Taking a break...

Things progressed at a rapid clip with the new place, and I'm busy packing and getting things organized. Got all the utilities seen to, need to see about the bank accounts, get a new library card, etc. I'm to have moved out of my current place by the 30th, and have been moving stuff up to the new place in dribs and drabs, throwing one of the more portable pieces of furniture in the back seat and loading up the rest of the available space with boxes. So if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to packing and wondering why I still have 2nd Edition AD&D manuals, and sorting through the nerd detritus, as I've just dubbed it. I'll be back in early October; internet should be up and running at the new place when I move in but you know how these things go...

A quick announcement

It looks like I'll be moving house in a few weeks, from Takoma Park to Catonsville. That means I may be not be blogging for a while until I get internet up and running. If all goes right, I'll be moving into that former dentist's office I mentioned in the calendar. So be warned!

Dust & Corruption Calendar for September 2013

Sorry I'm taking so long with this, folks. As you know, I've been apartment-hunting and yesterday saw a good one, so I've been filling out applications and doing research. It's in Catonsville, a suburb of Baltimore, is huge, and amusingly is a former dentist's office. Good location, reasonable rent, lotsa space...here's hoping. I also got word that Dad is improving; it seems the tumor isn't growing after all, but the dozen medications he's on are causing disorientation and trouble with movement, so he's experimenting with the cocktail, and has been able to stop using his walker and just gets by with a cane. Last weekend I was at a steampunk croquet picnic (a blast) and then at the Takoma Park Folk Festival, and was too exhausted to even think. It's been a busy month so far.

Anyway, here's some fun stuff going on this month.

As always, the Observatory in Brooklyn, NY, has a schedule of fascinating talks and workshops.

And Atlas Obscura always lists interesting things in different cities.

Saturdays: Speakeasy Saturdays continue at The Big Hunt; shows start at 9:00, and every Saturday is something different.

9/13 - Friday the 13th! Have a drink, watch a movie, walk under a ladder, break a mirror, whatever. Defy bad fortune! 

9/14 - GiGi Holliday present Zou Zou Revue, Bisou Edition. My pal GiGi does her monthly burlesque/comedy revue, inspired by Josephine Baker. With Deanna Danger, Cherry Bomb, Heart O. Harkness, Mab Just Mab, Maki Rolle, Maria Bella, and Vera Valentinaa. The Bier Baron, 1523 22nd St NW, Washington, DC. Showtime 8:30; tickets available here.

9/18 - Staxx Hot Happy Hour Revue. Burlesque and belly dance with an early-evening happy hour twist. With Shortstaxx, Mourna Handful, GiGi Holliday, and Alyssum Pohl. Sidney Harman Hall, 610 F St NW, Washington, DC. 5:30; free admission.

9/20 - Le Bon Ton Circus Extravaganza. Burlesque (from GiGi Holliday, Rev. Valentine, and Cherie Nuit) and sideshow (from Charlie Artful and Alex Doll), hosted by my pal Hot Todd Lincoln. The Black Cat, 1811 14th St NW, Washington, DC. Two shows, 8:45 and 11:00; tix $12 advance, $15 at the door, available here.

9/21 - The Autumnal Equinox! Summer is finally over. Have a dinner party, get together with friends, gather leaves, say a prayer or have a ritual if that's your thing. Do something fun to mark the day. (I'll be at a friend's birthday party.)

9/28 - Hot Todd Lincoln's Fall Extravaganza! My pal Todd is at it again, bringing burlesque and comedy, with Mavi, Valeria Voxx, The Red Huntress, Cherie Nuit, and Cherry Bomb. The Bier Baron, Washington, DC. Door 8:30, show at 10:00; tix $10, available here.

That's all I have right now...as always, if anyone knows of anything, give me a yell.

September at the Phantom Concert Hall!

It's a cool night in early September, and we're all dolled up in our best bohemian finery and out at the concert hall again. Tonight, we thrill to a soprano's rendition of an aria from a Hungarian operetta...

This is the opening song from "Die Csardasfurstin," the most popular work from Hungarian composer Emmerich Kalman, and I find it a delight. The title translates to "The Gypsy Princess" although she's not actually a gypsy, or Romani as some prefer, but a cabaret singer in the midst of romantic misunderstandings. I'll have to track down a recording of it sometime.

