before cd burners–composed of nothing but songs about transvestites and/or transexuals. That\’s 90 minutes of material. Omitting some obvious chestnuts, here are some of the highlights:

Fellas in the alley all look like girls
With the lipstick and the high-heeled shoes
Feel so pretty and the boys all say
That they know just what to do
That they know just what to do

–Richard and Linda Thompson, \”Hokey Pokey\”

A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms and history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George
And you think you found the bag
You\’re getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George

–Van Morrison, \”Madame George\”

Well, she\’s got Jet Pilot eyes from her hips on down.
All the bombardiers are trying to force her out of town.
She\’s five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench.
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch.
She got all the downtown boys, all at her command
But you\’ve got to watch her closely \’cause she ain\’t no woman
She\’s a man.

–Bob Dylan, \”Jet Pilot\”

One girl was called Jean-Marie
Another little girl was called Felicite
Another little girl was Sally-Joy
The other was me, and I\’m a boy

My name is Bill and I\’m a head case
They practice making up on my face
Yeah I feel lucky if I get trousers to wear
Spend ages taking ribbons from my hair

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it

Put your frock on, Jean-Marie
Flatten your hair, Felicite
Paint your nails, little Sally Joy
Put this wig on, little boy

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it

I wanna play cricket on the green
Ride my bike across the street
Cut myself and see my blood
I wanna come home all covered in mud

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it
–The Who, \”I\’m a Boy\”

People stared at the makeup on his face
Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace
The boy in the bright blue jeans
Jumped up on the stage
And lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and disgrace

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight, really quite paradise
And he sang all night long

Femme fatales emerged from shadows
To watch this creature fair
Boys stood upon their chairs
To make their point of view
I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
Lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and dismay

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice Really quite paradise
And he sang all night long

Oh how I sighed when they asked if I knew his name
Though they was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, and the song went on forever
He was awful nice
Really quite paradise
He sang all night long

–David Bowie, \”Lady Stardust\”

Arnold layne had a strange hobby
Collecting clothes
Moonshine washing line
They suit him fine
On the wall hung a tall mirror
Distorted view, see through baby blue
Oh, arnold layne
Its not the same, takes two to know
Two to know, two to know
Why cant you see?
Arnold layne, arnold layne, arnold layne, arnold layne

–Pink Floyd, \”Arnold Layne\”

Enjoy.

Favorite Song Lyrics–Tranny edition

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I once made a compilation tape–this was in the dark days before cd burners–composed of nothing but songs about transvestites and/or transexuals. That\’s 90 minutes of material. Omitting some obvious chestnuts, here are some of the highlights:

Fellas in the alley all look like girls
With the lipstick and the high-heeled shoes
Feel so pretty and the boys all say
That they know just what to do
That they know just what to do

–Richard and Linda Thompson, \”Hokey Pokey\”

A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms and history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George
And you think you found the bag
You\’re getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George

–Van Morrison, \”Madame George\”

Well, she\’s got Jet Pilot eyes from her hips on down.
All the bombardiers are trying to force her out of town.
She\’s five feet nine and she carries a monkey wrench.
She weighs more by the foot than she does by the inch.
She got all the downtown boys, all at her command
But you\’ve got to watch her closely \’cause she ain\’t no woman
She\’s a man.

–Bob Dylan, \”Jet Pilot\”

One girl was called Jean-Marie
Another little girl was called Felicite
Another little girl was Sally-Joy
The other was me, and I\’m a boy

My name is Bill and I\’m a head case
They practice making up on my face
Yeah I feel lucky if I get trousers to wear
Spend ages taking ribbons from my hair

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it

Put your frock on, Jean-Marie
Flatten your hair, Felicite
Paint your nails, little Sally Joy
Put this wig on, little boy

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it

I wanna play cricket on the green
Ride my bike across the street
Cut myself and see my blood
I wanna come home all covered in mud

I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But my ma won\’t admit it
I\’m a boy, I\’m a boy
But if I say I am, I get it
–The Who, \”I\’m a Boy\”

People stared at the makeup on his face
Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace
The boy in the bright blue jeans
Jumped up on the stage
And lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and disgrace

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight, really quite paradise
And he sang all night long

Femme fatales emerged from shadows
To watch this creature fair
Boys stood upon their chairs
To make their point of view
I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
Lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and dismay

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice Really quite paradise
And he sang all night long

Oh how I sighed when they asked if I knew his name
Though they was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, and the song went on forever
He was awful nice
Really quite paradise
He sang all night long

–David Bowie, \”Lady Stardust\”

Arnold layne had a strange hobby
Collecting clothes
Moonshine washing line
They suit him fine
On the wall hung a tall mirror
Distorted view, see through baby blue
Oh, arnold layne
Its not the same, takes two to know
Two to know, two to know
Why cant you see?
Arnold layne, arnold layne, arnold layne, arnold layne

–Pink Floyd, \”Arnold Layne\”

Enjoy.

Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated…

Hmm. I haven’t posted anything here in over a week. Let’s see what I can muster.

Politics
I’m shocked that Missouri elected Claire McCaskill to the senate. I’m shocked that the stem cell initative passed. I never know what to expect from Missouri voters. The divide between the rural and the urban populations–economically, socially, ethnically, and by just about any other meaningful demographic yardstick–is wide and profound. This occasionally means that strange things happen on election day. You may recall that Missouri elected a dead man to the Senate six years ago rather than send John Ashcroft back to the Hill. Should I ever have children, I can tell them with pride that I once voted for a corpse.

Sports
I’m glad I don’t gamble. I’m especially glad I don’t gamble on college football. Half of the top ten lost this weekend. Crazy.

Personal
Our water heater went tits-up last week. Replacing it turned into a hassle. Allow me to explain. I don’t carry a lot of consumer credit. My total consumer debt prior to this week was something like $400. That’s chicken feed compared to most Americans, and I do have student loan debt and a mortgage that aren’t considered “consumer debt” (mortgages are barely considered debt at all, because they can be sold like an asset). As a newly minted homeowner, I’m discovering that I need to have a certain amount of credit to cover things like water heaters that go tits-up. So I went galavanting through the world of credit last week.

After determining that a home equity loan was out–the amount I was after was too small for them to bother–and after determining that I didn’t want to pay the usurious interest rates charged by most credit cards, I wound up arranging a line of credit with my bank. I wasn’t aware that they still did this sort of thing. I recall reading about lines of credit in 19th century novels, but I’ve never met anyone who had one. The way it works is this: I no longer have a “free” checking account (mind you, there’s no such thing as “free” checking). My checking account has been converted to carry the line of credit as a form of “overdraft” protection. I pay a small monthly fee for this and no longer pay overdraft fees when I dip into it. Adding up the number of overdrafts I made last year, I come out WAY ahead of the game here. What a deal.

Then I went shopping for a water heater. After checking the consumer reviews for energy efficiency, I decided to buy a 40 gallon GE gas heater from Home Depot. Home Depot guarantees installation within twenty-four hours, too. So, naturally, I was still waiting on the damned thing four days later. Four days without hot water. Four miserable days. I finally called to cancel the order. They were apologetic and asked if whether I would reconsider if they could get me in touch with the installers within a half an hour. I gave them the chance. Twenty minutes later, I got a call from the Home Depot in Osage Beach, Missouri. They were as perplexed as I was because Osage Beach is a hundred miles from where I live–there’s a Home Depot in Columbia–and because the Osage Beach store doesn’t have an installation service. They offered to fax the information to the Columbia store. An hour later, I called the hotline and cancelled the order. Enough was enough. An hour after that, the Columbia store called me, apologized, and said the water heater I wanted was out of stock. They couldn’t have told me that four days earlier? Well, they can go fuck themselves with a chainsaw for all I care. I called a local plumber,  had the damned thing in the same day, and felt like a moron for jumping through the hoops. The irony of this is that the the plumber I called contracts installations from Home Depot. I saved a hundred and fifty bucks by knocking Home Depot out of the picture. Go figure.

Transition
I’m thinking of this as “transition” though I’m not doing anything overt in my lifestyle besides electrolysis. I think I’ve moved beyond recreational crossdressing here, though. Electrolysis really does separate the men from the girls. The downside is that I always seem to be growing the beard to accomodate it. I have to grow it for about four days prior to an appointment, and am told to leave it alone for a couple of days after the appointment, so the opportunities to shave and go out are becoming scarce. Because I’m on a two week schedule (I have a four hour appointment every two weeks), I do have a narrow window of opportunity every other week, but I need to plan for things. I had a tooth out last  year and never used the Vicodin they prescribed for me. I’m considering using it for electrolysis. Four hours of electro is kicking my ass. Three hours is just beyond my pain threshold, so four is an effort of will.

