Mothers' Day 2014

Mom

The first year's worth of holidays after losing a loved one is not fun. Mom's passing last October was so close to the winter holidays, they seemed very surreal (especially spending Christmas in Florida). I'll be staying home this Christmas, mostly because I'm going to Las Vegas for Thanksgiving. Just the three of us going: Me, myself and I. No schedule while there (except the ticketed shows I'll be seeing); no agenda. Just some insane people-watching and the sights and food of Sin City. I can't wait.

Still, today has been the most difficult holiday, so far. Most of my friends spent the day with their Moms. I can't begrudge them that. I would have done the same, if I could. Picking out just an "Aunt" card for my father's dear sister was certainly tough, given the lack of them at the store. And not looking for several new books for Mom to read was even tougher. She was midway through the last book I bought her (for her birthday) when she passed. 

I think I've mentioned before that all my mother wanted to be was a mother. She wanted seven children, but ended up with just two. When my parents split up after 27 years, she picked herself up and reinvented herself as a savvy working woman, dating but never re-marrying. She even briefly entertained a hot Russian who was five years younger than I was. She settled down when her health started to fail in her late 50's, but she was kept active by her job and the few friends she had. But once she was forced to retire (the Cadillac dealer she worked for went out of business), she sort of gave up and I watched her steady decline with a very sad heart. When she went into the hospital for the last time, I still had hope she would pull through. I thought we'd have a few more years with her, at least. But it was not to be.

Mom loved kids and animals. She's feeding a lorakeet at the Lowry Park Zoo in Tampa in that picture, the last time we went to visit my sister together (I'm guessing 2009). A voracious reader, she often went through two or three novels a week; mostly thrillers and mysteries. The last book she finished was "Under the Dome" because she like the series. She loved "The Walking Dead;" "Falling Skies;" "Grey's Anatomy;" "Scandal;" "Mike and Molly" (a show I find terribly unfunny); "Rizzoli and Isles;" "The Closer"/"Major Crimes;" and "Castle" and she'd be really pissed if she knew she was missing the "24" mini-series. She couldn't spell if you held a gun to her head; she mangled pronunciations and was the Queen of Spoonerisms. She was quick to laugh at herself about it, too. She often got celebrity names confused (Morgan Freeman was always Morgan Fairchild) and while she said she never had a favorite movie, if forced to pick one, it would have been Doctor Zhivago. 

She taught my sister and I to cook and do laundry when we were young so we would never have to depend on her. Her cooking when we were kids was awesome, though she often admitted my marinara (based on hers), was better than hers (even though she didn't really like either version). She raised us to be kind to everyone and to not have prejudices. When I finally came out to her, she cried - not because I was gay (she already knew that) but because she thought I was afraid to tell her. She came to almost every show I was in or directed until it became physically too difficult for her to do so and was always supportive of my artistic endeavors. She could out-swear most truckers and occasionally let her own mother's prejudices sneak out, but never with real malice and never without an admonition from me.

It's only been seven months since she left us and I know it will be a long time before I'm really used to the fact that she's gone, but today was just a little bit harder. I miss her - a lot -  and am not ashamed to admit it.

If your Mom is still with you, I hope you at least called her today. If you and your Mom are estranged or if your Mom is also gone, I hope you got through today as painlessly as possible. 

Happy Mothers' Day, Mom. And Happy Mothers' Day to you and your mother, as well.

Comedian John Roberts (of the terrible "Bob's Burgers") nails the suburban mom on the head with his video "Mother's Day."* And while Mom wasn't nearly as whiny as Roberts, I can hear her voice in plenty of the things he says.

*The placement of the apostrophe in Mothers' Day causes tons of anxiety. I must insist that since it is a day for all mothers, it should come after the final 'S,' while there are those who insist on making it singular by placing the apostrophe before the 'S.' IMHO, punctuating it the latter way makes it about one mother only.  Bad form, indeed.

