A Bit More Quiet Time

Sorry, folks, I'm in the midst of cleaning house right now. I'm also doing a major purge of my book collection; there's lots of stuff I've loved in the past but no longer has much appeal for me. There's stuff I've outgrown and lost interest in, stuff I've picked up here and there and started to read but found I couldn't stand it, and stuff I just have no plans to revisit. There's also a number of books that I've loved in the past, but I know I'm not likely to ever have a chance to read them again. There's certain authors whose books I'm hanging on to; people like Sharyn McCrumb, Sax Rohmer, Peter O'Donnell, and Leslie Charteris, for instance.

I'm also proving a point to myself: that I'm not a hoarder. I got a little worried that I was turning into a book-hoarder, but it was actually quite liberating to turn them over to charity. Plus it makes more room in my apartment, makes it less cluttered, and it'll be less to move when I relocate to Baltimore, likely in early 2013.

And, well, it feels kinda nice to think that someone else will be picking up a book I once loved, and will lose themselves in it, and see my markings in it and wonder who I was. (There's a story there, that I'll tell someday.) Too bad I don't have labels that say, "Courtesy of Dust & Corruption" to put in each one! Maybe I'll do that with future books I donate. Especially ones that I've reviewed here, or are in the spirit of the blog.

My books are being donated to the Friends of the Montgomery County Library, at their book sale in the basement of the Wheaton Library, so if you're in the DC area and in the mood to scour for used books, head over there soon and maybe you'll pick up one of mine.

This is great inventory control, though. I should do this on a yearly basis. Anyway, back to the regular grind before too long!

A Steamy July Night at the Movies!

Quick! Get inside! The air conditioning is working in the theater, and it's still in the nineties outside! When will this horrible heat ever let up?

It's our monthly night out, and we're gathering at our favorite cinema for some vintage thrills. First up is an eerie comedy from 1908, Segundo de Chomon's "Diabolical Pickpocket"!



And then it's one of the great overlooked silent horrors, the dark comedy The Monster, a film from 1925 that set many of the horror cliches...



It's still warm as we leave, hastening to the cafe up the street for something cold....

Dust & Corruption Calendar for July 2012

It's been a brutal month so far; if it hasn't been thunderstorms and power outages, it's been the record heat here in DC. I figure I better get SOMETHING out before there's another outage. Yeah, it's been that bad.

7/11 - Moonshine Cabaret, with comedy, music, sideshow and burlesque. Hosted by Richmond's own Mark Slomski and featuring my pal Rev. Valentine. The Red Palace, 1212 H St NE, Washington DC. Doors 8:30, $10.

7/12-29 - Capital Fringe Festival, DC's annual celebration of performing arts, with tons of plays, dances, and whatnot. I'll probably be doing my usual running around catching as much as I can, as this is likely to be my last festival as an area resident. Schedules and ticket info here.

7/12 - Hot Todd Lincoln's Sizzling Summertime Show. Burlesque and comedy, hosted by my pal Hot Todd Lincoln. Red Palace, 8:30, $10.

7/13 - "Anatomical Venuses, the Slashed Beauty, and Fetuses Dancing a Jig." An illustrated lecture by Joanna Ebenstein, featuring her own research into medical collections and museums. The Observatory, 543 Union St, Brooklyn, NY. 8:00, $10.

7/13 - Pasties of Perversion: A Burlesque Tribute to John Waters. Baltimore's Pope of Trash is honored with a crew including Nasty Canasta, Go-Go Harder, Kay Sera, Rev. Valentine, Maria Bella, Gigi Holliday, and Lauren Marleaux, hosted by Natasha Carrington. The Windup Space, 12 W. North Ave, Baltimore, MD. 9:00, $15.

7/14 - French Festival. Featuring 18th-century dance, and lessons in courtly manners, along with baroque music, pantomime, art & craft demonstrations, and talks on French art. Hillwood Estate, 4155 Linnean Ave, Washington, DC. 10-5, tickets available here. 

7/14 - Diabolical Delights. Sideshow, burlesque, and magic, hosted by sexy magician Albert Cadabra and featuring Angie Pontani, Dangrrr Doll, and Joel Jeske. Red Palace, 9:00, $12 advance, $15 at the door.

