Gorilla My Dreams

It's been a less-than-thrilling Halloween season for one reason or another. I couldn't decorate the yard early on because of the Big Clean-Out, and now with six days to go, there doesn't seem much point. I haven't been able to pig out on Halloween DVDs because I've felt it more important to spend my evenings working on making the house as comfortable as I can. (I've made some progress on that front, and am spending more time in the living room with the quats, listening to music and working on a scrapbook of the photos I took before the house was taken apart. This would not have been possible before). I haven't been able to read anything because I fall asleep after a sentence or two. And now my DVD player has died -- with one of my discs stuck inside. Anyone know how to pry open the jaws of a dead DVD player?

I did manage to squeeze in Fox's 1942 Dr. Renault's Secret last night. At just over an hour, there isn't much to squeeze. It's a creditable little B-picture that does what it sets out to do, though hamstrung a bit by its deep resemblance to the much more accomplished and more chilling Island of Lost Souls. J. Carroll Naish plays the secret of the  film's title, which makes him both one of the picture's strongest elements and one of its disappointments.

He excelled at playing sympathetic monsters (his hunchback in House of Frankenstein is another great example), and he clearly studied monkey mannerisms for this role. Which makes the secret much too obvious if you're at all familiar with this type of story. It's so obvious that I was hoping there would be an additional wrinkle. If I had been writing this thing, it would have involved the Bad Doctor's daughter. She's the hook that gets the hero involved in the story -- they are engaged to be married.

But -- there's no evidence that she actually has a mother. So I was really hoping that she was going to be the secret of the film's title, another of George Zucco's experiments, and rather a more successful one. I imagine a closing scene involving her and the hero on their wedding night, and a revelation that sends Mister Hero screaming out into the dark. But then I'm sick like that.

It wasn't until a year later that Universal made a girl into the monster for Captive Wild Woman -- another B picture that turns out to be better than it has any right to be. I mean, with a title like that one expects a rank exploitation movie. Instead, what you get is a bit of funhouse frippery that just wants you to think it's an exploitation movie. Oh, we do get to see John Carradine chowing down on the draperies. In fact, Captive Wild Woman may be the picture that inspired Woody Allen to cast him in Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex.

I just popped over to Wikipedia to make sure I was spelling Carradine's name correctly. He seems to have died exactly the same way my mother did.

That's neither here nor there. I have to get cracking! It will be a movie a night, every night, in order to get through all the "scary" stuff I have lined up by Halloween. Two more Abbott and Costellos, three more obscure chillers from Fox, and Something Wicked This Way Comes on Halloween night.

Where has the month gone? Never mind that, where has the year gone? Now, that's scary!

-- Freder.

The Power of Music

It's a big, old-fashioned, extravagant word, but it's useful for describing big, old-fashioned, extravagant emotions: the other night I was disconsolate. I was doing the evening dishes and weeping like a fool, feeling trapped, lonely and sorry for myself.

Then I heard a familiar voice that I had not heard in years. It was playful and flirty, with an edge of roughness to it.

I got a brand new pair of roller skates

You got a brand new key

I think that we should get together

And try them out you see

I been looking around awhile

You've got something for me

Oh, I got a brand new pair of roller skates

You got a brand new key

It was Melanie. I turned to look at the television and saw a baby in a stroller shooting through traffic at high speed: a telephone commercial.

My first thought was, Good on her! The old gal will get some money for that. I brushed my tears aside and turned back to the dishes, only this time my hips were swaying.

I asked your mother if you were at home

She said yes, but you weren't alone

Oh, sometimes I think that you're avoiding me

I'm okay alone but you've got something I need...

So many associations rose up from wherever we keep them when we're not using them. I remember buying my first Melanie album at a small department store in Wisconsin the summer that I rode with my grandmother and grandfather to Minnesota from Maine. We had traveled through Canada and stopped at Niagara Falls along the way.

Slowwwwly I turned -- step by step --

But I digress that's what associations do. Everything is connected.

I don't think I knew anything about Melanie when I bought the album (it was Gather Me -- a real good place to start); but I had seen them in the record club ads and I was curious. You'd never know that Melanie Safka was a New York City girl, born and bred; she wore what were known in those days as Peasant Dresses and cultivated the Whole Earth Mother image (the Whole Earth Catalog was another thing we had back then). I knew little about folk music and am not sure if I knew that was what I was getting into. The look was what intrigued me.