More, anon.
Prospero

Snow Day

Winter Storm Janus: Punishment for Christieism

I blame NJ Governor Chris Christie for Winter Storm Janus and the subsequent traffic snarl it caused yesterday afternoon, everywhere. If the fundies can blame me, then I get to blame some one, too. In truth though, the germ of the idea for this post came out of a Facebook status I posted last night, so forgive me if I'm repeating part of this. 

We all knew the storm was coming and the first tiny flakes started to fall yesterday morning just as I reached the last traffic-lighted intersection before arriving at the Day Job. At 11:00 I took my morning smoke break (yes, I know) and notice the plant across the way is closing, as cars begin to make a mass exodus from the lot. I came back to my desk to find an email from HR announcing we were closing at 1:00 (No lunch breaks, please). All well and good. The snow is light and easy to get off my car and I'm on my way by 1:12. It wouldn't be until 1:49 that I even got out of the town where the Day Job is located! The ride that normally takes 20 to 25 minutes and can sometimes take 40 to 50  minutes in bad weather, actually took me well over ninety minutes. And all because every other company along the I95 corridor closed at the same time and sent out millions of vehicles out onto snow-covered roads with hampered visibility. When I finally got home, after bitching about the weather and the traffic and the need to shovel, I sort gave in and resigned myself that this was happening and at least I'd gotten out early and would get a Snow Day out of it (an unusually high 2.5 this season). Which got me thinking about how I went from loving Snow Days as a kid to hating them as an adult. 

When Uncle P and his sister were kids, our Mom loved Snow Days, because it meant we got to stay home and she could play with us. We'd bundle up to go out and play in the snow; come in to warm up and dry out and have PB&Js and Campbell's Chicken Noodle soup and then go out for a another hour, until our faces were red and our noses runny. Then it was inside again where warm towels from the dryer waited for us wrap up in while leaning against the boiler's hot brick chimney. Then came hot cocoa and some sort of activity at the kitchen table. Colorforms; Shrinkey-Dinks; Spirograph; paint-by-numbers; coloring books and crayons; watercolors... always something creative to keep us busy until it was time for her to start making dinner in time for Dad to get home. 

Today, was not at all that kind of Snow Day. Sis's Sister-in-Law's son (say that three times, fast), who I've just started to get know and now refer to as my "Nephew-in-Law," came and shoveled me out today, and when I went to get money to pay him, he skipped. I texted him "No fair!" and he texted back "You're family!" Of course, when he helped me this past Monday to put the new battery in the car I'm trying to sell, I stuck a twenty in his pocket when his hands were busy and he had no choice. I'm going to make him some cookies or brownies or something. He's a good kid and I am appreciate my BIL and his family's (especially his sister and her son) kindness more and more, all the time. So, while I could have done any number of things today, including cleaning; painting; inventorying and purging the chest freezer (among others), I instead hibernated until after 10:30 and then vegged out on a "Tattoo Nightmares" marathon on Spike. And while I have 4 episodes of "Dracula" on my DVR, I'm not sure if I'm really willing to continue with the slow-moving plot that seems to have bogged it down the last few episodes I did see. 

So after dinner (the last of the chicken and hush puppies from Sunday) it was off to Netflix and the film version of a story I first read online: John Dies at the End. David Wong's online novel about time-travel; metaphysics; alternate universes; demons; mystical drugs and artificial intelligence (among other things) is transformed into a just-as-weird film by co-writer, director Don Coscarelli, creator of the equally weird Phantasm series. But this is also Coscarelli's homage to other genre directors with nods to Carpenter; Cronenberg and Raimi as told by Lovecraft. Produced by and co-starring Paul Giamatti, Coscarelli and David Wong worked on a script that both managed to connect some of the missing dots in Wong's novella, while maintaining its gonzo sensibilities. Add cuties Chase Williamson and Rob Mayes as leads Dave and John; genre fave Clancy Brown as a charismatic preacher/exorcist (he's so powerful, he can expel a demon over the phone); the often-used but rarely seen Doug Jones (Pan's Labyrinth; Hellboy); a cameo from Angus Scrimm (Phantasm's 'Tall Man') and loads of physical gross-outs and FX (plus an animated sequence that is both gross and hilarious) and you end up with a strange and often hilarious horror movie with two characters who deserve a sequel. *** (Three Out of Four Stars).