Relationships
Columbia doesn’t have much of a TG community, but it does have a kink community. When I was first coming out, I was fairly active in that community and there was a couple I was very friendly with. I sort of lost track of them a few years ago, but I still think of them as friends. The female half of the couple in particular was great fun to hang around because, except for her chromosomal make-up, she was a drag queen at heart. Fast forward to this weekend. After nearly five years, I get an email from the male half of the couple–who I always thought was straight–wondering if the person behind this online persona was the same person they knew from Columbia’s kink community. I wrote him back to tell him that I was, indeed, the same person and to say hi to him and his wife. He replies that they are getting divorced. “I see,” thought I. “Well this is awkward.” Mind you, he’s cute as hell and hung like a horse, but…

I don’t know what the hell I’m going to do about this.

Movies
My SO and I went to see the documentary, Crumb, this weekend at Columbia’s Missouri Theater. The Missouri Theater is an old-style movie palace that was purchased by the Missouri Symphony Society in order to save it from the wrecking ball. They’re currently restoring it–and it needs it–with the aim of turning it into the Mid-Missouri Center for the Arts. Our local film society stages monthly showings there and debuts our local film festival in the venue every year. The theater holds an audience of 1200 people. Whenever filmmakers visit the theater for showings of their films–particularly on the first night of the festival–they tend to be a bit shellshocked at both the size and art-deco decadence of the place and the size of the audiences. Kevin MacDonald, the director of Touching the Void, opined that our fair city had provided his film with the largest single audience it would ever have. He’s probably not wrong. We’re proud of our film festival and our arts community, small though they occasionally seem.

But…Crumb. A great documentary about the great underground cartoonist Robert Crumb. I’ve seen it before many times, but for this showing, our film society had brought in the director of the film, Terry Zwigoff, who also directed Ghost World and Bad Santa. Like other visiting filmmakers, Zwigoff was taken aback at the size of the space. The audience was relatively small–no more than two hundred people because the weather was horrid–but he seemed pleased to see it none the less. As an aside, Zwigoff was in the region for the St. Louis Film Festival, which showed his director’s cut of Bad Santa this weekend. If the St. Louis audience was larger than ours, I would be shocked, and not just because I know how small the theaters are that host the StLFF. Zwigoff was gracious during the Q&A period and spent some time dismissing some of the urban legends that have grown up around the film–one of which opens Roger Ebert’s review of the movie. The most interesting thing about his anectdotes was the shock he expressed when his driver briefly left his luggage unguarded on the pavement. “It’ll be okay,” the driver said. And it was. In Zwigoff’s hometown of San Francisco, his luggage would have vanished instantly. This prompted him to recount the frequent break-ins his automobile suffers there by teen-agers looking for a place to smoke crack. I’ll keep this in mind the next time I get an urge to move to San Francisco. Also interesting: Zwigoff claims that hanging around Crumb for the nine years it took to make the movie caused him to begin seeing things through the filter of Crumb’s art, particularly in its exaggeration of light poles and power lines and the other impedimenta of a late capitalist industrial society.

Felicia is not a film buff in any meaningful way, but she enjoyed the evening. She found the movie to be depressing–and it is, kind of–but she likes hearing filmmakers talk. She had a similar experience when we got American Splendor and a visit by Harvey Pekar and his family a couple of years ago.

What did I take away from it? I took away the feeling that even though I often think of myself as living in a cultural backwater, I really don’t. And that’s a fine feeling to have in the middle of red-state America.

Cheers.

A Republic, if you can keep it…

So the election is a couple of days away. The mud has been flying in my home state, where the most closely watched Senate race in the country is unfolding. Although I won’t vote for Jim Talent, I don’t much like the alternative. Like Talent, Claire McKaskill is too much a creature of her party and there’s something about her that makes my reptile brain twitch. She’s too much of a politician. That being the case, I’ll probably vote for her. I actually wrote to Jim Talent a couple of years ago and was pleasantly surprised to receive a response from him–not a form letter, mind you, which is all I’ve ever received from my other congressional representatives when I’ve written to them. He outlined why he disagreed with my letter, but he was polite and seemed genuinely pleased to engage his constituents. Be that as it may, his views differ from my own to the extent that I don’t believe he represents me to the Senate in a way that I like, so I’ll be voting against him.

Has anyone else out there written to their congressmen? Am I a rarity in this?

In any event, for those of you planning to vote on Tuesday, I recommend a visit to www.ontheissues.org. This is a useful site that tells you exactly where your congressional representatives stand on the issues before the legislature. I made use of this site to decide my vote for the House this year.