Gather Me is a great album by any standard and I was hooked. I spent most of that summer with my grandmother and grandfather (two more people I miss terribly). and spent a good chunk of it lying next to their stereo listening to one Melanie album after another.

I've been celebrating way too long

And I've been drinking I'm ashamed to tell

Still feel thirsty

God I want to drink the water from the well

Still feel thirsty

God I want to drink and Ring The Living Bell

Ring the bell, ah...

By that time Melanie Safka was well along in developing as a performer. In her early years her voice was a bit nasal and rough, and she fell into the same category as Dylan: more interesting as a songwriter than as a singer. She could belt out a wailing note, but she used that trick to excess, sometimes to the point of annoyance. But beginning with Good Book, her voice had mellowed some and her delivery was greatly improved in its range. She could still wail, but she could also coax and flirt, and when she sang sad songs it was with tenderness rather than overt weeping. With sophisticated arrangements by Roger Kellaway adding to the mix, Melanie had developed into something much more than just a hippie gal with a guitar.

I entered dancing

And looked for my partner

I thought the path could be a double road

You played my heart like a drum beating warning

Oh, I guess I'm gonna dance this one alone...

Several years later I remember shopping with that same grandmother at Porteous, Mitchell & Braun, in Portland, Maine. Once a great, old-fashioned department store (the closest thing Maine had to Dayton's in Minneapolis), Porteous was already suffering from a decline brought on by the opening of the Maine Mall, and you could see that decline in the store. But they still had a record department, and I remember the joy of finding a brand-new Melanie album there: Madrugada. Grandma bought it for me. With a great opening song and full-blooded covers of "Lover's Cross," "Pretty Boy Floyd" and "Wild Horses," it was a strong effort, if not quite to the standard of Gather Me or Stoneground Words.

I'm so tired

That I can't sleep

And I already read the Bible

Inner deep

The preacher keeps me on my knees

To wander and to travel

Her songs are often melancholy and reflective, which made me her perfect target audience. During the summers at the farm there were many days of daydreaming alone in my end of the house, with the stereo playing full blast, usually The Beatles or the Moody Blues or Melanie. I still have all the vinyl records, but my stereo system is Deeply Troubled, and I haven't played any of them in many, many years.

By 1976 Melanie had been without a recording contract for a few years. She had fallen out of fashion with the record companies, more than with her fans. Ahmet Ertigun (sp?) at Atlantic Records gave her a chance and her "comeback" album, Photograph, was released. The New York Times gave it a rave review, but it was not widely distributed. I remember finding my copy in the record store: one of those moments when you suck in a load of breath in excitement. That's one experience the internet has largely killed. The art of browsing, and the moment of pleasure when you make a find or a discovery.

Photograph is probably Melanie's best and most sophisticated album, with a powerful, stirring opening song, a reflective remake of her own "Nickel Song," and a pleasing range of autobiographical songs. It deserved a much wider audience. Instead, it was her first real step into obscurity.


By this time I was in my senior year of high school and about to make the worst decision of my life.

Too much singing for my living tonight

Do a song for friends and company

Too much is the matter with the giving on spite

Here's one for the giving, and the other for free

Here's a link to Melanie's web site. She appears to be keeping herself busy.


For my part, last night as I was once again doing up the evening dishes (and having a better time of it, for all the Melanie music going around in my head, plus the knowledge that I had just ordered up a couple of CD's online and will soon be able to listen to some old Melanie favorites once again), I realized that Ms. Safka even had a number in her songbook for my current crisis. All I had to do was change one word.

Look what they done to your song, Ma

Look what they done to your song.

You know they tied it up in a plastic bag

And they turned it upside down, Ma

Look what they done to your song.

-- Freder.

A pleasant surprise

Last night watched Dragonwyck, expecting to be asleep before the end of act one. I'd seen the first half hour once before, long ago, expecting it to get scary or at least interesting at any moment -- but it never did. The only reason I have it now is because it came as part of a cheap box set with Chandu the Magician. The latter is by far the more entertaining movie, yet Dragonwyck was the one that kept me awake.

Calling this a horror film is a gross marketing misstatement: it is a plain unvarnished gothic, and a mild one at that. But although the budget seems minimal, it is beautifully photographed and composed, with pale white faces shot against deep shadow, and sometimes the reverse. The writing is almost too subtle for its own good: some of the story material is touchy for the time period, and viewers are often left guessing until some cunningly placed line causes the lightbulb to go on.

