Lost scenes from German-Austrian director Fritz Lang’s legendary silent film “Metropolis” have been discovered in Argentina, German weekly newspaper Die Zeit reported on Wednesday.

Paula Félix-Didier, head of film museum Museo del Cine in Buenos Aires, discovered an uncut version of the 1927 science fiction film when she looked into reports that a tape in the archive was unusually long. She travelled to Berlin with a copy of the film and met with experts who say they are certain it is the missing original-length version of Lang’s masterpiece that reveals key plot scenes and an expansion of minor roles, Die Zeit said ahead of the publication of its Thursday edition.

“The film’s original rhythm will be re-established,” Martin Koerber, the man responsible for the current restoration of the film, told the paper.

When it premiered in 1927, Metropolis was the most expensive film ever produced in Germany, but was disliked by audiences. For the U.S. release, large amounts of footage was cut, reportedly making the film pretty incomprehensible. If you’ve seen recent DVD re-releases of the film, you may have noticed the proclamation at the outset that the film quality differs on some scenes — because these scenes were re-created from subsequent prints, and as i recall they look like crap. I’m unclear on whether this version will add any new scenes, but it’s a negative of the original 210-minute release.

Metropolis is a strange and challenging film. If you have never seen it, honestly, you’re missing one of the three or four biggest influences, and hey, maybe the biggest single influence, on the visuals of science fiction and futurism through the 1950s and right up to the naughts.

More than that, it’s a bizarre and beautiful insight into history. View it in the context of Weimar Germany, with its mud-wrestling optimism, pessimism and post-Great War malaise. Think of it is an urbane meditation on Socialism next to which the morbid antifuturist sci-fi of The Time Machine looks like prudish country bumpkin naivete. Lang’s great talent was to have a dream and a nightmare at the same time, and in Metropolis, as with the greatest noir gothica, you can drool your outrage and rapturously moan your despair.

There is a great apocryphal story about Lang, how he met with Nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebbels for an amiable chat and thereafter immediately beelined it in the middle of the night. Sadly, the story almost certainly never happened, as Lang left Germany with most of his Deutschmarks intact, and even returned for his belongings. But the story appeals to my American lust for the artist as outlaw, my desire to demonize Nazis and deify the idealistic social transgressor.

But there’s no need to deify, really: Art is what it is, and the artist can never compete with his creation. With its deep psychosexual perversity and its profound influence on the genre of science fiction, Metropolis is a spike into the unconscious. Seeing it is like being introduced to Carl Jung at a fancy dress ball at the border crossing between Heaven and Hell. Watch Metropolis and you’re glimpsing the mind of God.

Image from emory.edu.

Rubber Sex

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Another review of Rachel Kramer Bussel’s anthology Rubber Sex mentions my story:

“…The opposite end of the caper spectrum is noir. Thomas Roche may have supplied a ’spacey New Age shit,’ soundtrack to his story ‘Butterfly’s Kiss,’ but I heard a lone wailing sax and a voiceover right out of a gumshoe flick…. Roche has the skill to write a story that will leave you gulping for air even while it turns you on. If you can endure being uncomfortable, enjoy the challenge this edgy story provides.”

Hooray! Thanks, Steven Hart. Read more at Erotica Revealed.

Oh… and Steven, I agree, the tattoo stuff is totally opaque. I guess it’s meant to be obscure. I am reminded of a Roger Zelazny quote from the introduction to his second short story anthology, where he dicussed his early stories that did not sell and did not work as stories. I paraphrase his comments by saying that it occurred to me that I was explaining more to the reader than I would want explained to me.

I amend Zelazny’s sentiments with my own “So I resolved to be an obscure pain in the ass,” which I’m sure Zelazny never did. I’m pleased to note I’ve been at least partially successful…

As reported on about ten zillion freaky blogs, BoingBoing and the LA Times (I am just now catching up on my crypto feeds), Cryptozoologist Loren Coleman, proprietor of Cryptomundo and the International Cryptozoology Museum in Portland, Maine, is in the process of being audited by the IRS, which questions the validity of Cryptozoology as a profession, among other things. The survival of the Museum is in question and, as Coleman observes, ‘No one likes the idea of becoming extinct!’

Coleman is seeking $15,000 in donations to help the Museum continue. You can donate at Cryptomundo.com, where you can also find out more about Coleman’s work and the Museum — or watch the great BoingBoingTV episode on it.

