Slashing Sweeney Todd

Well, the web seems inundated with reviews of Tim Burton's film version of Sweeney Todd, some smart, many stupid. A friend in NYC said a bunch of goth kids came into the bookstore where he works and they'd just seen Sweeney. When they heard that the original Mrs. Lovett was created by Angela Lansbury the darling goth tykes responded, "Eeeww! That dumpy old woman! Was she the best they could get?"

Kinda makes a fella wanna move to France. . .

The original Stephen Sondheim Sweeney Todd opened in 1979 and it was my very first Broadway show. I got my chance to see it on a family trip to NYC when I was sixteen. It was only a couple months after Sweeney had opened and it still had the original cast of Len Cariou, Angela Lansbury, and Victor Garber. It really was extraordinary.

I have seen most of the important Sweeneys since: the New York City Opera version circa 1987 with Timothy Nolen and Joyce Castle, the 1989 Circle in the Square Broadway revival with Bob Gunton and Beth Fowler, the 2005 Broadway revival with Michael Cerveris and Patti Lupone. And the video version of the Lupone/Hearn SWEENEY concert, and of course the Lansbury/Hearn video. Heck, I've even seen the old black and white non-musical British film The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1936), starring the amusingly named Tod Slaughter. I also designed a large-scale production of Sweeney for Skylight Opera in Milwaukee in 1997. Click Here for Pics and Blog.

Ok, now that my throat-slitting creds are established ...

I saw Burton's Sweeney on opening day and found it very enjoyable for the most part. I think it is probably Burton's best film since Ed Wood. I really wanted to like it and at the time I managed to convince myself that I did. I thought it looked really good. The smog-choked London of the 1840s was made quite real. Johnny Depp is certainly the right age and has the intensity to play Sweeney well, as does Helena Boham Carter to play Mrs. Lovett.

Burton has heavily cut the score for some unfathomable reason. At first I thought it was due to length, but on checking running times I found Burton's film runs about fifteen minutes LONGER than the full-length stage version does. Perhaps Burton truly wasn't up to directing a musical. I understand the reason for cutting the "Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd" chorus parts. They are a theatrical conceit, and a stronger opening could be created for the film without it. But omitting the Act I quartet is bizarre. It's crucial to the development of the score. And paring down "A Little Priest" makes it seem like Burton simply didn't know what to do with the song. Or perhaps Depp and Bonham Carter simply weren't putting it over.

Spoiler Warning!

In the film Depp's and Bonham Carter's voices seemed fine. But as I've listened to the soundtrack since, they both sound very tentative and like they are at an early read-thru of the score. There is just not enough character in their singing, especially Bonham Carter's. In her opening number, "The Worst Pies in London," she should be chewing the hell out of the song - yet it has so little energy, it is so flat. Somehow Burton has stripped all of the comedy from the song. It needs to be lived and felt and made spontaneous. Mrs. Lovett is a very poor woman trying to get by selling meat-pies. She is supposed to be delighted that Todd--"A customer!!"--has just walked in the door. Instead, Bonham Carter gives us a Mrs. Lovett that is so underplayed it becomes confusing. On the one hand she should be trying to make a schilling by selling Todd a pie and on the other she wants empathy as she admits her pies are disgusting and gross. This slightly schizophrenic point-of-view is essential to Mrs. Lovett's character. It is what enables her to rationalize her way into serving cadavers as entrées. This multi-dimensional quality is largely missing from Bonham Carter's performance. And to top it off, the lyrics are simply hard to hear and understand.

Alan Rickman makes a wonderful Judge Turpin. Indeed, he would have made a great Sweeney. Sascha Baron Cohen (and his manhood) ably play Adolpho Pirelli. Though again a comedic moment goes for naught when Cohen switches from his over-the-top Italian accent to his Irish accent. Why is nothing funny in this movie? Jamie Campbell Bower sings beautifully as Anthony the young sailor, but he looks so pretty and girlish that it's hard to believe he serves any purpose on a ship other than butt-boy to all the "real" sailors, and it seems more likely Johanna should be rescuing him.

Burton made an interesting choice in the casting Ed Sanders as Tobias Ragg. Toby is most often played as a rather dim-witted young man/teenager. Burton cast a little kid who comes across as about eight years old. He has a lovely voice and makes "Nothing's gonna harm you" sound really wonderful. This is no reflection on Sanders abilities, but a kid that age simply can't act well enough to carry his weight in the drama. An genuinely little child has no real chance of "protecting" Mrs. Lovett from harm; and in the final scene when Toby is exposed to the horrors of the bake-house and meat grinder we need to hear a cry of terror and pain that makes our blood grow cold. Young Mr. Sanders just yells, "Mrs. Lovett, let me out," like maybe he has to go to the bathroom really bad.