So, that was my Snow Day - some nostalgia; sleeping in; bad tattoos and a fun, weird horror movie I've been wanting to see that turned out to be actually pretty good. I may be too old for sledding and snow-forts, but you're never too old to appreciate a lazy day and then ramble on about it like anyone else really cares. 

Did you have a Snow Day today? What did you do or not do, today?

More, anon.
Prospero

More Sad News

The Funtown Pier in Seaside Heights, NJ

As if my beloved Seaside Heights hasn't seen in enough tragedy in the last few years...

As a kid, going to the shore meant a trip to Seaside Heights. Every Mother's Day we'd pile in the car (Mom; Dad; Grandmom B; Aunt E; my sister and I) and head down for a day on the boardwalk, playing the wheels and riding the rides; eating pizza, caramel corn and Khor's orange creme custards.

Our day always started at the south end and the Funtown Pier with it's magnificent old carousel in the Carousel Arcade. We'd play games of chance for stuffed animals (for us) and cigarettes (for Mom and Dad); ride the dark rides and eat at any number of very bad-for-you places. When we got to Casino Pier, where the bigger 'adult' rides were located, we'd have a few rides and then head back, playing more games and hitting the arcades for a few rounds of Skeeball and silliness. On the way home, we would stop at any number of farm stands ("The Dirty Lady" was a favorite) and buy fresh Jersey produce to consume after we got home. If we were very good, Grandmom B and Aunt E would take my sister and I down a few more times each summer, spoiling us rotten along the way. We always had a good time.

As I got older and managed to drive myself down, the somewhat seedy side of Seaside became more apparent, but it was always lots of fun. One time, my very dear college friend Mary and I went down in the mid-80's. We had to park fairly far from the boardwalk and walk through town, where we came across a couple of Italian-American New York girls walking across the street from us. They had very dark tans, tiny bikinis and enormous hair-dos. Mary and I tried not to gawk and giggle, but were caught staring by one of them who brazenly turned to us and shouted "Yeah! I'm a Guidette! What the f*ck!" It was all we could do to keep from breaking down in hysterics. 

Most recently, my dear Matty and I met there to celebrate my birthday, two years ago. Sadly, MTV's "The Jersey Shore" had left its dirty little imprint on the boardwalk, where nearly every shop, bar and restaurant had signs proclaiming "As seen on 'The Jersey Shore'" or "Snookie Sandwich Specials" or other equally distasteful references to the TV nadir. It made me a little sad to see my beloved Seaside sullied by the decidedly non-Jersey cast of low-lifes who had taken over. 

Then, last October, Superstorm Sandy devastated the region, sending Casino Pier's iconic 'Jet Star' coaster into the ocean and destroying much of the boardwalk. I was heartbroken. But the folks in Seaside fought back and rebuilt. The boardwalk was replaced and the piers rebuilt. I was hoping to go there next weekend and see what had become of my beloved childhood playground.

Today, though, a fire broke out in the Khor's stand at the south end of the boardwalk. High winds from an impending storm stoked the flames and at least six blocks of stores; restaurants; arcades and amusements were burnt to the ground. The Carousel Arcade and its historic carousel were destroyed, along with the Funtown Pier, as you can see in the photo above.

I am heartbroken again. And not just for the loss of those iconic places from my childhood, but for the people who depended on those businesses for their livelihoods. A rainy June and July combined with an unseasonably cool August had already left the resort town hurting. Today's fire just added insult to injury. And while I know that Seaside will rise from the ashes over the next few months. there are so many things and places that can never be fully replaced and Seaside will never be quite the place it was when Uncle P was a s child.

