First, a few questions:

1) Am I the only one who had to look up what an Oxford Comma was?

2) Who are you people? I have a few repeat customers, as it were, of whom I have little knowledge. For instance, person from Louth, who are you? Person from Tempe, AZ, who are you? The people streaming in from various Middle Eastern places to look at (presumably) soft-core boy-kissing because their web-nannies ward them off from real porn -- this I understand. People looking for Furri porn -- this I *don't*understand, but I'm too lazy to track down one errant image that summons ye as hogs to slaughter-blood. Regular hits from other places (including Ile-de-France) confuse me. Identify yourself. Cookies may ensue. Actually, I fear that you are someone I know and haven't recognized moves me, so sing out... Feel free to use the nifty Guest Map.

Next, an observation:

I saw a coyote the other day. At least, I'm reasonably certain it was. My first though was that it was a wolf -- having spent more than my fair share driving through the swampy woods of NE North Carolina, I have seen Red Wolves -- typically dead on the side of the road, to be fair -- and I have seen Gray Wolves, and this was not a wolf. Nor was it a dog.*

Next, an exultation:

I got a random check from my (ex-) health insurance company. I used it to get a DVD set and book I've wanted for months. The local Barnes and Noble (and before you give me crap, it's the only bookstore with 30 miles. Yes, the only one. ) has a copy of Stephen Frye's The Liar. Judging from its shelfware, it's roughly contemporary from its 1992 publishing date, and certainly no-one else in these parts would read it. And it is lovely. It's literally hard to put down: erudite, cheeky and quite queer. The first part is -- deliberately, I'm sure -- like a cock-eyes Another Country, so clearly I'm enamored of it. I burn night-light praising it now rather than reading it.
The DVD set was It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia -- a returned-to-the-store copy and consequently cheap, but I've yet to find any problems with it.

Progress of the Rake?

You're the Tortured Intellectual!
Take What sort of Hipster are you? today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Personality Test Generator.

You're sensitive, you're emotional, and you wonder why everyone else in the world exists on a different plane. You cannot eat, breathe, or sleep without analyzing each action to death. You're usually sombre, depressed, lethargic, but you can be nearly glad from time to time. You wear whatever you can find on your cluttered bedroom floor. You carry books, notepads, reading glasses with you wherever you go. You have friends, but only a few who truly get where you're coming from. You frequent coffee shops, libraries, and the less crowded bars. You're obsessed with past people, past ideas, past lives. You wish you could die and be reborn as Jack Kerouac.

A) I'm not a hipster, but I'd sure write over-wrought prose to get between that model's pages.

B) Except for the Kerouac thing, it's pretty right-on. Compare this to a few years ago.

I haven't got a clever name for this one

I'm not sure exactly what's up with the spate of youtube videos lately, other than it's nice to have some video content to back up whatever I'm on about. This'll be the last for a while, hopefully.

You may notice I hardly ever talk about my personal life right now. Quite frankly, it's not entertaining in the deeply venial, mostly-comic style I usually evoke. And one of the... well, not benefits, really but... results... of thinking about and writing about tragedy as a genre is the sure knowledge that however pathetic your personal life is, the cards are stacked against you that it will ever rise to the level of tragedy. And if perchance does, the US will never appreciate it.

Which is just as well -- it' a bit harsh, but it keeps you wallowing too deeply in self-fear and self-pity. (Heh heh. *That* is a little criticism joke for you!)

But in contradiction to what I just said -- and without going into particular detail -- the past few weeks have been the worst of a bad time. Insomnia doesn't help. I've never really suffered from it before, but over the past months, I've developed a healthy respect for it. I'm sure it's stress-related, but I haven't gotten more than 3 or 4 hours a night for ages. Generally, after a week or two of listening all night to trains whistles from miles away*, I get desperate enough to swallow a few sleeping pills, and that's where I am right now. It this post disappears tomorrow, you'll know that it didn't pass the right-mind test. Heh.

Anyway, the point of the post is this: music helps the soul. There's nothing better than hearing a song someone else sings that describes the way you feel. The above song is mine right now. And yes, purists, I know it's his uncle who wrote the song, but I like Rufus' version better. I like that extra little bit of frisson his sexuality gives it, and I just think he's lived it better. It's one of the few songs he sings that I can forget how... slimy he is personally (yes, I have met him so I can say that with some level of authority) and just for once go with the song. Since I always like something to look at while I watch videos -- closed captions and subtitles, how I love thee -- below are the lyrics.

One Man Guy
Rufus Wainwright
from his album Poses (Dreamworks, 2001)

People will know when they see this show
The kind of a guy I am
They'll recognize just what I stand for and what I just can't stand
They'll perceive what I believe in
And what I know is true
And they'll recognize I'm a one man guy
Always was through and through

People meditate
Hey that's just great
Trying to find the inner you
People depend on family and friends
And other folks to pull them through

I don't know why I'm a one man guy
Or why I'm a one man show
But these three cubic feet of bone and blood and meat are all I love and know

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune

One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

I'm gonna bathe and shave
And dress myself and eat solo every night
Unplug the phone, sleep alone
Stay way out of sight
Sure it's kind of lonely
Yeah it's sort of sick
Being your own one and only
Is a dirty selfish trick

'Cause I'm a one man guy in the morning
Same in the afternoon
One man guy when the sun goes down
I whistle me a one man tune
One man guy a one man guy
Only kind of guy to be
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy
I'm a one man guy is me

*Yes, it is very "Blues in the Night". The nearest trains tacks are 4 or 5 miles away, but the whistles come in clear and low. Oddly, it's much more depressing a sound that the ships' horns from Upper New York Harbour I could hear in Brooklyn.