You may have guessed that I am not a big Tim Burton fan. I think he has a wonderful imagination and a strong personal style, but I have always felt he needed to be more tightly reigned in, that his ideas were too often brilliant first drafts that were never refined enough or thought through, that often his ideas were simply there because they were "cool" and if they made hash of the story-telling or characterizations, it seems Burton thinks, "Who cares, it's cool"! Here are a few of the most disturbing "Burtonisms" in the film:

The Opening Credits

It seems hard to believe that Burton will blow his wad in the opening credits by showing the audience the barber chair, the chute, and the meat grinder full of body parts. A good story teller would make the audience wait and build up the suspense. Why enact the plot in mediocre CGI animation before the film has even started?

The Tower Bridge

Moments into the film Sweeney goes sailing down the Thames under the Tower Bridge. The film appears to be set circa 1840, but the Tower Bridge wasn't built until 1894, some fifty plus years after the film takes place. Whether this was Burton's idea, or Production Designer Dante Ferretti's, it was a stupid mistake and makes both men look unprofessional. I have seen several other blogs online talking about this goof and a number of people seem to argue back: "But it's a musical! Since when does a musical have to be accurate? People don't sing in the streets either!!"

Well, that's not the point. It's bad because I wanted to be paying attention to the story and music and not be jarred out of my seat by architectural anachronisms. I don't want to see the Eiffel Tower on a backdrop for Les Miz either! Science Fiction films don't HAVE to be historically accurate, but if Peter Jackson had put the World Trade Center in his 1933 period-correct KING KONG because he thought it looked cool - well, it would have been stupid!

Passing Sentence and Key-hole peeking

To show the quality of Judge Turpin's character there is a scene where the Judge passes a sentence to "Hang by the neck until you are dead" on some poor prisoner in the dock who has committed a petty crime. In the show it's a young man and the severity of the sentence to the crime is considered sufficient to show the Judge's character. Burton ends the scene by pulling back to show the condemned prisoner is a little kid, possibly six years old, weeping hysterically. Ahh, subtlety.... In another scene the Judge watches Johanna through a secret peek-hole. It's in the original show, it's creepy, and helps define character. Yet for some odd reason Burton explicitly has Judge Turpin watch Johanna sitting in her window, engaging with the sailor and throwing a key to him. Yet later on when Judge Turpin hears Johanna has made these plans he seems to have no idea he watched it all himself earlier that day. The scene could have been solved by having the Judge simply quit peeking before Johanna throws the key. Go figure.

Little Bald Boys

Casting little kid Ed Sanders as Toby seems like a good idea when he's singing. But his big solo number is about his job selling a hair growing tonic and how he went from being completely bald to having a full head of hair. Hmmm .... I don't know many bald little boys, do you? It makes no sense.

The Meat Grinder

Mrs. Lovett's meat grinder is so over the top it seems ridiculous. It stands about seven feet high with an opening many feet across. Why? Where did she get a several ton cast-iron meat grinder? Huh? Also, Burton as usual must throw subtlety to the winds. In the show Toby finds some hair and then a fingernail in a meat pie, he puts two and two together, and figures out what's going on in the horrific bakehouse. In Burton's scene Toby finds a whole finger. It's just crass and doesn't allow the audience to make the journey and see the horror grow as Toby figures it out.

End Credit Music

The film ends with a bloody tableaux of Sweeney holding Lucy, both dead and bloody. Then the credits roll and we get an unimaginative jumble of music from the film. This would have been such a perfect place to hear "Attend the Tale of Sweeney Todd." At the end of the credits Depp and Bonham Carter could even have risen from the dead, like they do in the show, for a post credit "Gotcha!"

It isn't a bad film. I will certainly buy the DVD. But it could have been so much better. Burton doesn't seem to understand that the comedic moments are there to let the audience catch their breath, to relax the audience, so he can scare them all over again. Sweeney needed to be a roller coaster ride of giggly gruesome humor and stark terror. Burton's Sweeney is very one-note. Burton has put his imagination into everything from the little bald boy to the six-ton meat grinder. It's in the CGI smog-filled London and the cockroaches in the pie shop. It's in the squirting blood and in the whole finger that Toby finds in his pie.

But here, perhaps, is the rub ... Burton's vision is so "imaginative" that nothing is left to the audience's imagination, and it's a shame Burton doesn't understand that that's where true horror lies.

Copyright © 2008 D. H. Maxine

Click! Click! Click!