7/18 - 18th Century Taverns and Ales. Sample ales based on 18th century recipes, and listen to a discussion of tavern life of the era. Anderson House, 2118 Massachusetts Ave NW, Washington, DC. 6-8, tickets available here. 

7/19 to 8/31 - "Bone," a collection of art reflecting bones and skeletons, on display at the Florence Nightingale Museum,  2 Lambeth Palace Rd, London, UK.

7/20 - Bosley's Burlesque Cabaret! Burlesque & fun with Gigi Holliday, Cherokee Rose, Roma Mafia, and Sophia Sunday. The Strand Theater, 1823 N. Charles St, Baltimore, MD. 9:00, $10.

7/26 - Staxx Burly-Q Review Presents It's Only Burlesque But I Love It! DC's own burlesque artists Shortstaxx hosts her own presentation saluting the Rolling Stones. Red Palace, 8:30, $10.

7/27 - Lost Waterfronts of New York. Illustrated lecture with photographer and filmmaker Nathan Kensinger showing photos that document the changing landscape of New York's riverside landscape. The Observatory, 7:00, $12; advance tickets recommended and available here.

7/28 - The Tilted Torch presents: Play Date! This evening of burlesque and light-based dance performances will also be a fundraiser for Figment, a DC community arts festival in September. Red Palace, 8:30, $10 advance, $12 at the door.

7/29 - The Rhinestone Follies. This New York-based troupe promises an opulent 50's style burlesque review. I've never seen them before, so this should be fun. Red Palace, 8:30, $10 advance, $12 at the door.

OK, I think I've got enough up, and it's thundering again. Best get this up before my power goes out.

The Phantom Serenade: A Mad Genius

The deranged Prof. Lipsius is on the loose again, having strangled six prison guards. He's surrounded himself with his cult of wild diabolists and is back to his habits of bizarre art thefts and grisly murders. We've followed him to the mansion where he once had his headquarters, hoping for some sort of confrontation, as after all we are a troupe of dashing adventurous sorts. But alas, we've been captured and tied up in the huge basement laboratory, as the mad genius builds up a frenzy with his followers by playing one of his original compositions...



(This is actually a piece by Greek-born composer Iannis Xenakis, an avant-gardist of the first order whose organ compositions are full of dark horror. And a random sampling of his work sounds like Dr. Phibes' songbook.)

Happily, Lipsius is so absorbed in his playing that we're able to shimmy out of our bonds and escape with some of the Russian treasures he'd stolen recently; we're too outnumbered to capture him. But at least one of his lairs is known to us and he won't dare to come back...but will he be after us?

(And obviously, I'm back. My power was restored late Tuesday but I haven't had time to blog until tonight...)

Taking an enforced break

The DC area was hit by huge thunderstorms this past Friday night, so bad that most of the area is dark. My home is without power (I'm posting this from work) and the local power company is not anticipating having everyone up and going until Friday. So this blog will be quiet for a while as I join the others ranting and raging at the power company. And if I'm not doing that, I'll be scrounging the area desperate for ice. Happy freakin' 4th, folks.

Short Bits: What I've Read Lately

So I've been reading a number of things lately that aren't worthy of entire blog posts themselves, but are worthy of mention...so here goes...

As a gay kid, the Doc Savage books fascinated me, largely because of their covers. The muscular man in a tattered shirt recalled my childhood crush on Race Bannon (I'm not joking), and even as an adult I can't help but snicker a bit looking back; the images of Doc had him tailor-made to be a gay lust object, even though everyone seemed blissfully clueless about it. And even in the stories...he avoids emotional entanglements, hangs out with five other guys...hmmm, seems suspicious, eh?

Levity aside, I reread the first Doc Savage book, The Man of Bronze. It's a pulp classic, full-throttle pulp energy, throwing everything at the reader while still serving as a decent introduction to its characters and milieu. Doc's father, Clark Savage, Se., just died from a mysterious illness, and his son "Doc," aka Clark Savage, Jr., sets out with his five best friends to avenge his death. But he's attacked in his lab by mysterious assassins who seem to be Mayan, and the trail leads to a lost valley in Central America, a pocket of ancient Mayans, and to a confrontation with a vicious criminal who uses germ warfare to control a valuable resource.