Image from Cryptomundo.

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Tonight’s viewing: A Century of Science Fiction, hosted (sort of) by Christopher Lee. Lee introduces each episode with about ten seconds of spooky meta-observation, and then a predictable voiceover artist gives the narration over footage from science fiction films on various themes — the end of the world, monsters, computers, inventions, aliens, that sort of thing.

The footage and the history is interesting; I’ve discovered numerous weird B-movies I’m dying to see. The presentation, however, is crappy and the footage terribly transferred. It is not good.

The first episode I watched was on the end of the world. It is the best of them given that it’s mostly trailers — B-movie trailers are one of my not-so-guilty pleasures. For the rest of the episodes, it’s just footage from B-movies, totally out of context, some great, some kind of dull and weird, with a bland voiceover stitching it together. It therefore does not have the rabid maniacal unpredictable hyperbolic glee of the movie traler, which is usually about ten times better than the movie.

I have no idea how many episodes of this thing there are; I’ve watched five. the Amazon page informs me that this dog is 676 minutes; in fact, I am watching this series on Netflix Instant Viewing, and (thank God!) it’s more like 100. Which leads me to believe the five episodes I’ve watched represent one disk, and there are four more disks, with five episodes each, to go. Whatever.

This series has some fascinating stuff in it and is enjoyable for total B-movie freaks, but the presentation and the low quality makes it hard to follow and sort of exhausting. Good for you, maybe, but not a lot of pleasure to take. It’s like a dose of medicine, and not the kind you swallow.

Louis Eppolito

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

According to KMPH in San Joaquin County, a US District Court judge in Nevada sentenced former NYPD detective Louis Eppolito to 18 months in prison and ordered him to pay $102,000 on tax charges.

Eppolito was the son of Ralph “Fat the Gangster” Eppolito, a Mafia hit man who died when Louis was young. His uncle and cousin were also made members of the Gambino family, and were killed in gangland violence by the infamous DeMeo crew. Eppolito did not dispute these facts in his book Mafia Cop: The Story of an Honest Cop Whose Family Was the Mob, and in fact as you can see kinda owned up to them in the subtitle.

The book was about Louis’s struggle to establish and preserve his reputation as a NYPD detective, where he was hounded by Internal Affairs and some of his fellow cops who didn’t believe that a Mafia family could produce an honest cop. He was finally hounded off the force over an incident in which he was accused of passing confidential police information to Mob members.

I enjoyed the book immensely; I even found it moving at times. Eppolito’s self-righteousness rang kinda false, but when you read mob biographies you get a lot of self-righteousness, as much of it coming from the cops as from the robbers; Eppolito, the cop son of robbers, had it in spades, but I didn’t begrudge him that.

Louis Eppolito, with fellow NYPD detective Stephen Caracappa, was later convicted of labor racketeering, extortion, obstruction of justice, drug and gambling charges, not to mention eight murders. The charges go back to the 1980s, when Eppolito and Caracappa served as a hit team for the mob. A judge later threw out several of the convictions because the statute of limitations had expired; though there’s no statute of limitations on murder in New York, the killings were in fact prosecuted in federal court. The remaining convictions are currently on appeal.

Incidentally, a guy named Albert DeMeo was the son of Roy DeMeo of the DeMeo crew, the crew that clipped Eppolito’s uncle and cousin. Albert wrote a book called For the Sins of My Father: A Mafia Killer, His Son, and the Legacy of a Mob Life, which I read while cruising the Inner Passage in Alaska with my parents. I very much enjoyed that book as well. Roy DeMeo was also the subject of Gene Mustain and Jerry Capece’s semi-classic Murder Machine.

Information and public-domain photo from Wikipedia.

Australia

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Interesting article in News.com.au about the death of Rosario Gangemi:

One of Victoria’s veteran Calabrian mafia bosses has died of natural causes, aged 86.

Undercover police are expected to closely monitor mourners at Rosario “Ross” Gangemi’s Moonee Ponds funeral on Monday.

His death enables the Herald Sun to finally reveal Gangemi’s high standing in the mafia.

It also legally allows us to reveal that Gangemi was named by Italian police as ordering one of the infamous Victoria Market murders in 1963.