I watched a lot of television when I was a kid. In addition to the usual suspects like The Brady Bunch, Gilligan's Island, and Bewitched, I was especially drawn to That Girl starring Marlo Thomas.

This may have been partly due to the story-line echoing my Mom's life before she married my Dad and I was born. That Girl ran on ABC from 1966 to 1971. It was the story of Ann Marie, a young woman who has moved to New York City to be an actress. In the mid-1940s my Mom had moved to New York for the same reason. So Mom could tell me stories about living in New York, eating at the Automat, the subway, Central Park, Summer stock, dating, roommates, having pre-marital sex, all the things one does when one runs away to New York City to be in the theatre. Indeed, I did much the same stuff when I went to New York to do theatre in the late 1980s.

That Girl also shot a lot of location footage in NYC, so each episode was story-fodder for Mom. In the last couple years That Girl has finally been coming out on DVD. And since I had pretty much not seen it since the mid 1970s, I have been buying and rewatching it. It holds up quite well, the writing isn't bad, the cinematography is especially good, and the production and costume design is great! It truly is a little time capsule of fashion and fun circa late 1960s.

On rewatching the series I encountered a two part episode called "It's a Mod Mod World!" in which Ann gets a job as a fashion model after being discovered eating that old actor's treat, ketchup-and-hot-water soup, at the Automat. I had not particularly remembered this episode until I resaw it. But it immediately brought back a torrent of nostalgic glee. Because back in the summer of 1970 it set my little mind to working and got me all fired up to join the world of fashion. Mod Squad, move over! I got out my Instamatic camera, corralled my three-year-old sister, and decided that I simply MUST do a fashion shoot!

Now, of course I had much empathy with Marlo Thomas and her character Anne Marie. And perhaps deep down I wanted to be an actress, model, fashion-plate. Perhaps I still do! Yet this being 1970, me being seven years old, and my not being able to both click the camera and do drag at the same time—I enlisted my little sister.

I set up my photo-shoot in front of the sliding glass doors that led from the living room to the dining room (they looked sort of like store windows to me). I asked my sister to go put on her best dress, or as my grandmother called it, her "Sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes. And we were ready. I demonstrated the classy poses Marlo Thomas had used. A look of coy surprise! Click! Hands up and out so as not to cover the dress! Click! A big smile! Click! Sell it, sister, sell it! Click!

And then one has to take the film to the Skaggs Drugstore to be developed and wait and wait and wait. But eventually they were developed and I was the Fashionista of the Second Grade. No digital, no Polaroid, just a Kodak Instamatic, a box of blue flash-cubes, my three-year-old sister, and me.

Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine. All rights reserved.

Food for Thought

These days I do not make a habit of giving thanks to imaginary deities.

When I was four my grandmother came to live with us and she always said "Grace" before eating. This was something my parents did not do. My grandmother explained it as thanking God for the food we had been given.
I pondered this for a time.

When we moved to Albuquerque when I was three-and-a-half we had very little money. Mom was starting on her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico. Dad didn't have a job yet since the move, and we were dirt poor. The state did not give out Food Stamps to the hungry back in the mid-'60s. They gave people food. We went down to the "food place" and they stocked us up.

This was not a "food-bank" as one might know them today. It was all food packaged by the State or Feds. So no name-brand foods, and no processed "junk food" either.

On that Fall day in 1966 the state of New Mexico gave us something like the following:

10 pounds of flour
5 pounds of sugar
10 pounds of Pinto Beans
5 pounds of lard
4 cans of some meat-product called "Bulgar"
A large container of Peanut Butter

This was supposed to last us a month. Next month we'd get another batch of the same. One should remember that this was Albuquerque and the vast majority of the poor were Hispanic. Also, most people still cooked at home. Pinto beans were a nutritious staple. The flour and lard were meant for making tortillas.

But what was our family going to do with all this flour, sugar, lard, etc that we had? My dad learned to bake!

All of a sudden the house was filled with the smell of yeast and baking bread. We now ate fresh homemade bread every day. We had Cinnamon Rolls. Dad even came up with a use for all the lard. He made doughnuts! There is nothing on earth quite so wonderful as homemade, lard-fried doughnuts!

Dad eventually got a job with the Microbiology Lab at the County Medical Center. But he baked bread and rolls and cookies for the rest of his life. Later that year we moved into a bigger house and my grandmother came to live with us. This helped with the rent, and my parents decideded to adopt a little sister for me.

So, as I mentioned above, my grandmother had explained "Grace" as thanking God for the food we had been given. Ever a smart little boy, I finally asked, "If we thank god for the food we have, do we blame him when there isn't any food?"

My dear grandmother had no answer for that.

