Movies for Halloween

Catching up on unseen horror movies.

(1) Karin has a friend who arranges “watch parties.” Everyone stays at home, watches simultaneously, and exchanges text messages.

Are they good movies? They are not.

How can a person love camp to the exclusion of all else? How does she persuade family and friends to watch with her, month after month, year after year? It boggles the mind.

Two sub-genres of camp are represented at these parties: Hallmark and horror. ’Tis the season for horror. (Hallmark is for Christmastime.)

I relate this, not to complain, but to admit that last week’s selection was well above average. I’m referring to Dario Argento’s Phenomena (1985). (Philomena, I kept wanting to call it.) It’s set in a girls’ boarding school in the Swiss Alps. Jennifer Connolly and other girls climb out of dormitory windows and wander through forests, at night. Some girls are murdered.

Then there’s the little matter of Connolly’s ability to communicate with insects.

Baddie going to slice you open? Just summon a swarm of flies to protect you.

And there’s a hyper-intelligent monkey. And there are turns by Patrick Bauchau and Donald Pleasance.

This is the second of Argento’s movies I’ve seen. Suspiria (1977), an earlier “watch party” selection, was much worse. Karin’s friend loved Phenomena so much, she was ready to watch it again the next day. I might choose to watch it again on an airplane, or in prison.

(2) Midsommar (2019) is a tedious Wicker Man rehash with an awesome performance by Florence Pugh.

It’s sometimes remarked that the character of Hamlet is much too splendid for the rest of the play. Something like this can be said of Midsommar. What if Ophelia (not Hamlet), inarticulate but facially and gesturally exquisite, were to visit a savage (Swedish!) tribe? What if her companions – one of them, her loutish boyfriend – were a bunch of Rozencrantzes and Guildensterns?

That’s what Midsommar is.

It must also be said that the opening scenes, which involve a murder-suicide, are genuinely wrenching. Everything turns silly after that.

Of toilets

The British famously named one of their scientific boats Boaty McBoatface; in the same spirit, I hereby christen our new toilet Flushton McFlushface – “Flushy,” for short. (Karin’s dad kindly installed it yesterday.)

“Flushy” resided some days in our parlor, inside a big box, and became like a piece of furniture to us – which, I suppose, is what it is. Samuel and Daniel played upon, and inside, the box.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

The Middle Ages weren’t always so-called. Likewise, our old toilet, previously unnamed, is now “Not Quite Flushy” because of its position in the History of Toilets – and because of its chief defect.

We carried it out to the front porch where, due to rain, churchgoing (ours, not the toilet’s), etc., it has remained. With luck, it’ll be immortalized by Google Street View. This afternoon it toppled onto its side. I don’t know if it was pushed by wind, urchins, or stray cats; or if a part of it simply crumbled.

I intend to break it into smaller pieces with a hammer, to fit it into the trash.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

Enough of toilets. For the second half of my reading year I’m plotting a march through Dostoevsky. Curious thing. His canon is crowned by the “five major novels.” Russians list them differently than do English speakers. Russians include The Adolescent; English speakers typically don’t. They might include Notes from the Underground (a novella) or reduce the list to four. It’s not as egregious as, e.g., Oregon’s having become the best college football team in the Midwest’s 18-team Big Ten Conference, but it’s gerrymandered, all right.

Anyway, I plan to read Notes, the Russians’ “five,” and probably The Double and The Gambler; so, either way, I’m covered.

P.S. See this useful webpage re: translations.

October’s poem

Ecuador 0, Paraguay 0.

More futility.

The ref and the VAR failed to decree a penalty kick for us.

Such mistakes happen less often in these days of video review. I’ll be interested to listen when CONMEBOL publishes the booth officials’ audio.

♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦

A rather chilling poem by John Keats:

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

This living hand, now warm and capable

Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold

And in the icy silence of the tomb,

So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights

That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood

So in my veins red life might stream again,

And thou be conscience-calm’d – see here it is –

I hold it towards you.

⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯⎯

Netflix just released a new Unsolved Mysteries season. One episode shows Britons talking with the dead. These spiritualists, with their fancy electronics designed for listening to bat-calls, first seem nutty … and then, well, they record some strange things.

Most remarkable, to me, is one spiritualist’s less-than-admiring verdict of another: “He’s possessed.”

You’d think they would have considered that risk from the beginning.

Too much

Reading:

• Dante Alighieri, Paradiso (yes, still)
• Isaiah Berlin, Four Essays on Liberty
• **Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked this Way Comes
• E. H. Carr, What Is History?
• *Erskine Childers, The Riddle of the Sands
• John Cottingham, ed., Western Philosophy (this anthology is terrific; if you only ever read one philosophy book all the way through, let it be this one)
• René Descartes, Discourse on the Method
• ***Charles Dickens, Hard Times
• G. R. Elton, The Practice of History
• E. M. Forster, Maurice
• **Elizabeth Gaskell, Gothic Tales
• Homer, Odyssey (this month’s fantasy book)
• Anne Jacobsen, Nuclear War: A Scenario
• C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
• The New English Bible, M’Cheyne schedule (Kings, Paul, Psalms, Ezekiel)
• Anthony Powell, The Kindly Ones (bk. 6 of A Dance to the Music of Time)
• Sally Rooney, Intermezzo (a library copy, barely begun; time is running out)
• **The Marquis de Sade, Justine, a.k.a. The Misfortunes of Virtue (so far, basically Candide)
• Peter Temple, Truth
• Laura Ingalls Wilder, By the Shores of Silver Lake (bk. 5 of the Little House series)
• Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations

Good grief.

* = for fall-time
** = for Halloween-time
*** = “for relaxing times”

My (cat) lady love

Happy birthday to Karin. I found an age-appropriate gift at Goodwill: a volume of James Herriot’s Cat Stories (large-print).

We celebrated at a Mexican ice-cream shop. Nachos, jalapeños, elotes, tortas, paletas, and ice-cream, washed down with mineral water: What could be better?

The shop’s Instagram page has a photo of ice-cream with spicy Cheetos in it.