My current congressman in the House is Kenny Hulshof. I’ve met Kenny Hulshof. He’s a nice guy and I’m sure I would enjoy playing golf with him. More than that, Hulshof is NOT a congenital politician. He has a demonstrable history of personal integrity that’s rare in Congress these days (particularly among the GOP, to which Hulshof belongs). I thought about voting for him this year because I knew next to nothing about his opponent, Duane Burghard, and I admired Hulshof’s opposition to the changes to the House ethics rules vis a vis Tom De Lay and his indictment. But Hulshof’s record, as detailed  by ontheissues.org reveals a candidate with whom I disagree in almost diametric opposition. This encouraged me to dig up some information on Burghard, who is running one of the quietest campaigns I’ve ever seen. I presume that this is a seat that the national Democrats have decided to cede to the Republicans–foolishly, I think, given that the largest city in Missouri’s 9th district is Columbia, a very, very liberal city–because Burghard’s campaign has the character of an ad hoc sort of thing, one that’s not very well funded. This is a pity, too, because I think a candidate with Burghard’s biography could be very effective in the right campaign environment. I’m willing to vote for him, and I disagree with Hulshof more than I thought, so that settles that. 

Felicia will be working the election again this year, as she has in the last couple. As an independent election worker, she’s barred from performing many tasks at the polls, which require that important tasks be overseen equally by a Republican and a Democrat. Independents and third-party partisans are shut out many tasks. This doesn’t seem right to me, but until America has a viable third party rather than an assemblage of fringe parties, I suppose that it’s the way things must be. I’m just glad that Felicia will be working at our local poll rather than one in Columbia proper, because it’s only two blocks from our house. It will be convenient for me to stop in and vote before I go to work and it will be convenient for me to bring her some food once I get home.

One thing I will NOT be doing during this election is using a touch screen voting machine. The scandal over the 2004 Ohio election results has convinced me that I’ll use the paper ballots. Even if the rumors about that election are false, it’s enough to discourage me from trusting an electronic tabulation where there is no hard copy to compare if the results are challenged. Just say no, sez I. It’s not worth it.

I encourage everyone who is elligible to vote to go to the polls on Tuesday, and I encourage everyone to find out what the candidates think on the issues rather than relying on the advertising on television. And, Jesus H. Tapdancing Christ! I’ll be glad when the televisions stations go back to selling cars, feminine hygeine products, and soft drinks, because the polical ads this year have set a new low for midslinging. I personally believe that if you’re eligible to vote and don’t vote, you should shut the hell up about the things your government may be doing, because, aside from determining the agenda of the government, voting is the price Americans pay for their God-given right to bitch about their government.

---

“Well, Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?”
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
–Benjamin Franklin, when asked what kind of government
the Constitutional Convention created for America.

Adult Books

This week’s book for the drive to work is Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. This is the book the Police refer to in “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” and it was made into movie twice, once by Stanley Kubrick and once by Adrian Lyne. The star of the Lyne version, Jeremy Irons, is the reader on the edition I’m listening to, and it’s nice to hear him putting his talents to better use than he has in his recent films. The striking thing about Lolita is that it’s one of those “controversial” books that still has the power to shock. Have you ever picked up one of those controversial books of yesteryear and wondered what was the big deal? Lady Chatterly’s Lover, for instance? Or Moll Flanders? Cultural mores change after all, and what was shocking once might be quaint a generation or three later. Hence D. H. Lawrence has been rendered respectable (The Rainbow remained controversial longer than Lady Chatterly, mainly on the strength of its lesbian themes). But there are still books that have the power to shock. The revelation of how Popeye rapes Temple Drake in William Faulkner’s Sanctuary is still pretty far over the line. Sanctuary was filmed in the 1930s as The Story of Temple Drake, but because of the imfamy of the book, neither the title of the novel, nor Faulkner’s authorship could be openly acknowledged in the film’s advertising. Crazy.

The Story of O can still shock, too, which is interesting because pornography dates itself so quickly. The Story of O turns a trick that the best erotica  turns, in so far as it links eros with thanatos in a way that is profoundly disturbing. The line between erotica and horror is a fine one that O walks deftly at the end of the book. Lolita does something similar. But even if everything in The Story of O becomes commonplace–and much of it has, from body modification chic to erotic power exchange–Lolita will always shock. The nature of Lolita’s erotic obsession will ensure that, as will its narrative point of view. Neither film version of the book quite “gets” Nabokov’s genius here. He’s put the reader behind the eyes of his pedophile narrator and constructed a linguistic delirium that eroticized virtually every sentence of the book until the reader him or herself might begin to share in that obsession. He does this from the start, when he renders the name “Lolita” as “three taps of the tongue, Lo li ta.” More interestingly, he has specifically constructed the book to frustrate the guardians of the public morals. In the faux preface, the book’s fictional editor declares that it is a “moral” book in which there are no “four letter words” to be found. And sure enough, there aren’t, but the English language is so large that you can express most things–even the things expressed by “obscene” words–in ways that that are semantically identical using words that cannot be expunged by the blue noses. Nabokov does exactly this. It’s a dazzling display and hilarious at points. Part of the book is metafictional, intended to work as an abstraction in this way.  And in spite of all the intellectual constructs one finds in Lolita, I still found myself kind of abashed to be listening to the book in the middle of traffic. Once or twice, I could feel myself blushing at what the book describes as I wondered whether the people stopped around me at the stoplight could hear the book. And I’m jaded. I’m not easy to shock. It’s an amazing book.

