December's Night Out at the Cinema

It's a chilly December night, and the gang is gathered for our last night out...until the New Year, maybe? The waiter at the usual restaurant points us toward a seasonal special, and we enjoy a cocktail or two before heading off for the show, exchanging horror tales of Christmas shopping and strained family gatherings.

Tonight, it's a simple show...a neglected 1933 film that critics now say was very innovative for its day, and a heavy influence on later avant-garde filmmakers like David Lynch...THE SIN OF NORA MORAN.



After the show we adjourn to our favorite cafe down the street...but not too late a night, as we have the whirl of holiday parties ahead...

Bits & Bobs

A few little things...

• I recently read Kevin Guilfoyle's THE THOUSAND, which had all sorts of interest because of its plot centering on a secret society of followers of Pythagoras who guard secret knowledge that makes them rich...but it ended up being a depressingly generic thriller about young lovers on the run and while we're told the secret society has all sorts of wild forbidden knowledge we're never told exactly what and what about it is so dangerous to the general public. It ended up being very blah and forgettable. Avoid it.  
  
• A better read was Dana Cameron's SITE UNSEEN, a nice little murder mystery set in an archaeological dig in Maine. It's all contemporary and there's a lot of great factual information about archaeology. It's not quite got the macabre gothicism that I would give a full-throttle review to, but at the same time was quite a good read and with a cool plot involving an archaeological find. It's the first of a series and I'll definitely be checking the others out. 
  

• Added to the Link List is the amazing Hypnogoria site, which I am very impressed with. Go check it out.
• While you're at Hypnogoria, listen to the excellent Hypnobobs podcast. Host Jim Moon has a terrific voice that I could listen to for ages, doing some impressive dissections of various aspects of the genre, as well as readings of classic stories and poetry. 
• Jim Moon's purr shows up on some other podcasts as well, most significantly the hilarious Witless for the Defence, where a jury passes judgement on listeners' guilty pleasure movies.
• I believe I've mentioned the impressive Edgar Allan Poecast before, but if I haven't...well, they're the latest in the literary-analysis podcasts that's cropping up lately, dissecting the works of Poe. I've also made a crack recently about a Robert E. Howard Bicepcast...well, it turns out a Howard pocast just got off the ground, and so far they're doing a great job. Go check out the Cromcast!
• As a longtime fan of tabletop role-playing games I'm enjoying the new Improvised Radio Theater with Dice podcast, and the Video Nasties podcast has fun analyzing controversial shlock from the 80s video boom.
• On a personal note, our first Thanksgiving without Dad was odd but we got through it. Mom insisted I sit at the head of the table, which felt very, very weird for me. I still don't have a car but have hopes that situation will be resolved in a few months...and if not, it will be a while. Sigh.

That's about it for the moment...hope all my readers are doing well.

Dust & Corruption Calendar for December 2014

December can be a month full of annoyances and madness, but here's a few events that may offer distraction.

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.

12/6 - St. Nicholas' Day. Some folk give presents this day.

12/7 - Celeste Giuliano's Pin-Up Peep Show. Looks like a great show, "inspired by classic cabarets and supper clubs," and featuring many great burlesque artists, like the Peek-A-Boo Revue, D'Arcy Deluxe, Reggie Bugmuncher, and Anita Manhattan, with music by the Strip Tease Orchestra, all hosted by Miss Candy Mayhem. Union Transfer, 1026 Spring Garden St, Philadelphia, PA. Tix $20, available here. Doors at 8:30pm.

12/13 - Friday the 13th! Also St. Lucia's Day.

12/13 - Calendar Girls Burlesque. Bump & grind with Tapitha Kix, Cherie Nuit, Mab Just Mab, Glam Gamz, Sunny Sighed and Bal'd Lightning, and hosted by Hot Todd Lincoln. The State Theater, 220 N Washington St, Falls Church, VA. Doors 8pm, show at 9. Tix $12 adv, $15 at the door.

12/13 - Brews & Burlesque. Now taking place every second Friday, this showcase of Richmond-area talent stars Dev L. Ish, Moxie LaBouche, Dante the Inferno, and newbie Lindy Avalon. Strangeways Brewing, 2277A Dabney Rd, Richmond, VA. Tix $8 adv., $10 at the door. Showtime 9pm.