Survey Confirms...

...What we all knew anyway. Go get a haircut, Justin Long. Or a blowjob. One or the other.

I Feel Bad...

that no-one told the producers of Never Back Down that gay porn typically has a crappy techno soundtrack.

The Kid's All Right

The problem of youth has one other sort-of-tangential problem for me: class.

My first thought is to make the Edward figure (Daniel, from here on out) to be the son and heir of a CEO of a big company who dies early on in the play, or even before it begins. But that gets rid of lots -- lots -- of the weighty material of Marlowe's work. Actually, the more I think of it this way, the less I like it. I think Daniel will have to be a young king. I mean, there /is/dramatic precedent for that (cough cough Henry IV 1, Henry IV 2, Henry V cough cough). And it does give a certain frisson in the relationship between Daniel and some of his nobles: in Marlowe's version, I think there's a certain petulance and conception of Edward's inexperience by the nobles that's difficult to respect in a man the age of the historical Edward II, but completely in keeping with someone 18 or so.

After all, it has been argued that this kind of generational conflict is a big theme in the work (I think the editors of the New Mermaids version [the 2nd edition] of the play bring that up), and I kind of like the idea of the older generation of rebels (Mortimer Senior, Warwick et al.) being infirm in some way: morbidly obese, with an oxygen tank, in a wheelchair... Remember, the characters aren't on an even playing field, so of course these lot get the short end of the stick.

Which leaves the problem of the Gaveston-character's age (Michael, from here on out). Gaveston is a well-written character in Marlowe, so there are several ways he can be played by an intelligent actor. Very often, he gets played as an opportunistic schemer who takes advantage of Edward (Derek Jarman's Edward II film shows this to a degree); this usually shows Gaveston as older and wiser than Edward. There are also versions (like Brecht's play) that show him as the object of Edward's unreasoning passion, where he often is shown to be younger than Edward.

I think, though, there are problems with both interpretations. Each version gets played by reducing the agency of the opposite lover: the more manipulative Gaveston, the less canny Edward and vice versa. I think the best path is to go in between. There's a great scene in Brecht's version where Gaveston runs away from a battle that really doesn't work in his vision of the relationship. It's a scene that's touching on its own, but doesn't ring true for that mise-en-scene. (My thought is that it's some unadulterated Lion Feuchtwanger, but I've got nothing at all to back that up.)

All in all, I think Michael should be a little older than Daniel; the real Gaveston met Edward when Edward I was impressed with Gaveston's character and recommended him to Edward II as a companion. Being a little older keeps that idea going, but also helps play up the historical idea that Edward I later repented himself when Gaveston turned out to be a bad influence. And I think bad influences are sexy.

The Problems of the Youth

I believe (at times, anyway) very strongly in the idea of "give the people what they want". In the past few hours, I've had three people wend the Jaylemurph way under the Google Search "hunter brown gay jeopardy", which is comforting. It's not just me who thinks it, then.

Sadly, he will not be going on to the Finals round. And to be fair, he was legitimately beaten in competition, although I do invite humorous "spear carrier" comments. [Alas, he is not technically in my dating pool* since he only measure up to 5'11"...]

Anyway, I feel like I've been unduly beating around the Edward II bush the past few days. God -- how many mixed metaphors is that? Anyway: topic the first -- the central conceit of the work.

It's a version of Marlowe's work as envisioned by a 17 year old. A smart one, and a gay one, obviously, and one of the Kids. Right now, my vision is that he's a fairly regular high school student who projects himself and the people around him at school into the world of the play. He becomes Edward, his crush becomes Gaveston, and so forth. Also currently (and I admit this might change), I'm really into the idea that as the play progresses, it becomes more and more Marlowe's play and less and less the vision of the reader. The idea being that early on, you can have scenes that show Edward and Gaveston meeting and falling for each other, which are completely absent in Marlowe but end up in roughly the same place. I'm not going to be coy about the ending; it will be different. Sort of.

I think that almost the same sequence of events can happen, even with Edward being murdered, but with it not being about giving up dignity and pride. I think, for instance, that Edward can give up his crown without giving up his sense of self, or his sense of desire. (See what I will later say for my idea of the last scene.) But I get ahead of myself.

For me, this immediately brings up two problems. The first one seems to me the lesser of the two. If it's handled intelligently, I can't help but feel, it will ultimately be a positive point rather than a liability. It's age. The age of the characters.

There is something adolescent in the writings of Marlowe. I don't see this as a fault, but it seems hard to me to describe it as anything else. Read his plays: in the cockiness of his heroes (Tamburlaine, Faustus, Edward) is something undeniably so. I have two theories about this.

Theory One, part one: A big part of me thinks that Marlowe never reaches an emotional level of maturity. Maybe because he was never able to. And yes, I'm well-aware of the dangers of reading into the author the passions of his works. But I don't think that someone in his period so strongly identifying with same-sex desire could come to an adult understanding of emotional or sexual maturity -- he never even had the opportunity (or so it seems) to be in a deeply committed, long-term relationship. If that's the case, it does seem unlikely he produce a fictional version of one. What he can -- and does often and well -- is convey the fleeting, conflicting passions of an infatuation: the pursued and the pursuer, the frustrated and the victor.

