Month / December 2003

by DrMabuse

Beyond the Pale

Maud’s posted a great little ditty on pallor. But I must assure Ms. Newton that she don’t have jack on my albino ass. For years, I was terrified of wearing shorts. I wore T-shirts to apartment complex swimming pools, and I resented the fact that, no matter how powerful the sunblock, I’d return home with ruddy, blistered flesh. Beyond this brutal reddening, I was hopelessly etiolated.

P.E. was always the toughest period to get through. Beyond my scrawny, clumsy self being among the last selected when softball or basketball teams were established on brutal Lamarckian terms, I was subjected to merciless ridicule about my skin that all seems quite silly now. I was terrified of changing out of the school-sanctioned T-shirt and shorts, back into my regular threads. And no matter how silent I remained, the jocks and their jocose acolytes berated me without letup. I was called ghost, freaky, whitey, paleface.

The turning point came, oddly enough, with the Goth movement. I was never into Peter Murphy or those other silly, angst-ridden singers. But the Goth girls would come up to me and say, “You are so Goth.” At first, I thought they were referring to a towering spire that had somehow affixed itself to my back. But it soon became apparent to me that these young vixens, with their colored hair, tenebrous deportment, and passionate piercings, intended to compliment me.

When I moved to the City, the weather certainly worked to my advantage. But since the unspoken policy here was to accept everyone, eventually I had no problems wearing shorts on rare sunny days. I had no problem at all being Mr. Paleface.

They may be honest in Brooklyn, but I’m convinced that some people aren’t meant to turn tawny. And that’s a good thing. I’m also convinced that healthy pallor is one of the most underrated attributes of beauty. Particularly in a lady.

by DrMabuse

I’ve Got the Power

Last night’s planned baking extravaganza went awry. The situation was perhaps best described by today’s Chronicle in a remarkably redundant headline: Blackout puts S.F. in the dark. Personally, I’ve always wondered if a blackout could bathe a city in light. And, last night, it did in spurts. Flashlights, headlights, candles, and small halogen lamps replaced cruddy fluorescents. There was a rustic silence in the air. Who knew that so many things turned on, locked behind multi-unit buildings and overlocked doors and Victorian facades, created such a subtle din? It was nice to walk the streets, wandering around my neighborhood, looking at my life and surroundings without clutter.

From my own building, an anemic “Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee” seethed from the dark newels and balustrades. But it didn’t stop hands from groping in the dark. I became unexpectedly acquainted with my neighbor’s breast, and apologized for this unique, quite accidental housewarming. The sound lost its fresh Duracell perfect pitch quite quickly. This electronic vowel wavered, crumbling with the concealed security systems. It died in the dead of morning.

Phones were denied their electric juice. I was grateful to have a charged cell phone, if only for the dim LCD display functioning as a temporary candle. Humanity’s move to cordless had sucked the life of urban telephony dry. But I did hear one pleasant sound as I walked the streets. From a window, an old-school phone rang, the stark analog bell reminding me of those pleasant chimes we had forsaken long ago. There was purity in that sound, and I missed it. But progress was irrevocable. The phone went unanswered.

While mom-and-pop corner stores locked and chained their doors, Albertson’s stayed open, evincing the mantra, “We Never Close.” A backup power generator fueled a few registers. The overhead lights flickered. People smiled and couples bought bottles of wine, preparing to drink naked beneath undulating counterpanes. I was able to use my ATM card to buy candles, but I felt like I was cheating at a board game. But I wasn’t as ungainly as one young whipper-snapper, who hoped to get his pictures developed at the one hour photo machine. At first, I thought he was joking. And so did the helpful lady behind the counter. When he responded with “Thanks for the sarcasm,” this clerk and I laughed our asses off. Some people fail to understand that human beings once lived for centuries by candlelight. Why pictures now? What pressing priority did this young man have?