Gangemi served alongside Melbourne mafia godfather Liborio Benvenuto from the 1960s to the 1980s, possibly as his deputy.

Police intelligence files show he remained a respected and influential member until his death on Saturday in Coburg’s John Fawkner Hospital.

The Calabrian Mafia, or ‘Ndrangheta, is one of Italy’s four major crime syndicates, similar to the Apulian Sacra Corona Unita, the Neapolitan Camorra and the more widely known Sicilian Mafia. Apparently they also operate out of Australia.

Image from CIA.gov

Happy Birthday, Karen Black

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

A very happy birthday — her 69th (huh huh, huh huh huh huh huh) to Karen Black, favored scream queen of my childhood. In addition to being a beloved horror icon, she’s appeared in a boatload of prominent films, including Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, The Great Gatsby, Airport 1975, Nashville, Hitchcock’s Family Plot. More recently she’s been directing, acting on stage, and reliving her horror glory days with legions of fans who worship her, as well as appearing in such recent(er) films as Rob Zombie’s House of 1000 Corpses and the "surreal" Plan 10 From Outer Space, which I understand is a parody of Mormon theology.

My affection for Ms. Black and hints of a disturbingly psychosexual preadolescent craving for her originate from a lesser-known flick she was in with Oliver Reed, 1976’s haunted house story Burnt Offerings. It scared the living shit out of me when I was probably too young to see it, and scarred me for life. It probably made me weird.

Karen Black is still performing, directing and blogging. Keep up with her at her My Space page, from which this photo is borrowed.

Image from Karen Black’s My Space page

Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

July 1 is the anniversary of the joint presentation to the Linnean Society of the theory of evolution of Alfred Russel Wallace and Charles Darwin. It happened 150 years ago in 1858.

Which always makes me think of this:

“We had children showing up to school as segmented worms at 8:00 a.m. and leaving that same afternoon as Australopithecus… In many cases, their parents weren’t even asked to sign a permission slip.”

Images of Wallace (left) and Darwin (right) from Wikipedia.

Hawthorn Ridge Mine

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

The detonation of the Hawthorn Ridge Mine, 1 July 1916, marking the start of the British advance that began Battle of the Somme. 40,000 tons of explosives had been planted after months of painstaking digging under German entrenchments. It was one of ten mines detonated on 1 July, and one of three huge ones.

The explosions were meant to clear the way for the British advance. But there was disagreement among the British generals about whether the mines should be detonated two minutes before zero hour, at 7:28 am, to prevent the Germans having any chance to regroup, or be detonated several hours before zero hour, to allow British forces to capture the area of the crater itself before the main advance.

The British opted to wash their clothes in warm water and blow the Hawthorn mine ten minutes before zero hour. As described by Wikipedia:

“Once the debris subsided, two platoons… were sent forward to occupy the crater. However, the German defenders succeeded in holding the eastern lip of the crater. The early detonation alerted all Germans in the vicinity that the long-expected attack was now imminent. By the time the infantry went over at 7:30 am, the German machine guns were sweeping no man’s land and artillery fire was falling on the British trenches. The attack on Hawthorn Ridge redoubt, and on the entire VIII Corps front, ended in failure. By 8:30 am, the only [British] ‘gain’ …was one company clinging to the western lip of the crater but by the end of the day this too was lost.”

Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed that day, and almost 40,000 wounded. That would remain the largest number of British casualties in a single day until the fall of Singapore in February 1942. French forces also lost 7,000 men and the Germans 8,000.

Through my morbid fascination with history, I do not wish to cheapen the sacrifices made at the Somme; generals on both sides did that for me long before I was born, and they did a better job than I ever could have. Requiescat in pace, boys.

Information and image from Wikipedia.

Anyway, Xanadu’s director, Robert Greenwald, who also directed Farrah Fawcett’s The Burning Bed, has in recent years become a bit of a rabble rouser, directing a little 2004 fandango called Outfoxed, which made me say out loud, and I quote, “Dude, this is the guy who directed fucking Xanadu?” He’s apparently made a series of vicious political documentaries since then, and is now hitting the Tube something fierce.

Getting some traction in the Times is a recent video, “McCain’s Spiritual Guide,” on the conservative televangelist Rod Parsley, juxtaposing John McCain’s comments praising Parsley with objectionable comments the P-man made in re: Islam. “Islam is an anti-Christ religion that intends through violence to conquer the world,” sez Parsley, and oh, “America was founded — I’m going to stagger you right now — America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed.” Parsley has said he believes the US must fulfil a divine purpose to see Islam destroyed.