And to his credit, he doesn't ever really supply the goods of a purely heterosexual relationship. As far as I know (and I'd love to hear a dissenting view) the closest he gets is Hero and Leander -- and the guy Leander is practically raped by Poseidon while swimming.

Theory One, part two: the basic element of his dramaturgy doesn't support this. Marlowe's plays are, in some sense, always about people who get what they want and then suffer. Compare this to Shakespeare's characters, who dither about getting what they want (look at Hamlet). This idea of going after and getting what you want without considering the consequences strikes me as adolescent in a way Shakespeare never is.

*Let us not forget Laura's idea of a Hallowe'en costume: a post note above my head that says you must be "6' 0" to ride this ride".

Hold onto your Package, Hugh

It seems the news is allowing me an unprecedented level of topicality.

What's likely to be the body of Sir Hugh Despenser the Younger -- better known to Edward II fans as Spenser Junior-- has been identified.

It seems like the body is an appropriate age; the carbon dating roughly confirms its period; and it was found on what was family property at the time. The body also bears evidence of having been drawn and quartered. The title for this post comes from this: part of the elaborate process of drawing and quartering involved castration and burning of the genitals in front of the victim.

Now, I would've written more, but I got distracted by being the one to update Wikipedia's article on Despenser with this information. (To answer the question, just this update and the first version of the article on Ingram Frizer, Marlowe's murderer.)

Dogs, Cats and NPR

So it probably comes as no surprise I listen to NPR. It might be marginally more interesting that my current little slice of heaven has it's own NPR station. (Actually it doesn't, really. There is a transmitter that repeats the signal from the Charlotte NPR affiliate, WFAE.) I'm sure I'm one of literally dozens of people in the area who listen in.

For instance, two weeks ago, they re-broadcast my favorite ever This American Life story, which includes the story of Roger Dowds on the Irish version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? It's the best piece of radio, ever. This is a picture of him from the gameshow. There's another picture of him floating around teh internets that I'm not convinced is really him, for my own vain reasons.

Yesterday, however, I caught something new. It was a story on Weekend America about Abraham Lincoln as a fag. Not that that of itself was that odd, but the slant the story, and the place it ended up was very much like my own current research. Which was odd for me; it's not like I think my topic is particularly abstruse or irrelevant, it's just that it doesn't get a lot of popular exposure. And okay, it /is/ NPR, but still...

Basically, it had two historians on who said: "He couldn't have been a homosexual because that kind of sexual identity hadn't been created yet." Which is true; the word 'homosexual' wasn't coined until 1869, so it could never have been chosen my Lincoln to describe himself, even if he was frequently sharing beds and swapping night-attire with his umm, "bodyguard."

It briefly touched on gender stereotypes and how they change, as well, even if it didn't use the terms. They did point out that it wasn't that odd for men to exchange fairly intimate compliments. They even went so far as to point out how the first decades of the 20th Century changed this.

What they didn't really expand on was the sort of pre-1869 default setting for what we would call "same-sex attraction" got lumped in the category "sodomy" along with (depending on exactly where and when, but generally) sorcery, treason, marital infidelity and blasphemy. The real horror of sodomy, since it wasn't a particular way of defining one's self, was that it could happen to anybody. (Cue the ominous chords...)

Another part of that is that the whole modern conception of sexuality as a polarity between strictly homo- or strictly heterosexual (with, of course, the complete amelioration of one at the expense of complete peiorization of the other) is a fabrication. People's desire generally is on a continuum that intersects with a contemporary society's mores.

Anyway, these generally are the assumptions that underpin what is called the New Historicism, and the starting point for my thesis on Marlowe. And, consequently, my writing project on Edward II. If you anything about Marlowe, then you know he fits poorly at best in the modern conception of either "straight" or "gay" and just as poorly into Elizabethan attitudes towards sex. Choosing to understand sex and desire as a meeting point personal identity and socio-political pressure (I hope. I really hope.) offers a new way of evaluating his works.

...Also, I feel like pointing out that I found out while listening to the above story that there is a basset hound who lives on the way to the local BBQ shack. He lives about two or three blocks from the house where I grew up, and it was all I could do not to pull over and pet him.

For some reason, he reminds me (maybe in the set of emotions he rises up in me) of my first friend in New York, Sniffle-Kitty.

The Dead Hamlet

But back in the control console, the needle was twitching on the ham detector. It slowly swung down into the lower readings until it came to rest at "0". A warning light began to flash on and off, but there was no one left to notice...

Jaylemurph and basset hound Sebastian K. Poochles star in an all-new adventure in space and time this Saturday at 5.15 here on BBC-TV's new serial, "Poochles Poo".

We re-emerged in the console room a short time later. I was feeling much more prepared in a nice cardigan and some sensible shoes, and the Poochles had replaced his lost Astrakhan hat with a straw panama. Completely ignoring the safety monitors, we walked out the doors...

And I blinked. "Is it just me, Poochles, or has it gone all over-exposed?" I asked. "It is a bit bas-relief," he said. To make sure, we both gave our heads a good shake. That seemed to clear things up.

Looking around, we were in a kind of still, creepy wood. Poochles already had his nose to the ground, sniffing. "Look at the soil," he said, letting a palmful of it run through his paws. "It's all burned into ash and sand. The heat must have been indescribable!"

I realized there was a fairly stiff breeze blowing but none of the branches were moving. I touched one. "Hunh. It's like stone," I said "Very brittle stone." But Poochles was ignoring me. He'd found a little pink flower. "It's kept almost all its colour," he said.