Vicent Price is hardly known for under-playing any role, but here he gives a masterfully controlled and precise performance, whereas it's Gene Tierney who sometimes over-works the material. Walter Huston is quite good, but the actor who really runs with what she is given is Spring Byington as the faithful household retainer who is always ready with a comment that carries about six different layers of meaning. She knows how to use her eyes and voice in just the right way to imply much more than what she is actually saying.

A young Harry Morgan -- Col. Potter from M*A*S*H -- is in the picture, too, miscredited as "Henry Morgan," having a ball as an uppity tenant farmer who's mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.

Selfishness, murder, rising and falling in station, and disillusionment are the themes, played out in a cavernous manse that's run like a small  independent nation, much to the consternation of the little people. It did not hold my constant rapt attention, nor did it deserve to, but it is much more creditable than I remembered. Of course, the first time that I tried to watch it all those years ago, I was hoping for a monster with fang and claw. Now that I'm much older, I've realized that the worst monsters are often the ones who appear to have your best interests at heart.

-- Freder.

The Wolf in My Sister's Clothing

Sunday was my first opportunity to spend a whole day giving the house a good beating.

I vacuumed, swept, and scrubbed the floors in the living room and the kitchen, then vacuumed in the front room, front hall and office. Brought some things downstairs in a futile attempt to make the place more homey. I was actually feeling somewhat cheerful then, because at the time I still had ahead of me the definite prospect of moving on to a new place.

Given that I didn't believe I would live here much longer, I had made an offer to my sister and her husband. They are facing the reality of losing their home due to the mortgage he took out on the place when he built his "resort" (actually, it was a nudist colony which, predictably, failed in a big way. What kind of genius puts a nudist colony in an upper-central Maine farm field where half of the year it is freezing and the other half of the year the black flies hold sway?). Tony had built a little workshop near their house, and now he was at work expending it and turning it into something they could live in, but it will never be anything more than a shack.

I told them they could move in to my mother's house, rent free, for a time. In return, Tony could do a little work on the house, and everyone would benefit from that. Tony wanted to come over and look at the house. Claudia was going to stay away because she knows I hate her, but I needed her to come over and go through our mother's clothes to see if she wanted anything. The rest would go to Goodwill or Kenaset or the Salvation Army or someplace like that.

I was looking forward to seeing her reaction to the house, and the state that they had left the place in. I wanted her to see exactly what she'd made me do.

But I was disappointed. She walked through the door -- and didn't react at all.

Not an "Oh my Gosh!"

Not a "Wow!"

Not an "Oh, Mom."

Not even a widening of her eyes.

If anything, she looked satisfied.

Tony went into the upstairs rooms through the back (something that hasn't been possible in at least two decades), and I went into our mother's room to get Claudia started. Before she even looked at anything, she said "My husband won't let me wear anything Mickey Mouse."

It was a pointless comment as I'd already taken out all the Mickey tees and sweatshirts and nightshirts for myself.

I followed Tony and walked him through the place, pointing out some of the damage. When we were done he went to look at the place from the outside.

Claudia was pretending to look at my mothers coats.

She volunteered to help me move. I don't want her help. I don't even want her to know where I end up. I want to be done with her forever. There has to be one good thing to come out of this nightmare.

When they left she asked for a hug. There is no limit to her hypocrisy, and no shame attached to anything she does. Everything is somehow justified in her mind, even the most outrageous violations of faith, trust and personal property. I reluctantly allowed her to hug me, waiting all the while for the knife to slide between my shoulder blades. I didn't hug her back.

When I stepped back indoors I went straight to my mother's closets. I had made a point to taking anything of real value out before Claudia arrived, and of memorizing the way everything in there was laid out. All of the boxes of costume jewelry had been disturbed, both on the shelves and on the floor.

Claudia had not been going through the clothes at all. She'd been rifling the boxes, looking for valuable jewelry.

Mellowed with age...

Pandy Bear is fine, BTW.

In the old days, he might have disappeared for weeks and lost half his body weight. He had a peculiar split personality in that, when he was in the house, he was so people oriented and had to be sitting on your feet at all times; but when he got outside it was all "Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty -- I am free at last!"

Nowadays -- a night outside pretty much kills any interest in freedom he might have.

