Rocky Horror After All These Years

To anyone who has not ever seen Rocky Horror Picture Show, do not read any farther.  Go see it, and then come back.  I'll wait.

* * * * *

I go way back with Rocky Horror, having first seen it in D.C. during its live tour of the states somewhere in the late 70's.  People more in the know than I wore costumes, although I recall an announcement that, because these were live actors, we would not be allowed to throw stuff.  We were, however, allowed and encouraged to bring our cups of beer into the theater.

I honestly don't remember when I saw the movie version, but somewhere during the W. years I actually bought the 2-disc 25th anniversary DVD.  I don't often invest in a DVD, figuring that life is too short to imagine wanting to see a movie more than once.  Since then, I watch it every few years.  I also own the soundtrack.

The music is absolutely great rock 'n' roll.  The actors overact to perfection.  Tim Curry is just plain sexy.  The movie is a stitch.

So I have been thinking for years about going to a midnight showing of Rocky Horror.  Shortly after I moved here I learned that there were showings the first Friday of each month at James Island's Terrace Theater, a local treasure despite or possibly because of its sour management.  But midnight is pretty late for me; I like to be in my jammies much earlier.  And though I try not to let it, being older and living alone at times thwarts my sense of adventure.

But lately a great friend said she would really like to go to the midnight showing, and we made plans, three of us older women.  And let me just say here to those young folk who think they invented shock and pornography:  my generation OWNS Rocky.  Let's see what midnight showings y'all go to when you're sixty-six years old.  My guess is, Rocky.

When Rocky was a young cult film, it quickly became an audience participation thing.  Maybe because it is impossible to sit through it a second time without wanting to sing the songs and yell out the lines.  People brought props:  rice for the wedding scene, squirt guns for the rainstorm and toast for, well, the toast before dinner.

Sadly, last night we forgot to bring the rain gear.

And who could not want to jump up and do the "Time Warp?"

At some point, carried away by their muses, some just ran up to the front of the theater and began acting with their favorite character.  Hence, shadowcast.

The whole business of the shadowcast is important.  Because the version we saw last night had an actual paid shadowcast.  I scratched my head a little at that, thinking: wasn't it the audience that did the shadowing?  But I figured it was just something I had missed out on all these years.  It had to be great.

In fact, the shadow cast appeared to be having a good time.  They walked around for what seemed like hours, in costume of course, tossing f-bombs and selling raffle tickets.  An 11:30 showtime really meant midnight-ish, which is fine.  As the time approached, the guy in charge -- and imagine that, a guy in charge -- introduced the shadow cast, made some bad jokes, and then did a couple of really odd ice-breaker thingies.  By odd I mean choosing "virgins" from the audience (those who had never been to see Rocky) -- this was not the odd part -- having them come to the front of the theater, and play a game they called "pass the dildo."  Let me pause here to suggest that it would be more in line with the ambience of Rocky Horror to call it "pass the sausage."  Sausage being more suggestive, if you know what I mean.

There were a few rules, one of them being we weren't allowed to throw rice, which meant we three no longer had props.  I assumed this rule was because somebody got a kernel in the eye at some point, but I had to discount the potential injury rationale when, during the dinner scene, members of the cast began to toss handfuls of hard candy at us.  We were also warned that the cast would be circulating around the theater.  Consider us warned.

What I did not expect was that the shadow cast was LOUD.  They didn't just recite the lines, or even toss out the famous responses.  They stood on each side of the theater yelling obscenities that had little to do with what was actually going on, much like drill sergeants with Tourette's.  I felt for one of my friends who had never seen the movie (no, she did not stand when they asked for "virgins"), as there was no way she could pick up even the admittedly miniscule and obvious plot.

The saddest thing about this shadow cast is that they lacked, not subtlety, but cleverness.  There was a lot of yelling about sticking things in normally unmentionable places, and what I understand has evolved into a common routine of calling Janet a "slut."  Just not funny.  And, if you know me, you know I do not shy away from the occasional dirty word, but I do believe that if you are going to riff something clever, you ought to attempt to be clever at it.

Despite the shadow people, the audience was having a great time.  A lot of them were quiet, a number got up and did the Time Warp, the young lady in front of us should have been a member of a much better shadow cast.  I wondered why they needed to pay people to do what we in the audience would have been glad to do for free.  At times the yelling died down and it was great to see Rocky on the big screen.  And I don't mean to be snarky, but the fact that there wasn't a raised stage meant that you didn't even have to pay attention to the acting shadow cast members.