I wasn't listening. I saw what could only be called A Thing. As I backed up, I ran into his flower. "Sir!" he said indignantly. But he soon saw The Thing and trotted over to it. "It's A Thing," he said, helpfully.

I waved my hand at it in the fiercest way I knew. It didn't move, so I assumed it was as dead as everything else around. "It's stone," I said. Poochles gave me a withering look. "No, I think it's metal. It's a metal ham." He was right -- it certainly looked like a ham. Poochles gave it an exploratory chomp. A little piece of his tooth sheared off. "Not juicy," he said.

"Oh my god, Poochles, are you okay?" I asked, concerned. "It's nothing, sir, nothing. I can only imagine it's held together by some magne...." he kept rattling on, but when I saw his was okay, I wandered away, bored. I went over to the edge of the jungle, about 6 and a half feet away.

"Look at that, Poochles! A city!" Sure enough, a few miles away from us, a city bloomed up from the foothills of a mountain range. It looked like nothing as much as a stacks and stacks of washing-up liquid bottles with some dry ice fog floating over it. When we looked again, it was clearly different: much more complex and defined.

Poochles frowned. "Too bad it's 9.56," he said. "All the lights go off in four minutes. We'll have to come back tomorrow. Let's go back to the BASSAT and rest."

On the way back, I saw another of the flowers Poochles had found. I stopped to pick it up as Poochles nosed ahead through the forest, but as I was picking the flower, I felt a hand discretely touch my shoulder and heard a plummy voice cough and say "Pardon me, sir, but..." Naturally, I panicked and ran screaming all the way back into the BASSAT.

The Poochles looked at me funny but didn't say anything.

As we walked through the Ship's double doors, Poochles remembered it had been days since I had eaten. "You probably need some foods. Besides, they've built some nifty sets for the next serial: let's go see them." We went through a pair of roundel-ed double doors at the back of the console room I was sure hadn't been there before. Behind them was what could only be called a big, clunky Space-Age machine.

"What would you like to eat, then?" Poochles asked. I thought about it briefly and said "A chopped barbeque sandwich would be nice, and some french fries." He looked at me dumbly. "An aspirin, then? I've got one hell of a headache all of a sudden." Without missing a beat, Poochles looked at me and said "Ham and Eggs it is then, sir." He turned a dial or two and cranked a lever. What looked like a aged Mars Bar was excreted. "Eat up, eat up!" he said. I took a nibble. It was the best-tasting tuna casserole I ever tasted. We finished nibbling our bars, only to leave the mess behind us as Poochles marched back into the console room.

"Well, you'll be wanting to get back to 1960s London, I imagine," he said, forgetting I didn't actually come from there. I didn't say anything, as he had a TV and VCR in the ship. I thought I might try to record an episode of TV or two, figuring the BBC would have wiped it by my time. Who wouldn't want a lost episode of Doomwatch, I thought?

As he spoke, though, a thick blanket of smoke filled the room.

"Do you think I didn't see you mess with that control?" I said. "You yanked it right out!" The Poochles ignored me, holding up the little component and squinting at it. "This fluid link is empty. We need to fill it up before we can take off again. We can only find the necessary Mercury in the city we saw!"

"If you wanted to go there, why not just say so? It seems a bit more interesting than pre-Swinging London," I said.

"Yes, we'll just have to risk it. We'll just have to risk it," he said as he operated the door controls and walked out.

A few hours later found us at the edge of the City. I was sweating profusely and he was panting to beat the band. "It's no good," he said. "I'll have to rest."

"I need to use the Little Time Traveler's Room," I said. "I'll be back here in 10 minutes." It was a lie, of course. I had to heave, big time. I opened one of the little electronic doors and went through into the city.

I wondered around the city for some time. I noticed the doors were quite small and rounded, not shaped for a human. After a while, I began to realized I was being guided. Doors were sealing off. Eventually I was bundled into a room that converted into a lift. I plummeted several stories. When the door opened, I went through, heavy with foreboding.

I knew I was being watched. I turned around. There, in front of me, coming towards me was... was...

I could only scream...

Next Week: The Surviving Things.

On another note...

Did anyone see tonight's episode of Jeopardy! ? It's Teen Tournament time there, which is always good for a wheeze. Last year, there was the so-pathetic-it-was-cute (or maybe vice versa) crush the adorable gay boy had the other, smug gay boy. Seriously, he did everything but write "Pleeeeeze let me blow you"* for a Final Jeopardy question. Which is funny, because this year in college, I'm sure he hasn't got any need to beg anybody for sex.

Well, this year's resident boi, Hunter Brown, promises to be just as amusing, but not quite as pitiable. He and the other contestant got pretty well trounced in the first round; he was in third place, so got to go first in Double Jeopardy. His category of choice? "Broadway". He pretty much ran through the category.

What really sold it was the look of mixed grim determination to fight mixed with the look of slightly-smug "Queer Powers: Activate" pride. He didn't win today's match -- rather impressively, he risked everything on the Final Jeopardy question, got it right, but lost by $2 -- but I'm sure he earned enough to make the Wild Card spot.

*I think when he lost one of the final matches, he even went through a shoe-staring, googly-eyed "I'm glad I lost to such a great player" speech. It was heart-rending it was so sad.

