American Fez

The Bookish Guy at a Halloween Party Circa 1998

"I am Karr from Theophile Gautier's classic short story The Opium Smoker." I explained helpfully to the buxom She-Devil prodding me with her plastic pitchfork. She looked me up and down, frowned, and then moved silently away.
I encountered her again later, talking to some guy dressed as Dracula. "He is not Dracula from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula." I wanted to explain unhelpfully. "But Dracula from the WalMart discount coupon leaflet that was stuffed inside last Sunday's Boston Herald."

Suffer Little Children

Child prodigies could once expect lavish hospitality and influential patronage at the splendid palaces of European royalty. Alas, nowadays the best such a musical genius can hope for is a guest spot on TV's Amazing Kids. It has been a sad decline from delighting the Austro-Hungarian court with sublime virtuosity to playing second fiddle - quite literally - to an obese brat who can eat twenty hot dogs in thirty seconds.
This is very personal subject with me since my illustrious ancestor Ebeneezer Baldewyn had been a child progidy in the seventeenth-century, although, unusually, he found early fame as the gravity-defying boy on the end of an Indian Rope Trick rather than as a more conventional juvenile violinist.
"Why does that ugly old woman smell?" He reputedly asked when being presented to an assembly of female aristocrats at Versailles.
"Because that is the Inflatulata of Cadiz," he was told.
It is such a great shame that such wonderful personages have vanished from the face of the Earth like dinosaurs and the dodo.

Fireside Chats With Famous Men

"Yesterday," Paul MacCartney explained, "All my troubles seemed so far away, love was such an easy game to play, and now I need a place to hide away."
"Well you can't stay here." I told him. "I've made my mind up and no amount of boyish charm or wheedling Liverpudlian accent from you is going to change it. There isn't enough room, and besides, I don't want to be woken up in the middle of the night by all your disgruntled ex-girlfriends slamming the door behind them when they go without giving you any explanation why they're leaving. And I won't even mention all the marijuana smoking and Hindoo mumbo-jumbo you get up to."
His face fell and he became downcast, somewhat diminished, as if he were merely a fraction of his former self.
"The trouble is that you dwell too much in the past." I continued, "Reflecting on past glories when you should be thinking about the future."
"It's true." He agreed. "It's just that I've got such a shadow hanging over me and I feel like I'm only half the man I used to be." There was a brief pause while Paul digested this important piece of self-actualization, and then: "Are you sure I can't crash on your couch?" He pleaded. "It'll only be for a night or two until I get my troubles sorted out, I swear." It was a pathetic sight, seeing this former mop top hit the mopey bottom. "You need professional help, my friend." I told him, shaking my head. "And I believe you need it, like, yesterday, because, let's face it, there really won't be any room for old popstars in the World of Tomorrow."

Update: Apparently there is lots of room for old popstars in the world of tomorrow. In fact the world of tomorrow can't seem to get enough of them. So I was wrong. Obviously I don't know the first thing about the World of Tomorrow or how it operates. I guess that's why Paul's a multi-millionaire superstar and I'm just a poor, anonymous blogger.

Sunday Sprawl

Waking up late, I discovered that a shaft of lazy sunlight had fallen asleep across me at some point during the dawn, draping itself over my bed like a particularly catatonic Dali clock and stealing most of the sheets. No matter how much I struggled the slumbering sunray simply would not budge; and so I'm still here, horizontal with my head haunted by all the things I should be doing, laptop squatting on my stomach like a morning equivalent of Fuseli's nightmare. This is the last time I read Gerard de Nerval before I go to bed, I can tell you that much.

Thought For The Day

The French poet Gerard de Nerval hung himself to death with an ancient strip of ribbon that he claimed was once the Queen of Sheba's garter belt. One marvels at how enormous her thighs must have been to require a garter belt of such dramatic length.

New Undertakings

Being mindful of the possibility that, if elected president, John McCain might die in office of malignant melanoma, and that such an eventuality would leave our quaking nation in the overly-manicured and incapable hands of a facial-tic afflicted buffoonette, I hereby volunteer my expert occult services to the government as Chief White House Necromancer; an ambassador to the afterlife responsible for raising McCain's phantom from the netherworld at twice weekly seance sessions held in the Oval Office. 
I would interpret McCain's views on current economic and foreign policy issues via the series of raps and knocks his disembodied knuckles would make inside a purpose-built Presidential Ouija Cabinet (POC). Three loud knocks and an unearthly moan, for instance, would mean "bomb Iran." 
Some cynical skeptics will obviously claim that most of the noises made by McCain also mean "bomb Iran," and that nobody needs special psychic powers to figure that out, but they'll be the ones left with serious ectoplasm all over their faces when Amadinejad's evil djinn slips disinformation into the circle and we invade Iceland by mistake instead.