McCain refused to reject Parsley’s endorsement until after this video was released, whereupon Johnny boy changed his tune. The Times quotes Greenwald as saying that “he had no ties to the Democratic Party or Senator Barack Obama’s campaign.” “McCain’s Spiritual Guide,” interesting, has the Mother Jones logo at the beginning, as well as “Brave New Films,” which offends my science fiction fan sensibilities, since I think the current regime, of which McCain is at best a toady and at worst the apocalyptic heir, bears much more resemblance to that other oft-alluded to, almost never quoted and rarely read Brit-authored dystopia.

Perhaps the most interesting of Greenwald’s Youtube videos, in concept at least, is “John McCain is Dr. Strangelove,” which matches McCain’s Iraq war statements like “I’m sorry to tell you there are going to be other wars” with Gen. Buck Turgidson’s enthusiastic rantings from Kubrick’s classic of the nuclear war comedy genre.

The video actually kinda sucks — it fails to draw any real parallels between Turgidson’s statements and McCain’s, and in any event these are such different kinds of wars, with different motivations, that I actually think any real comparison between them is utter and complete bullshit.

What’s more, it drives me to fucking distraction when political activists completely ignore the facts of a film: as presented in this video, John McCain is Buck Turgidson, NOT Dr. Strangelove; a juxtaposition of Johnny Boy and Dr. S would have been high-larious, I’m sure, but less obvious and cheap. It’s always easy to compare militaristic American white guys to other American militaristic white guys — compare them to ex-Nazi lunatics, and then you’re talking fascinating social commentary, mein Fuhrer.

My objection, though, is not just that McCain is said to be Dr. Strangelove and then framed as Turgidson, but that Greenwald, like every political activist in the world, has assumed that nobody knows or cares who the characters in a great piece of art are, or what the point of it was — “Dr. Strangelove” is just shorthand for any lunatic who craves nuclear war. Fine, fine, in concept, but misconstruing great literature or art in the interest of politics always seems like the road to groupthink and the enforcement of the lowest common denominator. It’s just a heartbeat from the complete misinterpretation of art for political purposes. How far is it from Reagan praising Springsteen as a great patriot because of “Born in the USA,” and Springsteen playing “Johnny 99″ in response? Greenwald, as an artist, should be Springsteen in this equation, not Ronnie Boy.

That said, there never needs to be an excuse to watch George C. Scott delivering that magnificent iconic line that, I do admit, eerily reminds me of just about every Republican since Reagan: “No more than ten to twenty million killed — tops!” Is McCain Strangelove or Turgidson? You tell me, but either way he comes out smelling of the crisp scent of Iranian fallout.

Iran

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

CNN is reporting on journalist Seymour Hersh’s claim that Congress has authorized more than $400 million to launch a “’significant escalation’ of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government,” and that the operation “involves U.S. special operations troops and Iranian dissidents.” Said Hersh, “They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program.”

Hersh is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who first gained prominence in 1969 for exposing the My Lai Massacre.

Let’s rewind: Hersh says Congress has authorized more than $400 million. If this is accurate, this money was certainly assigned as part of a black ops budget, but Pelosi, as part of the leadership, would have known about the program. This sort of operation is pretty common not only in Iran, but in Iraq before the US invasion, in North Korea, and anywhere else the US government doesn’t like.

But this is Iran, a potentially explosive diplomatic situation and, most importantly, the Bush Administration’s many-times-over explicitly stated likely-next-war. How much more obvious can the agenda be — not to pull Iran’s teeth as a terrorist or nuclear superpower, but to have their war whatever the supposed reason? The Bush administration lied through its teeth every step of the way on Iraq, and whatever might be said, I continue to believe that everyone in Washington knew the claims about WMDs were total shit. This time, the lies are even weaker, but still we’re marching into the gaping maw of endless war.

I do not live in San Francisco any longer, but if Hersh’s account is accurate, Pelosi is signing off on the new Bush war not only before we’ve finished the first one, but when it’s painfully obvious that they would be unable to complete any significant long-term operation against Iran before Bush leaves office, creating a big pile of shit for the next President to spend four to eight years cleaning up — instead of fixing the economy, saving the environment, and generally undoing the nightmare that eight years of corporatist dictatorship has created.