As I came down the next morning I could see through the window (and if you've been looking at the pictures of the Wonderland this house used to be, you'll know that's a monumental statement all by itself!) that Pandy was lounging on the front step.

Of course when I opened the door he immediately started to run off. But I've learned a thing or two in my old age and did not try to chase him.

Instead, I went out and sat on the ground and just called his name.

Eventually, with a lot  of coaxing, he took a step in my direction. Then another, and another. And then I had him.

He's become very vocal since the house was cleaned out. He never used to make a sound. Now he wanders through the empty rooms, yowling at the top of his lungs.

It's not their interesting, cozy home filled with hiding places any more. Even though I've made strides with the cleaning and arranging of what furniture I have, the place is still more like a mausoleum.

A New Life: FAIL!

There no longer seems to be much point in blogging about what happened in the days following the clean-out of my mother's home.


We found a beautiful two-story Victorian that I loved. No work needing to be done on it. A little large for me, but that's better than too small. My father swung in and started negotiating with the owner. He managed to get the price down and to carve out a deal that we all thought I could afford.


Then the lawyers got involved. All they had to do was draw up an agreement, but no -- they wanted to change this aspect and they wanted to change that aspect of it, and by the time they were done changing things, we had no deal.


So here I am in my mother's house, typing up exactly not the story I had hoped to be typing, and feeling like another rug has been yanked out from under me.


That house was the only thing I had to look forward to, the one bright light ahead of me.


My father and his wife leave tomorrow for Sedona, so they won't be able to help me with their advice, their knowledge of houses, or their negotiating skills -- none of which I possess.

I'm marooned.

The Somnambulist

The "pop culture blather" aspect of this blog has not happened lately -- and not only because I have so much else to write about.

I can't seem to stay awake for anything!

For three nights in a row I've tried to watch Fox's 1932 Chandu the Magician, featuring Bela Lugosi. It's a good movie. The parts of it directed by William Cameron Menzies are great. The parts of it directed by the French guy -- not so much. All three nights, I've conked out on it.

It took me two nights to get through Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man. It's a cute, fun movie. I'm still not sure how it came out.

My days have been so full in so many ways that I'm just too pooped to stay awake for anything. It doesn't help that since the house was taken apart, my kitties have been so emotionally needy that I get three (and sometimes four) piling onto me as soon as I sit down. There's nothing that brings on sleep faster than being blanketed by pussy cats.

About the only thing I've been able to stay awake for is my nightly episode of Dark Shadows -- and that only because it's short. Rather than continue on with the Leviathan storyline from later in the series run, which I find extremely dull, I decided to circle back and pick it up from the arrival of Barnabus Collins. This must have been arresting stuff when it first aired and you didn't already know that a hand was going to come out of that coffin... Jonathin Frid benefits from the fact that they prepared for Barnabus's arrival well before he actually appears for the first time.

The last movie I was able to get through in one sitting was The Witches. I always thought of this as a Jim Henson production -- had forgotten it was directed by Nick Roeg. Yet, if you've seen Don't Look Now and The Man Who Fell To Earth, it's obvious that Roeg's fingerprints are all over this.

The Witches is just a great lot of fun from beginning to end.  It's scary and funny and fanciful... and Angelica Huston creates a marvelous villainess, whose obvious sexual pleasure in turning boys into mice adds an uncomfortable Freudian element to the thing.

Tonight -- I'm going to get through Chandu. Really and for true! Of course it's shopping night so I will be running late all the way...

And I promise that my viewing fare will get more dignified once October is behind us.

-- Freder

"Borrrrrn Freeeeeee!"

Quats freaking out in an empty house. Compare with earlier photo of the same space.

By Tuesday night I was emotionally and physically exhausted. As I got up and set about getting ready for the auctioneer and his crew to arrive for their third day of stripping the house, I felt as if this had been going on for months, years. It felt endless.

The cats no longer fought to get out when I locked them away.

My father was the first to arrive. His wife was already out looking at houses with the real estate agent. It was a quarter to ten before the trucks started showing up.

They had left bins of things in the front room of the house. I volunteered to help carry them out, but I had only made two trips before I completely fell apart and had to go hide in the barn.

My father found me there and hugged me.