The Presidential Disgrace

Since the presidential election has become such a celebrity egg-and-spoon race, an amateur talent competition in which lipstick shade, star-power and comedic personality traits are apparently the most important factors, I am waiting to discover which candidate People magazine endorses before I cast my vote. They are the experts, after all. No doubt the views of Plumber's Monthly should be taken into account, also, but alas my dentist does not subscribe to that particular publication. The rate things are going, in twenty years of time I am pretty certain the public will go to the polls and be forced to choose between two teenagers: the "Republican-or-Whatever" and the "Like, Democrat" candidates.

Raggety

The Urban Scarecrow squats in Copley Place surrounded by his turnip harvest; the sidewalk become a root vegetable smorgasbord; a one-man farmer's market; and he a refugee from Rupert Bear, trying to make ends meet in the real world by selling turnips in pumpkin season, and consequently symbolic, perhaps, of a certain strain of perennial bad luck.
The turnips were arranged in two rows of four on a grubby-looking Chinoise pattern head scarf; a vain attempt, or so it seemed to me, to invest the scraggly things with an alluring degree of Eastern promise, but instead made them look like something blown out of an ogre's nose into his oldest handkerchief.
I couldn't help but think that even a Victorian match-seller might have met with better luck on that particular patch.

See also: George

Board Games

It always amuses me how much Manhatten really does resemble the game called Monopoly rather than the other way round. And so who can blame Wall Street tycoons for wiping their backsides with the world's savings in a city where nobody would be surprised to observe a pair of dice come tumbling out of the sky, or to suddenly find themselves stuck in traffic behind an old silver boot on Broadway? "You realise that the reason why your glass keeps sliding off the table," I said to my friend Gloria Perkins as we ordered more wine while catching up in the bar of the Bowery Hotel. "Is because Time is finally folding up the board and all the counters and cash, Chance and Community Chest cards are being poured back into the box."
On Friday morning I took the Acela back to Boston where there were three new Visa offers waiting for me in my mailbox.

Camel Trading

Stock market fortunes rise and fall overnight like the temperature in the desert. One moment there is a sandstorm, the next there are dazzling golden dunes as far as the eye can see. Your money is a mirage. You have invested in the illusion of an oasis. "Nothing is written," said Lawrence of Arabia, and that includes the signature on the check you thought you were getting.

Quote for the Week

"The man fit to make a fortune in this ancient capital of Italy must be a chameleon sensitive to all colors which the light casts on his surroundings. He must be flexible, insinuating, a great dissimulator, impenetrable, obliging, often base, ostensibly sincere, always pretending toknow less than he does, keeping to one tone of voice, patient, in complete control of his countenance, cold as ice when another in his place would be on fire ... Of all these necessary qualities - I do not know if I am boasting or admitting my deficiency - I possessed only obligingness, which, without the others, is a fault."

Giacomo Casanova, History of My Life

Just Be Yourself

The inapropriately named tenth month called October with its burden of thrity-one days, the last of which is All Hallows' Eve when coffin lids creak open and the spirits of dead men whisper: "You know, I don't think I'm going to bother this year."
And why should they? After all, I doubt that the living of today are really worth haunting. It must be extremely difficult for a faint apparition to compete for attention with a flickering high definition television; or for a cold spot in the corner to make its clammy presence felt in the world of central heating. And what is the point of being a skeleton if you don't glow-in-the-dark? And which is more scary: the headless horseman witnessed beneath a pale moon, or an overweight hooligan with no neck manoeuvering a stolen mobility scooter across your path?
I have no doubt that the dead have long since lost their patience with us. They are becoming fainter and fainter while we are growing fatter and fatter. Yes, the true horror this Hallowe'en will simply be the human race in all its gluttonous glory, so take a tip from me: go trick-or-treating dressed as yourself.

Autumn Reverie Gone Wrong

Mother Nature changes the color of her hair from green to reddish-brown.
With black streaks for where there is pollution, and rusty coke-can curlers tangled up in greasy candy wrapper ribbons concealing all the holes we've drilled in her poor head.
I wonder why she still cradles us to her once abundant bosom, since we human leeches greedily sucked those tits as dry as dead leaves long ago. 

United Straits of America

Americans will never express effective, meaningful anger with their spineless government and manipulative financial institutions until that grim day arrives when they can no longer afford satellite TV, microwave popcorn and purple sweatpants. But for now, with only our retirement savings erased, we merely confine ourselves to miserable mutterings and disgusted shakes of the head around the watercoolers of the country's office kitchens. One can't help but feel that Paul Revere would have stuck a sabre up somebody's anus; Danial Boone would've de-sacked and eaten their testicles; and even Johnny Appleseed would've beaten the living shit out of a CEO or two. We do nothing except consider shifting our investments around. How times change.