It's nonsense, but it's energetic nonsense that's a ton of fun. It's got Haggardian lost civilizations coupled with Doc's slightly sci-fi gadgetry (what might now be termed "dieselpunk"). It's a worthy introduction to the series.

I mean, c'mon, how gay is this?

And then I dipped into more pulp...

Eyes of the Shadow is the second Shadow pulp novel, and suffers in comparison to the energetic first book. The second one's a bit turgid, with a slightly muddled plot about stolen Russian jewels and a group of criminals trying to kill off a series of men who were in on the secret, along with an elderly criminal who's pulling the strings and seems to get away at the end. It's OK, and has a few harrowing scenes, but was overall unmemorable.

As an aside, I recently listened to an audio version of Daniel Pinkwater's sprightly kids' book Attila the Pun, which besides being most amusing, has a character named Lamont Penumbra, who has a huge nose and skulks around by night wearing a slouch hat. Hm.

I just finished Cleek of Scotland Yard, one of Thomas Hanshew's countless Hamilton Cleek novels. Like the first, it's full of melodrama, but isn't as over-the-top enjoyable. It's basically a short-story collection given some connecting tissue, but the stories themselves are often letdowns. One mystery is a naked reworking of Doyle's "Silver Blaze." Two stories involve mysteries that turn out to be accidental, a theft that wasn't and a seeming attempted murder that turns out to be a bizarre twist of fate. One mystery is solved because by coincidence, Cleek had happened to spot the criminal doing something suspicious a year before. Another case is solved because Cleek just happens to know that a certain costume was all the rage in the Paris cabarets for a while. There are one or two noteworthy mysteries, including one of a boy who seems to vanish from a greenhouse-type room, but overall the book was a letdown.

Cleek himself becomes insufferable. He's almost moved to tears about the possible murder of a young boy, but it's so overdone and dramatic that it seems insincere. He's impossibly noble and forbearing, as well as profoundly judgmental and frequently correct in his snap judgments of people. And naturally, it ends with him being offered the crown of the country he's prince of (he's an exiled prince of a central European county, y'know), but he rejects it out of love for a common woman.

Some have wondered if Cleek was a Mary Sue for Hanshew; he's impossibly noble and blessed with every virtue, as well as being an actual prince and the object of adoration for nearly every person he meets. Not knowing much about Hanshew, I can't say.

Last up is The Benson Murder Case, the first of the Philo Vance series by S. S. Van Dine, aka Willard Huntington Wright. In this, Philo Vance, wealthy dilettante, is allowed by his pal District Attorney John S.F.X. Markham to poke around a real murder scene. Vance figures out who must be the murderer right away, and leads everyone else on a merry chase as lets on that he knows but won't share his methods or knowledge until the end.

It's a little annoying, to say the least. The crime itself isn't all that interesting (a broker is found shot in his home), and the jumping from one interview to the next gets a bit tedious. Vance himself is quite annoying at times, superior and supercilious, very affected in manner and speech, often seeming like a total prissy queen. However, it's kind of interesting on a meta level, as it was based on a real murder (the unsolved shooting of bridge expert Joseph Browne Elwell in 1920), and a method used in the book of determining a shooter's height is utter nonsense.

On the plus side, it's overflowing with real 20s atmosphere, something I always enjoy.

So, that's a sampling of some less-than-thrillworthy stuff I've read lately...entertaining enough, to be sure, but not always up to the standards one would like to employ.

More fun stuff on the way....

Slightly Late Sunday Night at the Movies

Sorry for the delay, folks, I've had a wild few weeks. But now we're all gathered at our favorite restaurant, talking and catching up on all our adventures, trials and tribulations, and having a great time. Then, it's down the street to that old movie theater where they know us all by sight...

Since it's been a hot few days, I'm featuring some shorts that may cool us down...







And here's a pleasant surprise: the entire 1916 version of the Verne classic!



After the show, we make our way through the warm, humid air to our favorite cafe, for a glass of something cool and our final conversations before parting for the night.