The Roses of Heliogabalus or, The Un-Valentine

Pretty isn't it? You can see the title above, it an 1888 canvas by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema. Why mention it? I think it's the influence for Act II (of three maybe?) for the Edward project I'm doing.

I've been reading (an abridged, but still 1,000+ page edition of) Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. It's one of a handful of books that I've ever read that lives up to its reputationL it's immensely well-informed but still highly readable. It's almost an obligation for anyone seriously interested in history -- and especially for those interested in writing about history -- to read.

But old Edward is a bit of a prude. Any non-standard sexual activity by a man (and hoo boy, do those Romani get up to it) gets labeled "effeminacy" and glossed over. Which is disappointing since that's part of while people read about the fall of Rome. Never fear, Suetonius is always glad to help out with a dirty secret or two and there are plenty of other fine Roman historians to fill the gaps.

And Elagabalus (for some reason often erroneously called Heliogabalus) was one of the interesting ones. Even reading Gibbon's version was enough for me to start sniffing around history to find out more. He came from a royal family of Rome (no point in going into detail here since these things get fuzzy for the Romans), and was at an early age a priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabalus. When he became emperor, he adopted the name as his title. And started the fun:

"When Hierocles, a charioteer in the arena, was thrown in front of the emperor's box, his blond hair spilling out from under his helmet, Elagabalus immediately had the youth escorted to the palace, where he was found to be even more captivating. Calling him "husband" and contriving to be caught in adulterous trysts, Elagabalus proudly displayed the black eyes he insisted on receiving. But there was to be a rival. Frequenting the wharves and public baths, agents sought out others who might please the emperor, especially those who were well-endowed. Another handsome athlete, Zoticus, was discovered who surpassed all others in the size of his membrum virile. Hastened to Rome, where he immediately was made court chamberlain, he greeted Elagabulus with the usual salutation "My Lord Emperor, Hail," only to be admonished, "Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady." That night, Elagabalus was to be disappointed, when Zoticus could not perform as expected. Hierocles, fearful that he would fall out of favor, had the cup bearers drug the wine and Zoticus, humiliated and deprived of his honors, was exiled from court."

This is from Cassio Dio, quoted on this excellent site.

The picture above is a rendering of this story from of his life:

"He [Elagabalus] loaded his parasites with violets and other flowers in a banqueting room with a reversable ceiling, in such a way that some of them expired when they could not crawl out to the surface."

Scriptores Historiae Augustae: Antoninus Heliogabalus (XXI.5)

Anyway, the link between the painting and Edward is this: the scene where the Edward-character and Gaveston-character first interact in a meaningful way after Gaveston's return from his (first) exile is in a scene set in a dance club, to the song "Michael". As the two dance* on the floor, everyone else's dances become equally sexy and roses, violets and other prettily-smelling flowers fall from the ceiling.While the other boys begin what is essentially an orgy (tho' their decorum be covered by petals), Edward and Gaveston leave to fuck alone.

Right now, I think the Gaveston-character will be called Michael -- for an obvious reason --and the Edward-character Daniel. I think that's enough for right now. Attentive readers can already see a few sticking points --"How old are these characters?" is one. The implied connection I've made between Elagabalus and one of the two characters (clearly Daniel as Edward) brings up the question of class -- which is a huge point in the original.

My next entry will detail the central metaphor I'm using for the work. I think once that has been laid out properly, I can return to the question I raised this time. I just wanted to start with this image, for its topicality, and because it's one of two relatively-thought scenes. (The other is Edward's death scene , with "40' " as the soundtrack.**

*Yes, all right, that's Shakespeare, not Marlowe.

**Do forgive the line spacing changes half way through the post. I meddled with Blogger for 20 minutes or so to fix it. Fortunately, it's somewhat masked since it only appears after the block quote: surely no accident, stupid cheap Blogger text editor!

"Fifteen pounds of fuck-puppy in a 10-pound bag"

So how, one may ask, do you fill your lonely hours of late, Jay? Well, despite spending a big hunk of each day writing a dusty thesis, I write. The only negative thing I could say about being in New York was that I didn't write as much as I should. Even that's not totally fair, as I was writing for school a great deal, but as much inspiration as there was to be had in the big city, I can't help but feel now I wasted a lot.


However, I got a big breath of inspiration not too long ago, and (touch wood) it seems to be lasting and prospering. Not all moody Indie music lends itself to working out, but not too long ago I started listening to Franz Ferdinand's first album at the gym. I had sort of given up on them as far too mainstream, but coming back to them and giving them a good listen, I clearly need to go back and tell myself to get over myself.

Time was, I thought the sun shined out of their shapely and seemingly available bums:


"Artist: Franz Ferdinand Album: Darts of Pleasure EP
Label: Domino Records Rating: 5 out of 5 *s


Oh. Yeah. Boys.
Being the Boy With His Thumb To The Pulse Of The Scottish Scene (TM ;0) I had heard rumors of the band Franz Ferdinand: wonderful, extatic, nigh-swooning things. And they were all right.
Franz Ferdinand is exactly what the whole lo-fi garage thing tries and fails miserably to be (Suck it up: The White Stripes, Jett, The Raveneonettes, et al. blow): fun, dirty and original.
What does it sound like? The above bands with a spark, with touches of Bowie, Steppenwolf and a little added Funk. On top is some sharp but subtle political edge (track three is about the gentrification of their hometown, Glasgow).
What separates these guys from their Big Label Clones is probably not surprising to any Kid around: they may be as hip or self aware as, say Jett, but they don't take themselves so damn seriously. They have fun. They're irony-light, yo. Play it now. "

[This, of course, was from the defunct Jaylemurph Reviews. I've been reading a few reviews there lately, after having, for soon-forthcoming reasons, wanting to find out more about the band. The material stands up pretty well, and the style pretty well matches up with the subject. It makes me smile]

Clearly, I like what I'm hearing there, and do again. And it's nice to have an excuse to spend some time listening to their work since that and their first full album came out. And it's good. The song "Michael"...