In my opinion, this war against Iran is an attempt to prevent the peaceful transition of power from one party to the other next January. It is one of two things — probably a little of each: a calculated attempt to scare the American public into war mode so they won’t vote for a liberal, and/or an attempt to cripple the next President — presumably Obama given how McCain’s numbers are looking at this point.

Much as the Bush cabal hated McCain before 2004, he’s their best bet now, and the supposedly independent-minded McCain has become their toady. McCain has an excuse: He’s an idiot, a right-wing war-mongering freedom-hating fascist nut job whose incompetence is superseded only by his hipocrisy. And Pelosi? You tell me.

Narikala fortress

Originally uploaded by Claire à Taiwan

And even more procrastinatory awesomeness, with this poto of Narikala Fortress overlooking Tbilisi. It was founded in the 4th Century as Shuris-tsikhe, or “invidious fort,” “invidious” in this context meaning either “hateful” or “adapted to create envy” (I had to look it up). It was later expanded, according to Wikipedia, by King David IV of Georgia. The Mongols renamed it Narin Qala, or “Little Fortress.”

Svetitskhoveli Cathedral

Originally uploaded by www.paata.ge

More crap to do today, way, way more, and thus more procrastination, searching Caucasus strongholds, in this case Svetitskhoveli Cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia, reputed to be the burial place of the mantle of Christ. The archbishop who serves as the Catholicos-Patriarch of All Georgia, currently Ilia II, is situated there.

France

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Freaky-tragic gun news from France, from CNN:

A military shooting demonstration in southeast France on Sunday left 16 people wounded, including children, when real bullets were used instead of blank ones, officials said.

Four of the wounded were in serious condition, including a 3-year-old child, Bernard Lemaire, chief of the regional administration in Aude, said on France-3 television. Fifteen of the injured were civilians.

A Defense Ministry official said the incident occurred during a demonstration of hostage-freeing techniques at the Laperrine military barracks. The official said investigators will look into why real bullets were used.

No information was immediately available about what kind of weapon was used.

The soldier who fired the shots has been detained, Lemaire said. He said the injuries were likely an accident but that it could have been a “criminal act.”

Image from CIA.gov

Happy Birthday, Ray Harryhausen

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

A very happy 88th to special effects master Ray Harryhausen, known (in case you’ve been living under a bushel) for his stop-motion animation. His films Jason and the Argonauts, the Sinbad movies, and Clash of the Titans were among my first exposures to cinematic fantasy. In fact, I was so pissed off about Titans that I just about had a stroke right there in the theatre. All due respect to the Ray-man, but I’m just not sure Greek mythology needed to be buggered that hard. I had read the Perseus myth in several versions and loved it passionately, and I thought the Titans version took unnecessary liberties with the subject matter, which in my young idealism made me go all apoplectic an’ shit.

Argonauts did not infurate me thus for two reasons: first, I had not yet read the Jason myth (and still don’t much care for it) and I saw it in a DRIVE IN — it was always so friggin’ difficult to tell what was going on with that damn speaker crackling and whining and all the other distractions of a drive in.

Plus, I was much younger when I saw Jason. Sinbad, I never got hopped up about because I did not know then, and still don’t know, much about Arabian mythology. No, no, it was Clash of the Titans that made me understand how profoundly the universe sought to betray me.

It’s all right, Uncle Ray, I’ve long since forgiven you, and started to appreciate your flicks right around the same time I learned to appreciate John Waters. Sinbad, Titans and Jason remain fixed in my memory as influential visions of rousing, if astonishingly cheesy and magnificently goofy, adventure.

Image from Wikipedia.

Franz Ferdinand

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

On June 28, 1914, 94 years ago this morning, Sarajevo time, Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife were assassinated. Sarajevo was the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina, then a provice of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Their killer, Gavrilo Princip, was a Slavic nationalist who favored the violent destruction of Austria-Hungary to unify the Slavs with Serbia and create a “South Slavic” nation — Yugoslavia, which means “The Land of the South Slavs.” Franz Ferdinand had been a great supporter of Serbia, so it’s kinda weird that Princip chose to clip him. Nonetheless, the Archduke’s assassination set into motion a series of events that led to World War I, at the end of which Austria-Hungary would be no more.