Virginia Woolf on MySpace

A woman must have an internet connection and a MySpace of her own if she is to write excruciatingly embarrassing online diary entries about herself.
For example, William Shakespeare owned a powerful, 120GB laptop with which he constantly networked on Facebook, Twitter and IM using the free wireless at Starbucks, but his sister was forced to make do with a Yahoo email account of limited storage capacity which she could only access once a week in the computer room at the Public Library. Consequently she could never tag her friends in pictures, compile iTunes mixes of her favorite bands, or maintain an Amazon wish list.
Such a woman was unable to post a video of herself disguised as an Elizabethan gentleman on YouTube. Nor could she have liveblogged her own suicide in the River Ouse.

See also:

The Phantom of the Opera's Facebook Page

King Kong's Facebook Page

All Is HG Wells And All Manner Of Thing Shall Be HG Wells

Low Expectations

The Invisible Man Goes Social Networking

Bull in a China Shop

For the past five years I have been engaged upon the completion of an extremely challenging jigsaw: Vermeer's View of Delft in twenty-million mind-bending pieces. The enormous size of this puzzle, almost forty-times larger than the actual painting and consequently impossible to contain within the confines of any room in my house, has necessitated the construction of a special "Jigsaw Arena" in my garden at the expense of my wife's flower beds and trellis.
Floodlights have been installed for evening sessions when, suspended from my modified trapeze harness, I abseil horizontally back and forth across the face of the jigsaw struggling with some of the more complex cloud sections. The edge pieces are now in place, which includes all of Vermeer's delicate weather effects and half of the Rotterdam Gate, the tiny figures by the canal, and that house on the left hand side of the picture. Indeed, I was happily contemplating completion of the whole jigsaw years when I encountered an unforeseen problem.
Somehow, pieces from a fantasy-theme Minotaur jigsaw must have got muddled up with my View of Delft at the printing factory, and so now, instead of Vermeer's shipyard and the rest of the Rotterham Gate, the middle of my jigsaw has been invaded by a muscular beast dragging a naked maiden through his Cretan labyrinth. I'm sure you can imagine my dismay, and I take no comfort from the irony of a puzzle of a mythological puzzle appearing within the original puzzle, either. Is it some sort of sign? What can it all mean?

(I'm sorry. I have no idea why I write these things. I'll go on vacation again soon and do more proper blog postings like those below)

Szentendre

The train to Szentendre trundles out of Batthyány Square, briefly shunts itself along a section of subterranean track, and then emerges into daylight, surrounded by a hodgepodge of crumbling, balconied apartment blocks and the dregs of tourist Budapest. It runs northwards alongside the Danube, stopping at stations with names that sound like diseases of the throat: Timar Utca; Filatorigat; Aquincum and Csilleghagy.
Rhonda's valiantly hesitant attempts at speaking Hungarian had obtained two tickets each for us at Batthyány Square: there and back, or so we thought, but they were actually only one-way fares to our destination, since the route is bisected by the end of the Metro line before metamorphosing into suburban public transport. At least I think that's what was the logic behind the double ticketing.
There didn't seem to be any other tourists making the trip that day, and we virtually had the compartment to ourselves for the last leg of the journey. Indeed, Szentendre seems almost designed to exist inside a souvenir snow-globe, and contains very little that would appeal to an average, non-sightseeing visitor. I often wondered, as we tramped around its quaintly impractical, arts-and-crafts-shop filled streets, where the otherwise invisible locals purchased their weekly groceries and other humdrum articles necessary for leading a normal life. But perhaps they don't; perhaps living in this ancient Serbian town is so bewitching that they've all been turned to stone like this rather mordant looking gentleman:

The Danube is bucolic and beautiful here, and it is probably worth taking the boat trip back to Budapest if you can keep yourself occupied until it leaves in the early evening. My tip: one or two o'clock in the afternoon is probably a fine time to arrive in Szentendre; enough time to see what is worth seeing, decide upon a dinner venue, and browse the numerous paprika and lace shops.

Around Castle Hill, Budapest

An Austro-Hungarian theme park re-built in the ruins of war torn reality, Castle Hill is perhaps the most touristy area of Budapest, except when the royal palace is closed and there's nothing to do but take pictures of Rhonda admiring the courtyard.

And this decorative wrought iron Crow Gate which fortunately leads to the Ruszwurm cafe rather than the old Crow Road.

Or a citrus fruit colored phone box for the Hungarian equivalent of Superman to change inside: Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No. it's a Trabant P50

Perhaps even a trio of heavily mustachioed stone anglers-at-arms carved into the arches of the Fisherman's Bastion which they once famously defended.

And, of course, this fairytale vision of the Hungarian Parliament rising majestically on the Pest embankment opposite.

My Putin Write-In Vote

The most dismal aspect of the current economic situation is that all our so-called leaders are once more revealed as the most bovine of followers, from the risibly titled "President" on down. They really are an unpleasant herd of dung-producing, cud-chewing scumbags. And yet many of my fellowncitizens will vote again in a few weeks time. This is the real problem with America, it seems to me.