12/14 - The Weirdo Show Wounded Warrior Benefit Show. Burlesque & sideshow with Maria Bella, Prof. Sprocket, Alex Doll, Candy del Rio, Cori Dials, and host Jim Dandy. All proceeds benefit the Wounded Warrior Project. The Bier Baron, 1523 22nd St NW, Washington, DC. Tix $12 adv, $15 at the door. Doors 8:30pm, showtime at 10. Have dinner and a few beers before the show; the fish'n'chips are killer.

12/19-21 - Trixie & Monkey's 9th Annual Holiday Spectac-u-thon. My pals Trixie Little and the Evil Hate Monkey do their thing with friends Murray Hill, Mr. Gorgeous, Perle Noire, Gin Minsky, and french horn trio Tres Horny. The Creative Alliance, 3134 Eastern Ave, Baltimore, MD. Tix $25, $20 to Creative Alliance members. Five shows.

12/20 - Stocking Stuffers! Hot Night Productions presents a holiday-themed burlesque show. Featuring Maria Bella, Spinnabel Lee, Karen Beriss, Cherie Nuit, Dainty Dandridge, and host Hot Todd Lincoln. The Bier Baron, Washington, DC. Tix $10 adv, $12 at the door. Doors 8:30, show at 10.

12/21 - Winter Solstice/Yule. The year's midnight, the shortest day. Honor it in some way. Also my parents' anniversary.

12/24 - Christmas Eve.

12/25 - Christmas Day.

12/26 - Boxing Day

12/31 - New Year's Eve.

And that's pretty much all I have. Go find a concert or museum exhibit where you are, or one of those holiday open houses at a historic site. Take time to relax and read. Do something fun with your family, if you can stand being with them. And hang in there, the new year is just around the corner.

December at the Phantom Recital Hall

We've got concert tickets tonight! Laura has a new dress, and Viola has one of her vintage outfits complemented by some stylish new jewelry. Ramsey is in tweed, while both James and May are adjusting the boutonnieres on their evening jackets. And of course, you check your buttons and run a hand over your hair, but your friends all smile and insist you're just FINE.

This is one of the older venues in town, but still serviceable. Once it saw the glamour of the elite; now, a more bohemian crowd, to be sure, and the ticket prices are cheaper, but it's still a lovely place.

The pianist does some dazzling work, including this striking piece.



It's an amazing performance, and we go home exhausted but happy. But later we are chilled by news of a murder near the hall just before the concert...and a witness describes someone who sounds a little like the pianist...what is his secret?

November's Night Out at the Movies!

It's an unseasonably warm evening in mid-November. Our monthly gathering starts at that charming restaurant, sampling the specials and flirting with the waiters, discussing our latest life changes and plans for the upcoming holidays.

And then, it's up to that shabby yet charming movie house up the street!

Tonight, we open with Segundo de Chomon's 1908 charmer "Les Ombres Chinoises," or "Chinese Shadows."



And then after that is the 1932 thriller "Out of Singapore."



After the show, we retire to the nearby cafe for a beverage and more conversation before we part ways for the night. As we go, we feel the chilly breezes begin to blow....

THE MONSTERS by Dorothy & Thomas Hoobler

I picked this up at the local library after having heard of it here and there, and while it's not exactly of the genre I deal with, it takes a look at some prominent figures and works in it, and so is worth delving into.

This is, basically, a biography of Mary Shelley, focusing on her authorship of Frankenstein, and also looking into the lives of those around her during the famous "haunted summer." We get an enjoyable look into the life and writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and her marriage to William Godwin...radicals and revolutionaries both, they resisted marrying until a child comes along, and they eventually cave in to convention to be sure their child will be regarded as legitimate.

But Mary Wollstonecraft dies soon after giving birth, and young Mary grows up in an unsettled home. Eventually she meets young Percy Bysshe Shelley, the noble-born poet and radical who is inconveniently married, and the two run away together to Europe...accompanied by Mary's stepsister Clara (soon to be called Claire), who soon becomes Mary's rival for Percy's affections.

It's a hot mess, when you throw in Lord Byron and his neurotic and needy doctor, John Polidori, who has literary ambitions but not the talent to realize them. And all the bed-hopping going on, and turbulent relationships, between Mary and Percy, and Claire and Byron, and Claire and Percy, and...well...who knows who else. Mary craved a stable home life but Percy kept her moving from one place to another, never staying anywhere for long. And then there was the fateful summer of 1816, The Year Without A Summer (caused by historically low solar activity and a series of volcanic eruptions that threw a load of dust into the atmosphere that blocked the sun), a summer of failed crops and frequent storms and cold temperatures and food shortages and riots and typhus and death.