How have I been? I survived my birthday, and visited the family. My niece was in town so we had a get-together, as heaven only knows when we'll see her again. (She's a chemical engineer in the Navy.) Dad was hobbling along; I saw him using a walker for the first time which was damned alarming. But now word comes from his doctor that the benign tumor they thought had grown actually hadn't, and the problems he's having are really due to the medications he's on. So they're adjusting the cocktail and tracking the results. Work has kept me busy in the meantime.

I hope to have the calendar done tomorrow night. Sorry to be lagging behind but I've had a seriously insane week. Just groove to that aria and dance a little if the spirit moves you.

August Miscellany

Some smaller things...

Le Fanu

• Today is the 199th birthday of J. Sheridan Le Fanu and the 264th birthday of Goethe, so go read "Carmilla" and "The Erl-King" to honor them. Or listen to an audio version. Or just have a drink. That's what I'm doing.
• I'm stressed out as hell; I'm hunting for a new lair in Baltimore and my father is having some fairly icky health problems, in the form of a benign brain tumor that's pressing on his motor centers and making him limp, as well as causing occasional seizures. He's on a stack of meds but this seriously blows. And my birthday is Saturday and I have mixed feeling about being 48. But I guess still being alive and kicking is something to celebrate. And if someone knows of a reasonably-priced two-bedroom place with a nice kitchen and near a light rail station in Baltimore, please get in touch.
• A new genre of podcast has arisen, where hosts go through an author's work story by story and analyze it, and so far it seems focused on weird fiction...or at least as far as I can tell. And I think it's cool. The grandaddy of them is The H. P. Lovecraft Literary Podcast, and in its wake are The Double Shadow (dedicated to the fiction of Clark Ashton Smith) and A Podcast to the Curious (dedicated to M. R. James). Now a brand-new one has arisen, and just in time: the Edgar Allan Poecast. Just one episode so far, where they dissect "Meztengerstein", but it's a corker. I anticipate good stuff from them. And what's next? The Nathaniel Hawthorne Guiltcast? The Robert E. Howard Bicepcast? Fitz-James O'Brien's Podcast Bohemia? If someone decides to kick off a J. Sheridan Le Fanucast without me I'll be peeved.
• A friend observed my fondness for Japanese ghost stories and taste for J-horror, and asked if I was into manga and anime. And, well, I'm not. I've found most anime to be incomprehensible, and sometimes pretty vile, although I think I've just had the bad luck to be shown some of the more extreme variations. Manga just doesn't appeal to me. If it's your thing, go for it, but it's not mine. My mental image of Japan is more the land of Lafcadio Hearn and Akira Kurosawa than Sailor Moon and  Kekko Kaman or anything else...I know, hardly up to date, but that's the way it is. And I'm not likely to visit any time soon anyway...
• I have found my dream car: the 1938 Phantom Corsair. Too bad for me only one was ever made. Who wants to build up a team to steal it? (NOTE TO LAW ENFORCEMENT PERSONNEL: Yeah, right. Like I could afford the gas that thing would require. It's mere a silly daydream.)    

YUREI ATTACK! by Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt

Yurei Attack! The Japanese Ghost Survival Guide is one of a series of books by husband-and-wife team of Hiroko Yoda and Matt Alt on Japanese pop culture; notably, there's also Ninja Attack! and Yokai Attack! One senses a theme. I first learned of it when I heard Yoda & Alt interviewed on the podcast "Monster Talk" and hope to get the other two eventually. Being a bit of a ghost person, I want for this one first.

The book opens with a general introduction to yurei, or ghosts of Japan, as opposed to yokai, or monsters. There's an extensive literary, folkloric, and artistic heritage of the uncanny in Japan, and it's really clear that it's the book's purpose to open that up to western viewers whose familiarity may not run much past Ringu and Ju-On and other J-horror films.

There are themed sections to the book. In "Sexy & Scary" there's a series of seductive female phantoms, including some from The Tale of Genji and my beloved Ugetsu Monogatari. These ladies range from the pathetic, like Okiku, the plate-counting phantom, to the infamous Oiwa, the template for Japanese female ghosts.