Such, I suppose, is the way of the world. But that's cold comfort when mourning the loss of something so deeply ingrained as part of my personal history.

More, anon.
Prospero

Daddy Issues

If you met my father or worked with him, you would have thought he was a pretty great guy. Often funny; fairly intelligent; somewhat handy and occasionally a good cook, my dad presented himself as a perfectly decent human being. 

Those of us who lived with him, knew better. A racist, anti-Semitic homophobe who was fascinated by Alexander the Great; Napoleon and Hitler, my father was actually quite a jerk. He cheated on my mother (who foolishly took him back after the first time he left her for the woman who gave birth to my half-brother) at least twice that I can confirm. His vacations were spent painting the house or doing other things that excluded the rest of the family and never took us anywhere for more than a day (and even then, only when he had free passes to wherever it was we went). Of course, I didn't realize what a jerk was when I was younger.

Truth be told, as a child, I idolized my dad. As most kids do. I have tons of happy memories spent with my father at the movies; at family cook-outs; on day trips to the Jersey Shore; learning to cook my grandmother's recipes... He instilled in me a love of classical music and certainly informed my sense of humor. He taught me about classic movies and introduced me to the Universal Monsters. He showed me how to build a perfect wood grill fire and attempted to teach me how to drive. He told lots of jokes and taught me accents which I use to this day.

As I got older and reached adolescence, it became clear that my father resented my mother, my sister and I. And although I never officially came out to him, once he realized I was gay, he shut me out completely. He often quoted Thoreau to me: "Most men lead lives of quiet desperation." He complained, "There are men exploring uncharted regions of the world while I am stuck here, paying bills and painting walls." And whose fault was that? As a young adolescent, he repeatedly reminded me that I had an acne problem (his face was heavily scarred from his own, much worse bought with it) and complained because I didn't participate in sports. He absolutely HATED the fact that I discovered Theatre and constantly berated me for not wanting to become a doctor, lawyer or some sort of executive at a boring, soul-crushing corporation.

Don't get me wrong. I loved my Dad. I loved him right up until the day he died from a neuroblastoma at the age of 59 in 1998, less than ten years after he left my mother for the second time and married a trashy, wealthy widow who dragged him to Las Vegas for the last five years of his life. That wedding was one of the unintentionally funniest events I have ever attended, though it's a story for another time. I loved him, but didn't like him very much at all.

Dad died alone, with no one from his real family nearby. Six months before he passed, we had a phone conversation in which he said "I love you" to me for the first time in my memory.

I was camping with my then boyfriend in Provincetown when he passed-away on July 5th, just three weeks shy of his 60th birthday. When Ric and I got home that afternoon, Mom told me he had passed and honestly, I felt nothing. Just like the gal in that number from A Chorus Line. And for the longest time, I felt guilty for feeling nothing. I mean, this was huge. My father had died. I should feel something, shouldn't I? 

After several weeks of legal wrangling (impeded by the meddlings of the aforementioned second wife), Dad's ashes were finally sent back East and we buried them along with his father mother in St. Stephan's Cemetery in Trenton, NJ. The ceremony was attended by myself, his sister and exactly five other people (one of whom was the funeral director). It was then that I finally realized that everyone else who had known my father knew what a jerk he was and that they had stayed away in droves. And while I have long ago forgiven him for being such a creep, every Fathers' Day I resent the fact that I don't get to share with everyone else who has or had a really great Dad. And then I realize that given the chance, I would have made a pretty great Dad, having learned so much from having such a jerk for a father.

I know I'm not alone in this. Plenty of folks have absolute monsters for fathers. He never beat us, or stole money to support a drug habit or killed anyone. He worked hard to support, feed and clothe his family. He just wasn't all that into it, I guess. 