Slouching Toward Bethlehem…

What rough beast is this, its time come round at last
 Slouching towards Bethlehem to be born…
W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming”

And so the Halloween horror challenge comes to an end. Here’s the end of my journey. The final leg sometimes felt like I was dragging myself across a field of broken glass…

October 26:

Quills (2000, d. Philip Kaufman)–Is this a horror movie? Oh, yes. If that wonderful drop of blood falling from the blade of the guilotine in the first sequence isn’t a signifier, then its central figure is. The Marquis de Sade was the black beast of the enlightenment, the monster bred by the sleep of reason. That this has other concerns besides horrifying the audience is immaterial. This movie is a film designed to unsettle one’s convictions, to stir the soup until it makes your eyes water. Geoffrey Rush is brilliant as the Marquis, Michael Caine is superb as the hypocritical Dr. Collard, whose private life is the horror that de Sade describes in his writings, only hidden behind a veil of respectability. The taste of irony at the end of the film is rich, something most horror movies never attempt, alas.

October 27:

Phone (2002, d. Byeong-ki Ahn)–Accomplished Ring knock-off from Korea. Pretty good in spite of being completely derivative, but that’s Korean genre cinema for you. They make up for originality with absolutely crackerjack filmcraft. Screenplay is a little convoluted, but that’s okay, because this film has the creepiest little girl in all of Asia in the cast.

October 29:

Nightmare (1962, d. Freddie Francis)–I watched this Hammer Gaslight knock-off for last year’s challenge. I completely forgot it between then and now. It’s that kind of movie. Nice black and white photography, but one expects that from a film directed by Freddie Francis. Otherwise unremarkable.

October 30:

The Climax (1944, d. George Waggner)–Attractively mounted conflation of The Phantom of the Opera and Trilby starring a woefully under-used Boris Karloff. There are some terrific character actors in this film, including Gale Sondergaard and Thomas Gomez, but the interesting characters–including Karloff–fade into the background. In the foreground are a bunch of wet noodles and too much bad musical. The sets, left over from the remake of The Phantom, are spectacular and the Technicolor cinematography is first rate, but the film isn’t worthy of them.

The Strange Door (1951, d. Joseph Pevney)–Another Karloff movie in which Karloff is reduced to a supporting player, this time backing up a Charles Laughton in full “ham” mode. The movie has a lot of plot, concerning a nobleman who’s forcing his neice into an unwelcome marriage in order to torture his imprisoned brother-in-law. Lots of great atmosphere, but this isn’t very scary. Were it not for the mood, it would be mistaken for a swashbuckler. Minor.

Lunacy (2005, d. Jan Svankmajer)–The director himself introduces this latest insanity thus: “Ladies and Gentlemen, what you are about to see is a horror film—with all the degeneracy peculiar to that genre. It is not a work of art. Today, art is all but dead anyway. In its place is a kind of trailer for the reflection of the face of Narcissus. Our film may be regarded as an infantile tribute to Edgar Allen Poe, from whom I’ve borrowed a number of motifs. And to the Marquis de Sade, to whom the film owes its blasphemy and subversiveness.” Who am I to argue? This is another of Svankmajer’s assaults on the citadel of reason, combining live action with the stop-motion animation of odd, and oddly menacing, everyday objects. Particularly meat. There’s a LOT of meat in this movie. If you know Svankmajer’s work, and like it, this should need no introduction. If not, this will be fairly opaque. I liked it a lot, but there you are…

Final tally: 32 movies. 18 new to me. This represents an improvement over last year’s tally where I barely got under the wire on both counts. I can only imagine how I’d do if I didn’t have those pesky real life commitments like work and social interactions…Alas.

Up next for me? French musicals. Maybe a samurai movie or three. But no horror for a while.