Today I am thankful to loving parents (now gone), a wonderful boyfriend, a slightly-deaf Boston Terrier, and the 1960s government of the State of New Mexico who gave us so much flour and sugar and shortening that my dad had to learn to bake bread. Now I do the baking of bread.

My Father, who art in the kitchen ...

David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will - be kind.
Copyright 2007 D. H. Maxine.

If I Were a Gay Man, Ya ha deedle deedle, bubba bubba deedle deedle dum!

The following blog is VAGUELY EXPLICIT!
If you are uncomfortable reading about a summer romp between two men - well, skip this blog.
Another one will be along in a little while.

---

SUMMER 1986

At this point in time I had been out for a little over a year - and been a non-virgin for about nine months. Happy little gay boy, la la la la la.  A good friend was stage managing a summer stock season in the midwest somewhere. The last show of the season was FIDDLER ON THE ROOF and she asked if I could come down and serve as an additional ASM (Assistant Stage Manager.) It was a big show, and the actual theater was a thrust-type stage with audience on three sides. My friend begged. She said she REALLY needed two ASMs backstage. Ever the genial fellow, I obliged.

When I got down there, all was good and the other ASM was nice. He was in his mid-20s, kind of cute, Jewish, had a moustache, and he was engaged to be married two weeks after FIDDLER closed. Oh, yes, ASM (as I'll call him from here on) was the only Jew involved in the production, on stage or off! It was basically the "Viking production" - starring Leif Erickson as Tevye! Oy!

Tech period went fine - except that I was nearly killed by a dry-ice fog machine. But the show duly opened to thundering applause. The opening night party was held at a beautiful home on a lake. We were tired, happy the show was open. We could now relax, do five shows on the next couple weekends, and otherwise have fun.

Well, after a few drinks the other ASM and I were sitting on a staircase drinking gin-and-tonics and he starts asking me about my coming out, what it was like, hadn't I ever been attracted to girls (No!), and other typical questions.

Then he says, "Would you?"

"Would I what?"

"You know! Would YOU . . . ?"

"Would I what?" I repeat.

He seems VERY uncomfortable! "You're really gonna make me ask this, arent you?"

"What are you talking about!" I ask, utterly baffled.

"Will you . . . have sex with me?"

Now, this is a spit-take moment if ever there was one! I recover myself and say, "Aren't you supposed to get married in two weeks?"

He explains that he is getting married, he loves his fiancee very much, but he's always thought he'd like to try sex with a guy just once. And this seems like his only chance before he gets married.

What we have here is an ethical dilemma  . . .

Is it wrong to have sex with a straight boy who is engaged to be married in two weeks?
Am I doing him (and his future wife) a favor by helping get this out of his system? 
If I say "No," am I denying him the chance to discover he REALLY is gay, and that he should call off the wedding before he messes up his and his future wife's lives?

Big inhalation of air . . . "So, you really want to do this? You're really serious?" I ask.

He stands up, takes me by the hand, and says, "Let's go!"

He takes me out to his car. We get in and he asks, "Where should we go?"

"Look, ASM, this was YOUR idea! Where do YOU want to go? Why don't we just go back to the Techie House?"

He explains that we can't do that, someone might get suspicious or figure out what was going on, or something.

I think, "Silly boy! Who cares! We're theater people!" We're still sitting in the car pondering locales and I put my hand on his upper leg and . . .

"Oh my God!" he says. "You're actually doing it!"

Now I'm TOTALLY confused. I ask, "If you don't want me to touch your leg through your pants, how are we gonna have, ummm . . . sex? Any time you want to stop, just say so. This was YOUR idea."

"I know where to go!" he beams and starts the car. I leave my hand on his leg and his breath corresponds to my hand as it moves higher up, onto his lap, and into the warm space between his jean-covered thighs.

He parks the car across the street from the theater.

"The theater!" I say. "You want to do it at the theater?"

"I have the only set of keys!" He smiles.

We go inside. He's REALLY nervous and sits down on the vinyl-covered couch in the Green Room. "Do you really want to do this?" I ask again.

"Yes! Stop asking that!"

I kiss him on the lips. He closes his eyes and kisses back, really well, too. We break apart for air. "Whoa! I've never kissed a guy before," he says. "It's different. It's rougher."

"Well, I've never kissed a moustache before; and THAT's what's rougher!" I make a face, and we go back to kissing.

"I don't like it here," he says. "This couch doesn't feel right. I want a bed. Come with me!"

He takes me by the hand and I wonder where he's taking me this time! I see, and smile; and know I've got a fabulous story for the future. In the corner backstage, under the blue running-lights, is Tevye and Golde's bed from the "Dream" sequence in Act One. We jump into the wacky-looking bed, strip off our clothes, and go at it: kissing, touching, rubbing, getting sticky.