I hope you have or had a better Dad, than mine. I'd like to imagine that given the opportunity, I would have been a better father than mine was. And I do have to thank my mother, whose kindness, compassion and love of Rock 'N Roll counterbalanced all of his negativity. I have no idea how or why she put up with him as long as she did. Without him, my sister and I wouldn't exist, so I have to give him credit for that, too. Still... I wish I had a Dad I would want to wish a Happy Fathers' Day. 

To all of the fathers reading this, please know how much you mean to your children. Love them no matter what. Don't give them reasons to hate or resent you. Make them want to be at your side on your deathbed and give them reasons to mourn your passing. They'll be all the better for it.

More, anon.
Prospero

If She Weighs the Same As a Duck...

"You shall bring us... a shrubbery!"

Uncle P's sister sent me this photo today. She visits as many cake sites as I do horror and movie sites, so I don't know where she found it.  It's probably the single most epic win cake of all time. Just look at it. The Black Knight; a Knight Who Says 'Ni;' the Killer Rabbit and the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch, all perfectly rendered in a cake I couldn't bear to eat, but just want to bask in its glory. This was NOT an inexpensive cake and I wish I had the money it cost just to pay some bills, let alone buy an insanely amazing custom cake. To be honest, she sent it in an email titled "awesome python cake." I was was actually expecting a picture of a snake cake. Imagine my delight at being so wrong.

But this post isn't really about cake. Nor is it about how my sister and I communicate, because she knew this particular cake, in conjunction with her recent guest post, would get me to a topic I don't think I've ever fully addressed: Monty Python Movies. Oh, I may have made passing comments or comparisons or minor references here and there. But I don't think I ever posted anything devoted solely to the British insaniacs and their influence on my personal take on life. But I'm going to talk about the movies, first. And one at a time, every now and then. Starting with favorite and ending with my least. And what better place to start with the group's first feature length film, Monty Python and the Holy Grail. 

Directed by the Terrys (Gilliam and Jones), and co-written by all six of them, Holy Grail is a brilliantly nonsensical take on the Arthurian legends, loaded with bad puns, repeating themes ("I'm not dead yet!") and preposterous situations in a world completely populated by morons, lunatics and cartoon monsters. Not everything works (the three-headed giant is kind of lame as is the movie's anti-climatic non-ending) but there is far more gold than pyrite in this movie and no matter how many times I've seen it or how many lines I can quote from it or how easily I can manage to work a quote into a conversation with either or both people who will get it and people who won't, it still makes me laugh like an idiot after more than 45 years. I think it's because, like Carroll, the six Pythons understood that not only was nonsense funny, it was even funnier when applied as satire.

Holy Grail covers the gamut of what every movie should include:

A Plague:



Religion:



Sex:



Logic:



"Who are you, that are so wise in the ways of science?" Genius!

Denial:



Arranged Marriage (and Musicals):



History:



(It's even funnier in Spanish!)

So many more moments and comments and quotable scenes. Too much to go on and on about. Proof that nonsense can be as funny to adults as it is to kids, especially when applied so pointedly satirical, Monty Python and the Holy Grail not only cemented the troupe's cult status (especially here in the U.S.*) but paved the way for more daring satire (if not always as successfully) in their future films.

If you don't know Python or (like many) think you hate Python, you may want to start with the Broadway Cast recording of "Spamalot," Eric Idle's musical adaptation. Yes, many things are very different from the movie and it's funnier of you know and love the movie but it's as gentle an intro to Python as you can get. Then watch Holy Grail.

Of course, the movie is also one of several very special shared movie experiences for Sis and I. And to some extent, Dad (who swears that at the matinee he attended alone, a very confused old lady got up and left after the first twenty minutes). One of the many things that bond my sister and I so closely are the movies we saw together as kids. I like to think I taught her how to watch movies. I know she helped me to remember how do that and still enjoy them. That and the fact that she loves nonsense as much as I do, helps.

*I know plenty of Brits who don't get Python or our obsession for them. Their loss.

More, anon. 

Prospero