Perhaps it reflected the quiet desperation in the air. With routine disrupted, I saw many people standing around, at a loss with how to expend their time. Some sat in stairwells, smoking cigarettes, drinking from bottles, talking, flashing lights at strangers, counting flowers on the wall. Some walked their dogs. Some soothed little ones. Others shined powerful rays out their windows, perched solitary on sills. What to do without the blue orbs reporting “reality?” What to say when they set their minds on silence?

Predictably, the bars were packed. Dipsomaniacs forewent their whiskey-and-cokes and downed straight Jack. Aside from the attached and the hard-line alkies, there weren’t a lot of women. The shuffling shadows kept them indoors, wondering when the power would be restored.

Eventually, I headed home. When I woke up at the crack of dawn, I heard my computer humming. The monsters weren’t due on Maple Street, but I sure as hell missed the silence.

by DrMabuse

Who the Hell is Emeril?

While trying to score some bakeware this afternoon, I ran smack dab into a huge display that read “Emeril.” Physically, I was unharmed. Emotionally, however, I was quite devastated. “Emeril,” you see, was photographed with his arms outstretched on the various boxes. I did a quick search on the Internet and found the following photos:

emeril2.jpgemeril1.jpgemeril3.jpg

There doesn’t appear to be a single photograph of this man with his arms close to his body.

Can someone tell me who this Emeril guy is? I don’t have cable television. I’m completely in the dark about his show. But what I do know is that it’s morally wrong to photograph a chef as if he just dismounted from a high beam. It does not, shall we say, inspire others to have fun in the kitchen.

To be perfectly frank, I’m alarmed by this man. His arms are so long that I wonder if they’re mechanical enhancements. While one can look into Emeril’s face and see that he’s just a giddy, harmless bastard, what of the moral costs?

All I needed was an extra baking sheet. Instead, the Emeril display had me sobbing like an infant.

by DrMabuse

Bad Santa

Like everyone, the Muthafu’in Holidays have kept me so perplexed that I’m dropping key letters from colorful adjectives and creating nonsense. Expect something coherent again on Monday. In the meantime, why not try some of the many fine establishments on the left?

by DrMabuse

___________ of the ___________

Well, now that I’ve seen It (It being a high-profile film release that will make many people rich this week alone), I must confess that I’m a bit disappointed. Not outright hostile towards the film, not hating it, but decidedly underwhelmed and, if it can be believed, even more ill-disposed towards the source material than I was before. The last twenty minutes of It featured more anticlimaxes than I had seen in five years of summer blockbusters. Even the effects played out like cut scenes from a crudely rendered computer game. (Here’s a tip to the boys in the editing room: When you cut directly from an overhead shot that is clearly computer-generated to a medium angle that involves real people on real horses, it sort of hinders the illusion. Also, things like rain and night, and actual build-up, help disguise visual blunders and work to your advantage, as they did so well in the Helm’s Deep battle from the last film.)

Loved the trolls, loved Howard Shore’s score (Wagner-like, the best of the three), loved the opening Smeagl-Deagol moment (and nearly every moment with Gollum). But the problem with It is utterly clear: These characters have no flaws. They are not nasty or mischevious in any way, unless frat boy nips in the weed count as intelligent behavior. (Even Indiana Jones was sardonic enough to blow away a swordsman with a gun. Even Superman sacrificed his powers for the woman he loved. Even John McClane had to pick out shards of glass from his feet. Even Luke Skywalker confronted his father to clear up a complicated domestic situation. You see where I’m going with this?) They are people wandering around a beautiful landscape, getting involved with battles, and there is every assurance that they will come back from the wars unscathed. Despite the fact that everyone else around them has been flung about by elephant-looking things.

Amused? On some basic adolescent level, yes. Will I see it again? Maybe the Extended Edition. But ultimately I’ve now come to terms with the sad reality that character no longer means a thing in an action movie. And that’s a pity.

On a somewhat related note, Tom has some thoughts on moviegoing. I must say that one of the best moviegoing experiences I ever had was seeing Rear Window at the Castro. Despite the fact that nearly everyone there had seen the movie, they remained on the edge of their seats. The oohs and aahs of Hitchcock’s suspense rippled through the crowd like magic. Years later, the film had lost none of its power to thrill.