Before we finish, I have a vision that as we orgasm a bunch of gay ghosts are gonna appear at the head and foot of the bed, crawl out from underneath, and after a lovely harp glissando they will all break into a chorus of A blessing on your house! Mazel tov! mazel tov! And I pray that the spirit of the fiancee won't appear to curse me for coming all over her future husband.

The next day we had two shows and ASM barely mentioned our one night of love. Sunday we had the afternoon off and the production staff went to the nearby lake and I learned to water ski.

After the Sunday night performance ASM volunteered to lock-up. He asked me to stay behind and help. When everyone else was gone he asked me to come out on the stage with him. He'd turned on all the work lights so the stage was very bright.

"What?" I asked, following him out to the middle of the stage.

"Stay right there," he said positioning me dead center front on the thrust stage. He jumped off the front of the stage, crossed the shallow orchestra pit, and climbed out into the auditorium. He sat down fifth row center, smiled, and said, "Strip!"

Well, as I said at the beginning of this blog, I am a genial fellow, and I obliged. It was one of the hottest, sexiest things I've ever done, too. After I was properly unclothed we switched positions. I went out into the audience and he hopped onstage and stripped.

Let me entertain you, indeed!

Over the next ten days we did just about everything you can imagine. He didn't feel up to being topped - he thought I was too big. Silly boy! But pretty much everything else was tried at least once!

When the show closed he departed for home to prepare for his impending marriage. I never heard from him again and have no idea if he married the girl or not. That was twenty years ago!  OH MY GOD!  How time flies!

It was just about the best sex I've ever had. It was the first time I didn't feel like the newbie, the novice. I was now the expert. It was so uninhibited, so free, so very hot.

And to him, wherever he went, and whatever he chose -

L'chai-im!

David

Christmas Memories

Photo from Christmas 1964 - Arlington, Texas - Two years old

I've been thinking a lot about my childhood Christmas memories. Fearing they will one day fade I started writing down details I remember or have knowledge of, from my first when I was six days old, on up to last year's Holiday. I have some memories of Christmas 1965 when I had just turned three. And quite good memories of Christmas 1966 when I was four. The earlier Christmases are reconstructed from notes in my baby book, our home movies, and family anecdotes. Happy Holidays!

1962 - Six days old

This was probably an odd Christmas. Of course I don't remember any of it. I'm not even sure whether I was at home or in the hospital on this first Christmas. My mom had had a C-Section but I suspect we were home by Christmas. I'm sure she would have wanted out of the hospital as quickly as possible. At this time my parents lived with my grandmother in Arlington, Texas. My grandmother had a heart attack the day I was born. No doubt it was a combination of stress, subconscious jealousy, and needing attention from my mom. Sigh...

1963 - One year old

The next year I had just turned one. We were still living in Arlington with my grandmother and great grandmother. For Christmas that year I got a red wagon, a marvelous pull-toy called the Happy Hippo, a set of blocks, and a corduroy suit. I remember all these toys well. I had them for several years afterward.

1964 - Two years old

Now we are two. Same living situation as before. This year I got a Santa's Work Bench, a toy train, a toy mail box, and a little table and chairs. It is this Christmas morning featured in the photo at the top of this blog-post. We also have some great color home movies of this Christmas but alas they aren't digitized yet.

1965 - Three years old

Three years old and all is much the same. But it would be our last year in this house. My mom was about to graduate with her BA from University of Texas at Arlington and she was looking for Grad schools.

This year I got a bright red toy car that I could ride in. It had a push stick. So my Dad would push me down the sidewalk or street with something that looked like a pool cue. This little red car was made by Marx Toy Company. My parents noted with glee that I had a little RED car made by MARX. Perhaps to balance my early introduction to leftist politics I was also given a toy gas pump, and a cash register. My parents also surprised me with a Christmas puppy. When asked what I wanted to call the puppy I said, "Nuffin ..." So Nuffin became the puppy's name.

1966 - Four years old

This is the first Christmas I remember in vivid detail. In the Summer of 1966 we had moved from Arlington, Texas to Albuquerque, New Mexico so my mom could get her Masters degree at the University of New Mexico.

A couple months before we moved Nuffin disappeared. My mom accused my Dad of "getting rid of Nuffin" to make it easier to move. Years later he admitted he had. I knew nothing of this at the time of course. Just before the move my great-grandmother passed away at the age of 92. My grandmother stayed in Texas, taking an apartment in Fort Worth. And we traveled back to Texas to spend the holidays with my grandmother.