Incidentally, Franz Ferdinand was shot with a FN Model 1910 .380 ACP, a gun that always fascinated me as a child, which is one of the reasons I’ve always shown a predilection toward using it in my crime fiction.

Image from Wikipedia.

Bulgaria

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

From SFGate:

Extremists throwing rocks, bottles and gasoline bombs have attacked the Bulgarian capital’s first gay pride parade.

Police say they prevented the extremists from harming the 150 or so people in the procession through Sofia. No serious injuries have been reported.

…Gays face widespread hostility in Bulgaria and opposition to Saturday’s parade has been fierce. The far-right Bulgarian National Union had called for “open resistance” to the gay pride parade with a campaign featuring posters that say: “Be Intolerant, Be Normal.”

Bulgaria’s influential Orthodox Church said the march should be banned as it undermines the country’s Christian traditions.

Image from CIA.gov

Thomas Roche’s story of vac-bed fascination also merits a mention. “Butterfly’s Kiss” is erotica noir, a dangerous sort of tale that combines lust with enough of a sense of imminent danger to keep the blood boiling on a couple different levels at once.

Thanks, AAG! And thanks Rachel for the opportunity; this was one of the recent stories of mine I’ve been happiest to have written.

And yes, I did say W00t. They’ve broken me. They’ve finally broken me.

California fire

Originally uploaded by BitHead

Susie Bright has a harrowing post about the fires happening near to her in Monterey County and all over the state:

The Central Coast is burning down— and no, I’m not kidding. The Santa Cruz Mountains, and the Ventana Wilderness, my community, have been ablaze with fires for the past few weeks. Big Sur has been on the edge of destruction since the weekend, and if you can read a satellite map, be prepared for a shock.

The air is orange and choking gray with smoke, the heat like an iron. In my neighborhood, 20 miles from from the nearest burn, there’ve been swarms of winged insects crowding the windows and doorways. You can drive past smoldering ruins and still-flaming burns down Highway 1. The lightning strikes over last Saturday ignited over 800 fires across the state of California, and most of them aren’t reported in any daily newspaper.

Later on, she discusses why this is happening — not acts of God, really:

There’s an extra edge to the smoke, that goes beyond the inevitable natural crises: Our country has, for some time, been unable to provide the infrastructure to deal with disasters.

I’m not just talking about for the hermit who’s off the grid. Everyone in California is mindful of the terrible floods in the Mid-West, and that leads to the all-too-obvious reminders of Katrina. A bridge collapses in Minnesota, and everyone knows that bridge should have been repaired or replaced ages ago. I’m sure all of you could tell me about something in your area that is a public hazard, overdue for repair, a “disaster waiting to happen,” and yet nothing happens ’cause there’s “no money.”

Meanwhile, we see the latest gas prices, and read about the exploding number of multi-millionaires— who still can’t fucking pass through the eye of any needle— and you just want to explode.

Amen, and hope for everyone that is caught in harm’s way. Susie’s post has a lot of helpful information about what to do if you’re one of those people. Don’t delay.

Image from BitHead.

Cemetery Man

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Tonight’s viewing: Cemetery Man, aka “Dellamorte, Dellamore,” aka “Of Death, Of Love” or “Of Love and Death,” which Martin Scorsese called one of the best Italian films of the 1990s. Directed by Dario Argento protege Michele Soavi, it is one of the strangest movies ever made. It’s way better than just one of the best Italian movies of the 1990s. This captivatingly beautiful weirdfest is a strange existential dissection of reality in the form, kinda, of a zombie movie. If you have not seen it, there is gore, exploding heads, sex with the dead (oodles of it), weird metaphorical horror shit (oodles of that, too) and the visual esthetic of a low-fi rotting-fruit still life, Peter Greenaway by way of Hitchcock and Evil Dead. It’s gorgeous and weird and one of the greatest flicks ever made, quite possibly in my opinion the greatest horror flick ever made — not least because it’s not a horror flick, really, it just has exploding heads and zombiefucking.

I saw Cemetery Man when it was “Dellamorte, Dellamore,” which I think was before it was released on tape in the U.S. I’d missed it during its brief sojourn in US theatres… though I’d had it recommended to me, I’d been burned by plenty of foreign horror films and didn’t go out of my way to see them in the theater (still don’t). I must have rented Dellamorte, Dellamore from the amazing Le Video in San Francisco, which for years was the only place I could rent foreign horror films. In particular, they had the best selection of Hammer films I had ever seen. Like you care? It’s late.