Oiwa emerging from a lantern.

Up next is "Furious Phantoms," with specters motivated by rage and revenge. Included in this section are Taira No Masakado, a historical figure whose shrine occupies valuable Tokyo real estate but is still honored and feared today. Another is a fictionalized ghost story based on real-life kabuki actor Kohada Koheiji, who died in the 1700s.

Koheiji, in a famous print by Hokusai.

 "Sad Spectres" includes Miyagi, from Ugetsu Monogatari, and who was incorporated into the 1953 film Ugetsu. Another interesting one was Ame-Kai Yurei, or the candy-buying ghost. In this tale, a sad-faced woman shows up at a stand for several nights in a row to purchase a small piece of candy, of the sort normally given to a baby. The shopkeeper eventually follows her when she leaves, to a cemetery, where she vanishes over a recent grave. Digging it up, the shopkeeper and his friends find a mother and child together; either the woman died while pregnant but managed to give birth in the coffin, or they were both ill and while the mother had died the baby had been mistaken for dead and buried with her. And in it were the remains of the candy, along with the living child; obviously she had been sustaining the baby's life with the candy. I recount all this because long ago I read a story that had been told in the North Carolina mountains that was almost identical, except it was a general store being visited by the ghost and she was buying bottles of milk. Hard to know which came first, but it's yet another example of how uncanny folktales from different cultures can be so similar.

The Okiku Doll, another haunted possession in Japanese lore.

"Haunted Places" is a fun chapter because so many of the stories are from historical sources, some not all that long ago. Tabaruzaka, a hill near Kumamoto, has a haunting from a real battle of the Satsuma Rebellion in 1877. Mount Hakkoda is haunted by soldiers who died there during a disastrous training exercise in 1902; they were trapped, unprepared, during a "normal" cold-weather survival mission, that went hideously awry when a history-making blizzard hit the area, with record low temperatures, and out of 210 soldiers, only 11 survived, some as multiple amputees. There's also Japan's famous Suicide Forest (where a staggeringly high number of people go to off themselves), Jomon Tunnel (haunted by those who died during the construction in 1914), and Oiran Buchi (a waterfall where 55 courtesans committed suicide in the 1570s).

The Hakkoda mountains, now a ski resort.

"Dangerous Games" looks into various spooky pastimes, including a form of ouija board, a popular curse, and the hyaku monogatari, a sort of seance game where you and your friends light 100 candles, then sit around at night telling scary stories, and blowing out a candle after each story. When you blow out the last one...well, something scary is supposed to happen, but the stories are very vague as to exactly what. It's supposed to be done in summer, which is the spooky season in Japan. (In the West we tend to associate ghosts with autumn, thanks to Halloween, I guess, and also with winter, because of the long nights. Remember A Christmas Carol?)

Chapter Six, "Close Encounters," has three tales of famous meetings with ghosts, including the famous "Hoichi the Earless" which was recounted in Lafcadio Hearn's Kwaidan and dramatized in the famous film of the same name. There's a tale each about Yuten Shonin, a famous real-life exorcist, and Ono No Takamura, a poet and scholar who is supposed to have visited Hell. The appendices include a selection of ghost-related toys and merchandise, and suggestions for further reading.

Yurei Attack! is fun, spooky reading; Yoda and Alt do a very good job of making this part of Japanese pop culture accessible to Westerners. It's got a ton of illustrations, with a lot of classic Japanese ghost art from great artists, and modern manga drawings from Shinkichi.

This is great stuff, folks. Look it up, find it, and read it. It's available as a physical book and I think also for the Kindle.

August Afternoon at the Movies!

It's a rainy Sunday afternoon in August, when it's surprisingly cool but you still need air conditioning because it's so damp and clammy outside. After lunching at our favorite restaurant, we proceed down the street to the comfort of that old movie house...

First up is a short from 1900, the first in a supernatural-themed film trilogy. Watch the antics of Uncle Josh, in this film from Edison's production company, in "Uncle Josh's Nightmare".



And then the feature presentation, a fun 1932 mystery drama with a young Ginger Rogers, "The Thirteenth Guest."



Show's over, and we amble down the street for something cold at that little cafe, and take comfort in our little routine...