We drove back to Texas in our white Corvair van: Mom, Dad, me, and our new pet basset hound, Zeb. I remember we drove straight through - which is a long drive. We put my mattress from home in the back of the van for me to play on and for me to sleep on once we got to Texas. In the middle of the night driving Zeb the Basset had a very smelly accident in the back of the van. We stopped, my dad cussed, and the van got cleaned out. We stayed at my grandmother's new apartment. I think she slept on the couch in the front room and my parents took her bed, and I slept on my little mattress we had brought with us.

I remember being very happy we were going to see my grandmother; and remember, too, that it seemed strange to see her in a new apartment. The apartment was a fairly big one-bedroom. My Grandmother was a pianist and she still taught at this time so she needed room for two pianos. She had downsized to one baby grand and one console.

There was also a neighbor lady who had a boston-terrier named Inky which I absolutely adored! I was also fascinated with my grandmother's red finger nail polish. I was thrilled when she painted mine red, too! Such a nice and obliging grandmother!

I don't remember much about the tree that year, but I'm sure we had one. I do remember my presents!

Model Tramway Car

This was a toy tramway car that I suspect my parents fot at the Sandia Mountain Tramway just out side of Albuquerque. We had gone to the Crest of the Mountain right after we moved and I had wanted to ride the Tram but it was too expensive. So I think this is why I got the toy one. I wanted to play with it and my Dad cleverly rigged it to run between two of the legs on the grand piano.

Creepy Crawlers

This was a very popular toy, probably considered too dangerous for today's kids. It came with a little heating plate and metal molds of various insects. You filled the moulds with liquid rubber which you then "baked"on the little hotplate. When the rubber became cooked and opaque you plunged the metal into cold water and peeled out the rubber insects. I really did like Creepy Crawlers a lot!

Cheerful Tearful

I had also asked for a baby doll. Well, my grandmother gave me one named Cheerful Tearful. I don't remember getting any flack from neighbor kids either. I've wondered what my grandmother thought of giving me a baby doll and of painting my little fingernails red. Maybe grandmothers always "know what's up" on some level. But this WAS 1966 and she was a straight-laced methodist lady, so who knows, but she was very supportive of my off-beat interests!

I also got $9 in pennies from my grandfather (who stored up pennies all year long in a big glass jar). I got a Remco Mouse House; and perhaps the most lasting of all the presents, my Dad built me a playhouse in the backyard of our house in Albuquerque. I was there when it was being built so I know it wasn't a surprise. But I don't remember if it was built before Christmas or right after we got home. David's Playhouse needs a blog post of it's own!

More Christmas to come ...

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine.

My Little French Emo-Boy

People go to France for many reasons. I went to France most recently in October because Eric the Boyfriend had been invited to Quai des bulles, la festival BD de St Malo (The Saint Malo Comics Festival.) Yes, the BF draws a comic book series called AGE OF BRONZE which is doing very well in France.

Our adventure began when we arrived in Paris. We went to the hotel and took a short nap and made plans to have dinner with our friends Virgine and Laurent. Virginie cooked us a wonderful dinner. The next day we made our usual trip to the Louvre for culture, a trip to FNAC for off-beat and obscure opera CDs, and then to the ALBUM comic store at Bercy so Eric could do a signing event.

The next day the mini-tour began. We left Paris in the early AM to travel by train to Rouen where we met the comic store owner and were taken to our hotel. We met soon after for lunch and Eric was interviewed by two French journalists. Rouen, like most of the towns we visited this trip, was badly damaged by bombings in WWII. During the interview the subject of WWII came up and I mentioned that my Dad had been in this area of France during the War. One of the journalists thanked me for what my Dad gave to France. That has NEVER happened to me here in the US.

The next morning we arose and traveled by train to Caen where we were met at the station by Jean-Marie and his wife Sophie who own a wonderful comic story called Le Cour des Miracles. We again dropped off our stuff at the hotel and then headed off for an incredibly tasty lunch. Then Eric went to do his signing at the store and I went to explore the remains of William the Conqueror's castle a few blocks away. Jean-Marie helped me track down the spiffy new French comic book version of SIEGFRIED I wanted and later presented me with a large 3-D plastic poster for SIEGFRIED. A review of RING graphic novels will be coming along soon.

The next morning we had breakfast with Jean-Marie and Sophie at their home and we were introduced to the music of Serge Gainsbourgh, ate croissants, talked about SHORTBUS, ate more croissants, and finally headed to the train so we could travel to Rennes and do essentially the same thing yet again.

Rennes was ok - but neither the store or the town had the charm of Rouen or Caen.
On to Saint Malo!

The walled town Saint Malo.