...struck a chord. The sort of louche pan-sexuality the band and their music exudes resonates as a concrete musical example of the theoretical, critical dullness I've been writing about for my thesis. This article, by Rob Sheffield and from the Village Voice, does a pretty good description of it, and is also really good a putting a finger on their musical influences. This entry's title comes from the article.

But of course the band does a much better job themselves:



Seriously, don't you want to grab one (or potentially, a few) of those boys from IndieBoyz?*

But obviously, gentle reader, cheap titillation aside, I'm sure you're champing at the bit to see where I'm going with this and my non-academic writing. Okay.

I'm writing a musical adaptation of Marlowe's Edward II using the music of Franz Ferdinand.

I still think it's a brilliant idea. Anyway, I've got the feeling this will be a profitable place for me to come to hammer out the details: I've got specific ideas for individual songs and how to use them, a general idea of what I'm going to change, and why, a general concept for plot, and -- best of all, if not the most useful -- as specific concept to build all these up on.

But I can get into those later. A lot of them are relatively complex dramaturgical issues that need more time and energy than I'm willing to expend this second.

One thing that is sort of tangentially exciting is that my good (and drop-dead gorgeous) friend** Jacob, who's finishing up his DFA at Yale, was the dramaturg for a production of Edward recently. Ish. I know I can bounce ideas of him, since we've worked together before, and I have the greatest respect for his knowledge and experience. His expertise is on modern theatre, but he has a solid understanding of the Elizabethans. And that's not praise I throw around a lot.

*Perhaps not completely incidentally, Eurocreme (well, technically their sub-studio IndieBoyz) has released Indie Boyz 2. The original is better (what sequel is ever as good? And no, don't say The Godfather...) but it's still hotter than 99.9% of the rest of the porn in the world. If this show ever gets on its feet, I'm totally giving small parts to the boys in these movies. It's only fair.

** Uhh... Maybe I shouldn't have said that, but I'm reasonably certain that a) he's never going to read this site, b) he knows I think that anyway, c) it's not at all mean and d) it's as true as anything I've ever said, if not more so.

Now Let Us Praise Famous Queers

For one reason and another, I haven't been listening to Dan Savage's Savage Lovecast podcast for the past several weeks, so as I was pottering around cleaning today, I listened to a few in a row.

Amusingly, in episode 66 (for 22 January) he bitches about Alexander Wolfe's hand-wringing complaint that because dull computer geek podcasts aren't the most popular ones, that podcasting is dead. And then Dan mispronounces Leo Laporte's name. Heh heh.
(If you don't know, Leo is in the contending for the dullest person on Earth, attended by a clique of poorly-washed, faux-hacker faithful who mistake technology for means of social interaction.)


Alarmingly, in episode 64, I'm reasonably certain it's my old friend Paulie from Brooklyn that's calling in, describing his girlfriend with a grammar fetish. And lying about it. Paulie's the guy who managed to sleep through shifts as a Renaissance soldier ("He had the night watch...") and who, after getting profoundly drunk, drew a "Mister Paulie's Stomach" smilie-face in indelible ink
and used him to talk for him for several hours. He's fascinating for being a drifter with whom you randomly run into in far-flung places: last time I heard from him, he was a bar manager in Asheville (giving Laura Llew completely the wrong impression of my ability to pull); before that, he was studying music in Poughkeepsie; before that, he was fleeing a hurricane in Raleigh (and no, that doesn't make any sense to me, either). Calling in to Dan Savage's show while high is oddly in keeping for him.

Here's an open Question...

Can you tell me why English infinitives have "to" in front of them?

I've never met anyone, anywhere who knew. It isn't inherent in the language -- Old English doesn't do it. As far as I can figure, it confers some idea of futurity, rather like the "to" in tomorrow or tonight. And the original form of those words often appeared as to-morrow and to-night as if the *to- was some sort of archaic enclitic, but I'm not aware of that form appearing anywhere else. Clearly, its function is purely grammatical, as that form of "to" carries none of the locative or dative functioning the preposition to has.

The Cave of Hams...

Or No Forest of Fear
Or The Fire-Basset

I woke up a few minutes later, feeling distinctly hung-over and confused. Then I remembered. I was aboard the Poochles' mysterious BASSAT, and he had kid-napped me away from my home. When I tried to escape, he had electrified the door switch on the control console and I had shocked myself trying to escape.

I remained fairly confident I had gone (at least temporarily) insane.

When I looked up from the chair I had collapsed into, the Poochles was hovering around the controls. Apparently, he had de-electrified them. "Hmmm now. That's odd. That's very odd. This yearometer seems reads '0'. It must be broken," he said, mostly to himself.

"So you think we've traveled, do you, Doctor Poochles?" I asked disdainfully.

"Poochles who?" he muttered, not looking up from the controls. Well, I thought, there goes a perfectly good title.

Aloud, I said with some disdain "I said, you think we've gone somewhere?"