Image from Wikipedia.

Steinberger Spirit

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

I have been wanting one of these friggin’ things for months. The Steinberger guitar is the 6-string guitar version of the legendary Steinberger bass guitar, which was originally made of graphite and carbon fibre, rather than wood and sounds and plays like nothing else in the friggin’ world. The thing that makes the Steinberger different, whether in bass or guitar version, is that it tunes down at the bottom with a system that means it rarely goes out of tune. It is also just really small and looks all weird cyberpunk and freaky, something that appeals to my aesthetics.

The Spirit is the cheap version of both the bass and the guitar, and incorporates wood, but in my experience plays kinda like a Steinberger. Enough for my purposes, since I don’t play nearly enough electric guitar to justify buying the more expensive Synapse or the TranScale, which plays like a baritone but capos down to a standard scale. (The TranScale sounds interesting, though I’ve never played a bari guitar… some amazing effin’ sounds out of the baritone guitar, and I’ve always had such a fondness for Ennio Morricone.)

Anyway…. I’ve been eyeballing the cheapass version at MusicYo forever, promised “This item will be available on 5/1/08,” “This item will be available on 5/31/08,” and subsequently “This item will be available on 7/1/08″ and then “7/31/08″… and now they tell me no, we don’t know when it’ll be available, check these other fine retailers.

God damn it!! Back to the Washburn… but “Lucrezia, My Reflection” just doesn’t sound the same on it.

I Will Post Signs All Over Home Depot

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Roberta will post signs all over Home Depot if she does not get her money.

What does that mean? Pretty obvious. Why Home Depot? I don’t even want to know.

Via PassiveAggressiveNotes.com

Glamorous Glennis

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

The Picture of the Day today (well, actually, tomorrow — guess it’s GMT) on Wikipedia is a great newsreel about Chuck Yeager’s breaking the sound barrier on October 14, 1947.

Yeager, now in his mid-eighties, is a supporter of right-wing right-to-life Congressmensch Duncan Hunter, who supported a bill that allows parents to sue pornographers for imperiling their children. For further reading: My Right Wing Childhood Heroes, Volume Eleventy-Seven.

Joss Whedon by Jo Anslow, via Wikipedia

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

Happy birthday, slightly late, to Joss Whedon, creator (like duh) of “Firefly” / Serenity, “Buffy,” “Angel,” and the forthcoming “Dollhouse.”

Big screamin’ geeks everywhere, eat cake.

Photo: Joss Whedon at the "Serenity" premiere, 2005. By Jo Anslow, via Wikipedia.

Colombia

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

I totally missed this last Friday — it apparently happened just in time for the weekend…

BOGOTA, Colombia - A truck loaded with cocaine flipped after taking a curve too fast, spilling nearly a ton of the drug across a Colombian highway.

Police said the drugs were hidden in the truck’s walls and roof, which ripped open Thursday when the vehicle overturned in Medellin, 155 miles north of the capital, Bogota.

The driver escaped injury but was quickly arrested.

Image from CIA.gov

Moon Over Miami by Mark Averette via Wikipedia

Originally uploaded by Thomas Roche

I think Miami is my next vacation spot… not just because of this news item, but because the name of the madam is Christina Morta — I can only hope it’s a typo and her real name is “Morte.” Death as a bus-riding, lap-dancing prostitute is a longtime dream of mine, and if I were in Miami (or anywhere in Florida) I would most definitely want to know the cold embrace of Death.

From ABC 10:

Miami Beach police made 75 arrests as part of a prostitution crackdown meant to clean up the city.

According to police, Christina Morta was operating what appeared to be a brothel on wheels; a bus with five prostitutes on board that made regular stops along South Beach.

“One of our undercover officers saw the bus driving up and down Collins Avenue, was able to get on the bus for a certain amount of money, and saw the illegal activity going on inside,” said Miami Beach Det. Juan Sanchez

Morta allegedly charged $40 for patrons to board the quarter million-dollar bus. Once on board, prostitutes received even more money for performing lap dances and various sex acts, police said.

Police said Morta, the so-called madam, was also one of the prostitutes.

Image: Moon Over Miami from Wikipedia.