Saint Malo was charming beyond belief. It is an old walled city that was the home of the Corsairs (something like pirates hired to defend the Bretagne coastline). After acquiring our convention badges and stuff we checked into the hotel (inside the walled city!) and were given a couple hours to go find lunch and walk around the town. Our Parisian friends Virginie and Laurent had mentioned that the French writer Chateaubriand was buried on a little island, the Grand Bé, off the coast of Saint Malo - and that one could walk there at low tide.

So Eric and I bought a baguette, a Camembert, and a bottle of red wine; and when we saw the tide was out we walked to the Grand Bé to picnic at the grave of Chateaubriand having only the vaguest notion of who he really was. Was he related to the expensive beef dish? We had also heard that the previous year at Saint Malo, another cartoonist friend of ours got stuck on Grand Bé becuase he wasn't paying enough attention to the tides. Thus I wasn't absolutely sure we were in fact headed toward Grand Bé because it seemed hard to believe the ocean would come in to sequester this island. So off we trekked to the rocky little island. We walked to the top and there was the grave of Chateaubriand.

The grave of Chateaubriand on Grand Bé.

We found a nice rock to sit on, ate our bread and cheese, drank our bottle of wine, and felt worldly and sophisticated. But when one has purchased a bottle of wine one has little choice but to finish it. Thus by the time we had finished lunch and began the walk back to Saint Malo, well ... nous étions tres pompette! My French gets better when I'm a little pompette, too! Quand j'ai été pompette j'ai pensé ma Français était meilleur. Hien? . . . donc, comme je disais ... Well, Saint Malo was a wonderful experience. We stayed for three days and three nights. I walked around the city walls one afternoon and watched the tide race in and, indeed, it not only cut off Grand Bé from the mainland it completely smothered a number of other little islets and rocky outcroppings until the ocean was lapping at the walls of Saint Malo itself. Eric and I also had our best meal in France this trip when we discovered we liked mussels - a specialty of the region.

We left Saint Malo and headed back to Paris. But Eric had one more thing on his schedule. He was to be interviewed on a popular "live" radio program (sort of the equivalent of "Fresh Air" on NPR) called Minuit/Dix which starts each night at ten past midnight. We arrived at the Radio France studios around 11:30, met the host, and the show began. It was very interesting. And I was allowed to sit in the studio during the broadcast.You can hear the interview by clicking the link below and clicking on the little red "Ecoutez" button. There is a little SLIDESHOW of PICS of the interview on this page, too.

CLICK to listen to Eric Shanower on MINUIT/DIX

The next morning Eric went to the airport to fly home to San Diego. Actually he missed his flight and he had to spend the night at Charles de Gaulle/Roissey Airoport. But I didn't find this out till later, as I was off to Belgium to visit my mySpace friend Katerine and her family. One of the best things I did was visit Breendonk, the Nazi Concentration Camp/POW camp in Belgium. I also visited the Mechalen Deportation Center which processed all of the Belgian Jews on their way to the Concentration Camps in the east. This will all get a blog of its own but it was quite over-powering. We also went to see SIEGFRIED, the Vlaamse Opera's latest installment in their new RING cycle. The next day I returned to Paris and flew home the following morning.

Now, I know what you're wondering ... where's that French Emo-Boy David promised! Surely there is some brooding and intense, floppy-haired, dark-eyed, tight jean-clad boy for you somewhere in this blog! Where is the Emo-boy?

Well, you have already met him. The Emo-boy par excellence, François-René de Chateaubriand. After I got home I decided that if I had gotten all tipsy at his grave, the least I could do was track down one of his books and read a little about him. It turns out Chateaubriand was the founder of French Romanticism. He was a lonely little boy, born in Saint Malo where he wandered the beach with his little mates. He was born in 1768 and he lost a number of family members in the French revolution and Reign of Terror. He came to America to find material for his writings and later produced his two best-known works from this material: Atala and René.

So I tracked down a paperback copy of Atala and René which kind of go together, and they each contain some of the same characters. Atala involves a love relationship between two Native Americans in 1669. The story is told by Chactas to a young Frenchman, René, as a memory about 75 years after the events have unfolded. But the true charm of the book is Chateaubriand's vivid descriptions on what is now the southeastern United States. The European descriptions of the surging rivers, mountains, wild life, and Native American culture are truly fascinating. Occasionally Chateaubriand goes a little over the top, but always with the most vivid results: "Down avenues of trees, bears may be seen drunk with grapes, and reeling on the branches of the elm trees." Contemporary reviews made fun of Chateaubriand's "drunken bears" too. But so much rings true - especially the details of how Chactas was captured and tortured by the Muskogee. It reminds me much of several books I've read on the early Iroquois. The book is also about the difference between a modern civilization gone awry (France in the revolution) and the Noble Savages of the Americas. It was most enjoyable.