This was enough to make him trot over. He looked me right in the eyes and said "I see. I know. You don't want to believe. But if you could taste an alien ham, and hear the cry of strange birds, and watch them wheel in another sky, would that satisfy you?"

"Yes," I said.

He went back to the controls and chekced a few read-outs. "Gravity, normal. Air, breathable. Radiation, nil. Let's see this new world, sir." He gathered up a few odds and ends and operated the door controls. They swung open to reveal a bleak landscape.

A few hundred yards away, a forest began, but all the trees were bare. There didn't seem to be a lot of movement within them. Closer to us, it was all sandy scrubland, with a few dried-up bushes and brown clumps of grass. It was dry, almost arid, and cold. It didn't look like an alien world. In fact, it looked suspiciously like a disused quarry. Needless to say, despite Poochles' poetic turn of phrase, there were no birds wheeling about.

Just then, there was a rustle from the trees. A figure was running towards us, dressed in furs that looked a bit tatty. It was a tall, leggy blonde with suspiciously long eyelashes and a full set of teeth. She was screeching and flapping her arms a bit. As she passed us, a flea landed on my arm. She kept going, and was soon out of sight.

"So... that was a cave woman, then?" I asked Poochles. He narrowed his eyes at me. "Clearly. And it suggests we've arrived at about 100,000 BCE. Now I had to leave your time in a hurry, without properly setting the controls. I'm going to sit, alone, here and take some measurements and make some calculations. With those, I'll be able to restore the proper directional setting back in the Ship. Now you go somewhere else. I'll be perfectly undefende... vulner... happy."

I left him as he settled down, cross-legged, and was lighting a big meerschaum pipe. I suddenly found one of the scrubby bushes immensely fascinating, and bent down to study it with my back turned to the Poochles.

After a few moments, I heard Poochles' ringing bite-bark. It sounds a bit like "Bwar-rar-rar-rowrf." My first reaction was an immediate "Oh, /that's/ what it sounds like when it's not me getting maimed. " I automatically rubbed my top lip. "Gee, it sounds awful."

Then the penny dropped. Poochles, I thought, he's alone, and been attacked!

I ran over to where he had been. His notebook had leaves strewn all over, and his pipe was smashed. His little Astrakhan hat was lying abandoned on the ground. Even the portable Geiger counter he had was smashed into ruination. Worst of all, there was a path of blood trailing away into the dark woods.

I stood for a minutes considering my options. I was no match for a vermin-infested cave man, let alone a tribe of them. Besides, who knew, I might get tangled up in a mind-numbingly dull primitive war of religion and politics.

But at the very moment, Poochles came walking out of the woods, tail wagging. And not oozing blood.

"Poochles," I said, "What's going on?" I suddenly felt like I might be saying that a lot more often from now on.

He was pretty nonchalant. "The gentleman needed some fire. He was hanging around earlier and saw me light my pipe. He tried to steal my matches, but I gave his ankle a savage nip. When he sat down to clean it, we had a little conversation. Turns out he's trying to become chief of the Tribe of Ham, but they've lost the secret to making fire. So I gave him a package of my nifty ever-lasting matches, and told him to teach the whole tribe how to use them. Problem solved." He looked pleased with himself. "Saved a lot of running around for us both, I bet."

I was a little put out. "Yeah, but what about all the character development, and metaphorical parables about nuclear weapons? And should you be meddling with history like that? "

He patted my head in a very irritating manner. "Nuclear weapons parable? You ain't seen nothin' yet, sir." He walked nimbly back to the BASSAT. "Shall we go? I was thinking of going somewhere Beyond the Sun."

I followed him in. He was already working his magic on the controls. Within a few moments, the central column on the control console stopped its rhythmic rise and fall. He told me to check the environmental read-outs. "Oxygen, okay. Gravity, normal." There was one he hadn't mentioned earlier next. "Ham, normal."

"Very good, very good!" he said. "Let's go get some food and a change of clothes." I agreed: " I could do with some knit-wear, you know. Maybe a nice cardie. And some sensible shoes." I followed him out of the console room.

But back on the control console, the needle was twitching on the ham detector. It slowly swung down into the lower readings until it came to rest at "0". I warning light began to flash on and off, but there was no one left to notice...

Next Week:
The Dead Hamlet

(in your most booming voice now): "WHAT??!!?!"

This may just be the greatest thing on the Internet. I actually got through it on my first try, but that in no way does justice to its inherent genius.

In case you don't know, Brian Blessed is a god who currently walks with us. He's best known for his huge performances (literally and figuratively) in most of Kenneth Branagh's films (Exeter in Henry V was particularly good, and a world away from my friend Mary's version when I did it*), and parody of the same kind of role in the first series of Blackadder.

But he's also been in Cats -- the only reason a sane person would /see/ the damn thing -- and donned eye make-up and a dress for a spot of high camp in Doctor Who (possibly the highest camp** ever in the series, and a thing of beauty to watch***).

AND he's climbed Everest three times, though not to the top, along with successful attempts on Kilimanjaro and Aconcagua.

I think the perfect film would involve him and Robbie Coltrane arguing over something. Anything.

*Well, it would be, wouldn't it?

**Sontag's article is not without its problems (she makes a direct link between camp and homosexuality (natch) that's troubling to say the least) but it is the /first/. And like everything she writes, intelligent and insightful.

