Halloween

I dressed up for Halloween this year. We had a huge crowd at my theater—over 200 people, thanks to the Tribune article I posted below. Thanks are due to Kris, who dressed as a witch; looked suspiciously like the protagonist of Dracula's Daughter, which was the second half of our double bill; and made popcorn for increasingly agitated patrons (because of the combination of small machine capacity and small kernels, it's impossible to keep up with the demand for popcorn, and people end up having to wait).

About My Favorite Theater

The Chicago Tribune ran a story about the theater where I work. It's a nice story, emphasizing the "well-kept secret" side of things. It quoted some regulars I probably know by sight but not by name; and Kenny, the nicest security guard in the world; but not me. Not that I mind. I'm enough of a celebrity as it is.

Three Punk Love Poems and a Song of Despair

Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, "Pirate Love" (from L.A.M.F., 1977). Johnny Thunders started out in the New York Dolls, the archetypal glam-rock band. When they broke up after being mismanaged by Malcolm McLaren (who became more famous managing the Sex Pistols), he floated around for a while until forming the Heartbreakers with former Television guitarist Richard Hell, who promptly quit when he discovered that his new bandmates were more interested in drinking and overdosing on drugs than in rehearsing. This album was dead upon release, partly because the record company folded, and partly because the original mix was atrocious. This is from a 1994 remix, three years after Thunders died of an overdose.

Dead Boys, "Flame Thrower Love" (from We Have Come for Your Children, 1978). The Dead Boys were one of the angrier New York punk bands of the late 1970s. They were pretty nihilistic; their debut album Young Loud and Snotty was filled with screeds about hate and abuse and anger, all delivered in frontman Stiv Bators's rasp. I don't have their second album: I got this song off a compilation. I'm told the second album isn't as good, but this song is pretty great. Stiv Bators was once stabbed in the chest by a mobster during an argument. He survived until 1990, when he was run over by a car in Paris.

Stiff Little Fingers, "Barbed Wire Love" (from Inflammable Material, 1979). Dubbed "The Irish Clash," Stiff Little Fingers were a really great punk band. On their first album, they sounded rather Clash-like: much straightforward punk rock with political messages, with the occasional reggae-influenced song and some oddball flourishes, like on this song. From a melodic beginning, the song goes downright Beach Boys, with admittedly raspy, doo-wop influenced harmonizing in the catchy break. I don't think anyone from this band has died.

The Psychedelic Furs, "Pretty in Pink" (from Talk Talk Talk, 1981). The John Hughes movie of the same title ruined the Psychedelic Furs, who had been one of the best post-punk/proto-New Wave bands around. Before Hughes, their sound was darker; keyboards added to the sound, instead of defining it. This version is the original. They rerecorded it for the 1986 soundtrack, taking the edge out, layering it with unimpressive keyboards, and sapping it of its darkness. These guys are all alive too.

(Post title adapted from Pablo Neruda's poetry collection Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair).

My Blog Is Worth Peanuts

More Things

Remember my "101 Things" list, the one that I was going to dole out a little at a time? It's been too long.

8. Sometimes when my favorite art historian is going to have her colleagues over, I artfully arrange my clutter of books and movies so that they can be impressed by the breadth of my interests. When the rock-star English prof with an interest in movies is coming, I "accidentally" lay out film books and interesting DVDs so they might catch her eye.

9. I just put all of my CDs on my new hard drive. I possess 6070 songs, which is approximately 15.5 days of music. Now I'm selling the CDs on ebay so that I can buy a good video camera.

10. I was caught shoplifting at a local five-and-dime when I was around 12. My punishment was a lecture by a police officer and one Saturday of working in the store. While I was working (mostly sweeping), my friends came in and asked what I was doing. I told them I had been given a job, and they were impressed. At the end of my "shift," the manager bought me lunch and ice cream. Who says crime doesn't pay?

11. Speaking of crime, I was once tracked home by police dogs. I was around 13, and my friend Duane and I walked through the woods in back of my house and came upon what looked like abandoned warehouses. We broke 97 windows in those warehouses. The following Monday, when I came home from school, my mother was waiting for me at the door. She informed me that the police had used dogs to track us back through the woods. The warehouses were apparently very much in use. I ended up with community service.

12. My community service was at the laundry in an elderly care facility. On my first day on the job, the smell and heat were so bad that I got sick, and the nice lady in charge sent me home. The following day, and each day that I had to be there, she let me sit in her office, watching television and folding sheets. She even brought me fast food for lunch. Then she would send me home early. She let me skip my last day. Who says crime doesn't pay?

Annoying Hipster Audience

I had an awful experience at a screening of one of the greatest films noirs ever made, Double Indemnity. It was at Doc Films at the University of Chicago, a film program that shows a wide variety of films. The film was great, as I remembered it, but the audience... The audience was filled—nay, infested with hipper-than-thou college kids.

Throughout the film, they laughed. Constantly. Admittedly, there are funny parts, which I think were intentionally funny. Combine the black humor of Billy Wilder with the hard-boiled dialog of co-screenwriter Raymond Chandler, working from a James M. Cain novel, and you have a recipe for some pretty dark humor. Especially funny are the first meeting between MacMurray and Stanwyck, and Edward G. Robinson's diatribe about how Dietrichson's death couldn't be suicide. I laughed along with them during those parts.

But these people laughed at everything: at the narration, at closeups, at musical cues, at just about all of the dialog. They laughed through the murder scene, which is so wonderful in the way the camera stays on Stanwyck's face. They laughed at the scene where Robinson becomes convinced that it was murder, and Stanwyck is hiding behind the door in the hallway (a door that had to be put on backward, opening out instead of in, so that Wilder could shoot the scene). They even laughed when MacMurray shot Stanwyck and laid her body on the couch.

You know the type. They greet the world with what they think of as ironic detachment. Everything is a joke to them. Every situation presents an opportunity for them to establish their intellectual superiority. They're incapable of meeting anything on its own level. Rather, they're incapable of letting anyone see them meeting anything on its own level. Individually, I'm sure that many of them would have enjoyed the movie in a manner respectful to the rest of the audience, but collectively, they had to put on a show for each other.