By lunchtime, my father's wife was back. Mr. J_____ invited us three to lunch at a little restaurant in Albion. I am sure that he wanted to regale us with more of his stories, but the entire lunch was co-opted by my father and his wife, and her report of the houses she had seen.

My father picked up the tab.

Sometime in the middle afternoon Mr. J______ stopped sorting items and entered the house. I believe he was determined that this was going to be the last day of his involvement. He went down the basement and all through the house, searching for value. He opened every door, including ones that were off limits. More on that later.

Among the things he found that he seemed to want were the boxes of my old shop stock from the Duck Soup days, ten or eleven big boxes full of comic books dating from 1982 and earlier. I couldn't believe that he really wanted them, but this part actually pleased me: I had been wondering how in hell I was going to get rid of the things. They will be auctioned off as a lot, included as part of the estate.

At some point I found myself in the front hall, looking into the study. My desk and everything on it were there, my computer was on its stand as normal, the sofa was against the wall. Everything else was gone. When they had taken down the painting over the fireplace, all of the plaster had come down with it and was piled up on the floor and mantelpiece. On the outside wall, a horrible amount of water damage had been exposed. The same was true in the living room. Plaster and paint chips everywhere.

When I looked up the stairs, I was shocked to see that Pandy Bear and Whitey were both out. They were starting down the stairs. The front door was open behind me.

I leaped forward at them and they split. Whitey ran back into the bedroom. I shut the door behind him. Pandy had gone off towards the bathroom. I ran down and slammed the front door shut.

When I went back to look for Pandy Bear, I saw that the doors that are usually closed, leading all the way through the back of the house, to the back stairway and the entry hall downstairs, were all standing open. No sign of Pandy Bear.

I ran down through the house and got to the back door just as Pandy was stepping outside. As I reached for him he took a fright of my action and what was happening in the yard, and ran off at high speed for a big fatty-bounce of a cat. He ducked into the bushes and dove into the hole that goes under the barn. He was gone.

I screamed at the workers. "Is there anything we can do to help, Doug?" Bill G___. said. What a stupid question. I went around the house calling for Pandy, but there was no sign of him.

When the day started to wind down, Mr. J____ walked me through the upstairs of the house, which was largely untouched. He said the beds and other furniture up there were not worth much of anything, maybe $50 - $150 a piece. His brother in law would be around in two or three weeks to remove them for his auction, but Mr. J______ advised me to keep them unless I was certain that I would not need them. They would not bring much at auction, and would be more expensive to replace.

He left. His crew finished packing. By five o'clock I was signing the final contracts, twelve or thirteen pages. The trucks drove off. All the grass in the yard was mashed down. The place was quiet and empty.

Pooky wandered through the house crying her head off, trying to absorb what had happened. Patches was totally cool and copacetic.

There was no time to look for Pandy Bear. My father and his wife had made a six o'clock appointment to look at houses.

This time, I drove myself. We picked up the agent -- Sue's husband Harold -- and drove to a house I had never seen before, in a good neighborhood. It was a plain white house with a screened porch for my kitties, sitting on a crazy knoll across the street from the Catholic Church. The garage was in poor condition, but inside it was nice, if on the small side. Very small, actually. I was conscious of feeling cramped even though it was unfurnished. The bedrooms upstairs were a little bigger than the closets in my mother's house. Not all the furniture that I retained would fit. Still, I could envision myself and the cats there. It would be a little on the cozy side, but it could be done. But that horrible carpet would have to come up. and the green paint in the kitchen would have to go.

Then we went up to the cute brown-shingled house that I had been looking at for so long. This was different. It was beautiful inside, and just the right size. I quite liked it. But the porch had a bounce and a droop in it and the screens were loose, and the house needed a lot of work: new shingles. Structural work. This did not phase me as much as it did my father. The deal breaker for me was the bathroom situation. There was just one bathroom in the whole place, and it was a horrible cramped thing, too small for me to fit a cat tray inside. It would be impossible to sustain five cats.

So it appeared the small white house was my only option, and I began to feel a little depressed at the thought.

We dropped off Harold, a very nice man, at his office and went up to MacDonald's for dinner. There we talked over the options, and they decided to come over to the house the next day to help me work on it. They said that they would investigate the Victorian that was For Sale By Owner on their way out.

The niceness and the helpfulness of everything they were doing for me actually made me feel uncomfortable. I drove home in full dark with such mixed emotions, not all of them sad.

There was no sign of Pandy Bear.