***So, yeah, the 1980s.

In which the monster eats some people and destroys Whole Foods

I saw Cloverfield last week. I wasn't very impressed, and the more I've thought about it, the less I like it. Although, to be fair, it was enjoyable. Aside from the motion sickness. My collected opinions:

As a piece of drama, it pretty much falls flat on its face because it wants -- boy howdy, and how -- to be a character piece, but it's built as a melodrama. It's so completely and utterly based on plot that there is only some cheap, perfunctory character development or conflict. It bumps along fueled by cliches. All its best moments are direct rip-offs of other movies.

It feels like the movies own instincts lean towards wanting it to be a monster movie, and its instincts are right. The characters are whiny and dull and worse, completely predictable, so the vaguely defined and (for most of the film) vaguely seen monsters are far more interesting. This wouldn't be a problem if it settled down into melodrama. You don't expect the characters to be interesting then, and it's a relief to see them act they way you expect. Here, it's a cheap let down.

But the monsters in the "character movie" idea of the film that keeps trying to assert itself are just a means to an end, which is why in both you see so comparatively little of them, despite how intriguing they are. Appropriately, as they eat up the characters, they were the mechanics to initiate a vaguely sadistic audience to watch the characters break down. We eat them up, too.

And towards the end, even the physics of the world begins to break down. Characters become like cartoons: "oh look, they popped up *again* after being knocked down"; they /explode/ for ill-defined reasons; the camera stands up against every attack (including a nuke) and the battery lasts forever.

Well, I think it's illustrative of my biggest criticism of the movie: it /wants/ to be about the characters, yet one of them explodes -- explodes! -- and no one says much about it. (I know, they can't, they're too busy... that's the problem.)

You don't need every story point (Not plot point, and there's a big difference there, and this movie has noooo problem with the plot) explained, and there is a suspension of disbelief. But that can't be tortuously stretched and has to be internally consistent. And like I said before, by the end of the movie, that belief begins to break down as the character keep getting knocked down but keeping getting back up. That's the essence of comedy, right there, or more aptly, farce. But with the heavy hand the script has, it doesn't even acknowledge the possibility of humor and it moves the audience into a place of vague sadism. A good director would know that and try to at least downplay it, if not out and out re-write it.

With a movie so desperately self-consciously aware of itself, I thought that intro bit was corny, and wound up raising more questions that a normal "shut and watch, the movie's starting" scene would be. Why not do what the characters suggest and have some kids in China watch it on Youtube, with hokey military warning intact, too? But that'd be too close to making a /point/ for this film.

The only really interesting thing about it is it's use of 9/11 imagery -- which for me was uncomfortable. If that footage had been used in a better movie -- a movie /about/ something or that used that imagery to /say/ something other than a cheap effect -- it wouldn't have been so weird.

At 73 minutes, it's kind of long for what it is. I mean, the ending is completely predictable and effectively communicated in big, red letters, so it really could have ended 15 minutes earlier. What's left after that is basically the money shot for the monster fans.

That said, I did get a kick out the building I used to work in getting to be a setting. And then wholloped.

What I think about HR 888

Or, why

Mr. FORBES, Mr. MCINTYRE, Mr. AKIN, Mr. BARRETT of South Carolina, Mr. CULBERSON, Mr. DOOLITTLE, Mr. FEENEY, Mr. GINGREY, Mr. GOHMERT, Mr. HAYES, Mr. HENSARLING, Mr. HERGER, Mr. JONES of North Carolina, Mr. MCHENRY, Mrs. MUSGRAVE, Mr. PEARCE, Mr. PENCE, Mr. PITTS, Mr. RYAN of Wisconsin, Mrs. SCHMIDT, Mr. WALBERG, Mr. WILSON of South Carolina, Mr. WOLF, and Mr. YOUNG of Florida

need to review their Ninth grade Civics class. If you need to learn about the Bill, you can read it here. My response? Haranguing my above-named Congressional Representative co-sponsoring it.:

[The real question, though, upon reflection is why Rep. Ryan et al. (need I even say there's an R next to their name?) decided to drag their districts along for the ride to 1764. The South being fuzzy on Constitutional law I get.]


Mr McHenry --

I'm writing to encourage to you to vote against H. Res. 888, should it ever come before the House. It is clearly in defiance of the separation of church and state enshrined in the First Amendment. It serves no purpose other than sheer self-congratulation on the part of those adherent to the Christian faith.

Personally, as a non-Christian, I find it offensive that a bill so clearly pro-Christian is attempting to word itself in the generic name of "religion".

I see it as a clear repudiation of the Constitution wording and intent, and a vote for it as nothing less than proof of your unfitness for the office you hold. I take it as read that a member of so august a House should be at least as familiar as I am with the documents that found this country, and the opinions and lives of the men who created them. All of these point to a deliberately atheist state, and this Bill (along with the related -- and alarmingly passed -- Bill 847) is nothing less than an attempt to undermine this, and an attempt to falsely re-write our history as a specifically Christian nation.

For these reasons, I am scandalized any such bill should come before the House, let alone co-sponsored by my own representative. Please be aware that in this, you do not represent me, nor many, many others in your district. Hopefully, your awareness of the position you hold, your knowledge of your country's history and practice, and your conscience in representing your constituency will all prevent you from furthering this bill.

Respectfully,
Jaylemurph

Indie Pete

So have you been reading Diesel Sweeties where Indie Pete turns out (maybe really) to be gay? That's kind of hot.


But really, it's an excuse to give some people an opportunity to look at this Diesel Sweeties and say: do you really, seriously need something this obvious to tell you "Fuck off"?