Of course, there's the whole well-known summer that resulted in Frankenstein, but there's also Mary's dead child, and Claire's child by Byron, Allegra, who dies young, and the suicides of Percy's wife and Mary's sister. Needy Polidori eventually self-destructs, Byron gets in over his head trying to be a Greek patriot, and Percy's fascination with the sea, and inability to swim, destroys him eventually.

The portraits of the personalities involved are compelling and realistic. Percy is restless, perhaps too self-absorbed, and is a model for Victor Frankenstein in many ways. Byron is immensely talented and immensely handsome, but also with serious body image issues that lead him to go to great lengths to disguise a malformed foot, and to always go on crash diets. John Polidori is blinded by optimism and a need for affirmation and reassurance; despite his own talents and striking good looks (he was quite dishy, even when next to Byron), he was always striving for something just beyond his grasp.

Like I said, dishy.

The tragedy of some of these characters' lives touches me; I came away really liking Mary and wishing she could have had better. She and Shelley were an ill-sorted couple, and although she seems to have loved him and devoted herself to his memory after his death, it sometimes seemed as if they would have been better off going their separate ways. Byron was compelling and yet often contemptible. Polidori is likable despite his pathos; he needed support and some good friends, even though he seems like he could have been a bottomless pit of emotional need.

But a fun part of this is the discussion of how not only had Mary given horror one of its most iconic characters, but also how Polidori had codified and defined the image of the vampire for generations to come. The Hooblers look at how Mary's life and circumstances may have shaped her writing of Frankenstein, and how her early politics and radicalism softened in later life...leading to a revision of her signature work that blunted some of its sharper edges.

It does have a few debits, including occasional conjectures not backed up by much documentation, and it ignores Mary's final work, a travelogue of Germany and Italy that included quite a bit of political and philosophical commentary that is now regarded by many as her second-best work. But I can forgive that given its focus on Frankenstein.

This is a quite enjoyable and informative peek into the lives of some influential people in the genre, and of a time of poetry and miniature portraits and long holidays by the lake and amateur scientific experimentation. If you're interested, get it and read it.

AYLMER VANCE: GHOST-SEER by Alice and Claude Askew

Wordsworth Editions has started a marvelous series of horror and mystery reprints, and I snapped a handful or two when I could, and am finally getting around to reading them now that I've getting settled in at the new place and adapting to a new normal.

Alice and Claude Askew were prolific writers of pulp fiction in the early part of the 20th century. A husband-and-wife team, they wrote a slew of works, and even had a few adapted for the stage and the silent screen. They were involved in support and relief for Serbians during WWI, operating in Serbia and Corfu. (For some reason I find Corfu impossibly exotic and enticing. I'll say it again. Corfu.) They died together in 1917 when a ship they were traveling on was sunk by a German torpedo.

This slender volume of short stories (only 127 pages) is a very nice example of the early 20th century occult detective genre.Some are built around supernatural menaces, and a few are more mystical in their outlook. The first tale, "The Invader," is a tale of possession, but the next, "The Stranger," tells a story of a woman who is apparently beloved of a pagan god and eventually rejects an earthly suitor to join her true love. (In that respect it's reminiscent of the preachy Dr. Tavener stories by Dion Fortune, only less preachy.)

"Lady Green-Sleeves" is an occultist love story with no real detection. "The Fire Unquenchable" tells of a series of mysterious fires and poltergeist activity ties into a deceased poet's unfinished work. "The Vampire" is a fun variation, mixing vampirism with possession. "The Boy of Blackstock" revolves around a haunting and an unhappy marriage. "The Indissoluble Bond" is more mystical in exploring a girl's bond to a man who may be her destruction. "The Fear" is a more straightforward tale of a destructive haunting.

The stories do follow a progression; the narrator, Dexter, moves from being an acquaintance hearing some stories, to Vance's partner in detection. And there's a thread in these stories that distresses me...a few times, the solution to a haunting is the complete razing and destruction of an old manor or castle, something that would have M. R. James screaming in horror. It made me blanch, that's for sure.

This entertaining collection can be purchased by itself in paperback by the aforementioned Wordsworth Editions, but you can also get an electronic edition from Ash-Tree Press that contains two other collection of occult detection, Rose Champion de Crespigny's Norton Vyse stories, and Kate & Hesketh Prichard's Flaxman Low stories. Take your pick with these.