The sequel, René, is a different sort of beast. In it, the brooding René finally tells his pitiful troubles to his American friends. René has become almost paralyzed with grief, woe, and misery and after unloading his troubles at last, Father Souël gives René some advice:

"Nothing in your story deserves the pity you are now being shown. I see a young man infatuated with illusions, satisfied with nothing... Know now that solitude is bad for the man who does not live with God. It increases the soul's power while robbing it at the same time of every opportunity to find expression. Whoever has been endowed with talent must devote it to serving his fellow men, for if he does not make use of it, he is first punished by an inner misery, and sooner or later Heaven visits on him a fearful retribution."

Wow, is that David's prescription for happiness or what! Hmmm...

Interestingly, René had an odd effect on French society by inventing the French Emo-Boy of the early 1800s. In typical romantic tradition Chateaubriand came to regret the monster he created. He later wrote:

"If René did not exist I would no longer write it; if I could destroy it, I would. A family of René poets and René prose writers has been swarming about. We can hear nothing now but pitiful and disconnected phrases; they talk of nothing but winds and storms, and mysterious words whispered to the clouds at night. There is not a scribbler just out of school who hasn't dreamed of being the unhappiest man of earth, not an upstart of sixteen who hasn't exhausted life and felt himself tormented by his genius, who in the abyss of his thoughts, hasn't given himself up to his vague passion, struck his pale and disheveled brow, and astounded men with sorrow which neither he nor they could describe."

Sigh ... thousands of little René-wannabe emo-boys wandering the French countryside, flopping their hair, oozing attitude, and looking for love. J'aime ça!

A+ David

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.
Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine
Quotes from ATALA and RENÉ translated by Irving Putter, University of California Press, Copyright © 1952.

Let them eat Gingerbread

Is that the Eiffel Tower
or are you just glad to see me?

Well, my dear readers, on Saturday, December 1st, the BF and I had our annual Holiday Party. We began these festive romps six years ago. We have our friends over for tasty food, assorted beverages, and my infamous "Wonder Nog" which contains nothing but sugar, cholesterol and alcohol! Eighteen egg yolks! It's very good stuff!
For this year's edibles I made a ham with pineapple and cherries; Swedish meatballs; green potato salad with red pepper bits; a tropical fruit salad; Gruyère quiche for the vegetarian crowd; two kinds of cookies; and hot mulled cider on the stove.

This year we had thirty-one guests and the party went till a little after three AM! Guests often bring presents of wine or something but a couple years ago one of our guests gave us a gift of a little gingerbread house kit. It was fairly rudimentary and in the end we never put it together. But we did eat the gingerbread and other stuff from the kit.

But this little present got me to thinking "Hmmm . . . why, I think I could make a better gingerbread house than the one in that kit!" I puzzled over the idea of a gingerbread Victorian House? a Gingerbread Castle? ... hmmm ... but after I got back from France last month I finally made up my mind and started baking.

The Gingerbread Eiffel Tower

Thus Le Tour-Eiffel du Gingerbread was born. It is a bit over three feet tall and has an electric light at the top. Now ... what on earth am I gonna do next year?

Cheers, David

David's Wonder Nog Recipe
12 large egg yolks
2 cups of sugar
1 cup of dark rum
1 cup of whiskey
8 large egg whites
1/2 teaspoon salt
6 cups of cream
1 Tablesppons of vanilla extract
1 whole nutmeg (grated)
2 to 4 cups additional rum or whiskey
(2 cups of milk to thin out nog is desired)

Beat yolks and sugar until thick and sugar is dissolved. Add 1 cup each of the rum and whiskey. Refrigerate over night.

A couple hours before serving beat the egg whites and salt until until mixed but still very soft. stir into nog mixture. Add cream and vanilla and stir well. Add in ground nutmeg. Add additional liquor and or milk to taste.

This recipe is my version of an Egg Nog Punch recipe in Sheila Ferguson's SOUL FOOD; Classic Cuisine from the Deep South. Her recipe calls for beating the egg whites to soft peak stage and for whipping the cream. But whenever I've tried it her way the egg whites and whip cream keep rising to the top of the punch bowl and it needs to be stirred before serving each time which is a big bother. So I suggest only slightly beating the egg whites, mixing them well into the nog, and then adding the cream straight from the carton.

It is very good, but be careful; it is very smooth and very easy to drink but is also very potent!

When you talk about this blog later, and you will, be kind.Copyright © 2007 D. H. Maxine. All rights reserved.