Rocky Horror Picture Show is just one sexy movie.  It reflects the freedom of the 70's, when the sexual freedom we are these days struggling to be allowed to express privately was celebrated publicly.  I hope Tim Curry doesn't mind that some of us think that Frank N. Furter is his greatest role ever, and Susan Sarandon just brings joy to discovering how great sex feels.

The sexiest word in the entire movie is... "antici   pation."  And it was shouted over.  What should have been a two-hour sexual tease turned out to be an assault.

So if you can, find a theater that is showing Rocky without a shadow cast.  When Dr. Scott enters the room and Brad yells "Great Scott!" you may want to have your roll of toilet paper to toss.  And you'll know when to shine your flashlight.

On Halloween night, I'll be at home watching my DVD with my black cat, Molly.  We won't be tossing rice, not because of injuries, but because I'd have to clean it up afterwards.  But I'll be singing along, shouting some of the lines, and I may even jump up and dance a little.

I am looking forward to it with great antici                                                                                                    pation.

On the Anniversary of the Death of Princess Di

This is what I was doing on the day Princess Diana died.

I was in Rhode Island, my home, with my family -- my husband, nearly ten-year-old daughter, and six-year-old son.  We were going to the Cajun Bluegrass Festival...

...which we had been doing every Labor Day weekend since 1992. This would be our last time there.  Marital tensions and an eventual move to South Carolina brought an end to those weekend festivals.

But in 1997, when I called in the summer to make reservations for the weekend, for some crazy reason, all my usual haunts were booked.  As were all the other hotels anywhere near Escoheag, and by anywhere near Escoheag, I mean thirty miles from Escoheag, which is nowhere near anything.

I couldn't believe there was nowhere in Rhode Island -- Rhode Island! -- that had a hotel room for us, so we just booked it on over there, and tried finding something along the motel/fastfood highway that runs from South County to Warwick.  Nothing.

We stopped in to visit a third cousin ("aunt"), one of the few family members I was close to, but apparently not close enough.  Guido, one of my favorite warm and sweet distant "uncles," worked in the post office, and back in the pre-internet travel days, he knew how to make his way around anything and anywhere.  So he dug around trying to find a motel with a vacancy.  It puzzles me to this day that an invitation to spend the night there was never offered.  I do come by my curmudgeonly ways honestly.

What Uncle Guido came up with was the Leprechaun Motel.  Sadly, the only reference I could come up with was from 2008.  But it looks a bit like this:

...only smaller and sadder.  I do recall a leprechaun smirking somewhere on a sign in front of the building.

I need to take a few moments to talk about the Leprechaun Motel, as it is such an important part of this story.  I grew up in Warwick, and the Leprechaun Motel has always, always been there.  It has always been a tiny building with a leprechaun somewhere in front of it, unimpressive, just there.

The room looked a bit like this one:

  

...only smaller and sadder.  I think it was somewhat dirty, but no critters.  The toilet worked erratically.  There may have been bunk beds crammed in with a double bed.  There was definitely a television set.

We no sooner got settled in than it started to rain.  Really rain.  So we decided on a movie.  It may have been a Disney movie, but I do remember waiting in front of the theater in the car and reading Tom Sawyer aloud.

Back at the hotel, we settled in as best we could.  The highlight of the stay was watching The Brady Bunch Movie before bed.

Since we had all begun to finally relax, that was when my husband flew into a rage.  After he was done making me crazy, he was fine, we continued to watch the movie, and in my mind we definitely moved out the next day.  I don't have any idea where we stayed the next couple of days, so it may have been a trick of my memory.

During that evening at the Leprechaun Motel, the movie was interrupted with the news of Diana's death.  I don't follow the royals, all I know is that she seemed to be just what those stuffed shirts needed:  a young, modern woman who was not from royalty and actually had some clue what the world was all about.

So I don't know what to say, really, about the fact that every single time I hear about Diana's death back in 1997, it is inextricably linked with our night at the Leprechaun Motel.

Heps of Happiness

If you are craving laughter that doesn't involve meetings with Russians, you have got to read Paula Poundstone's new book, The Totally Unscientific Study of the Search for Human Happiness.

Paula and I are kindred spirits.  If you are honest, most of you are kindred spirits with Paula Poundstone.  She reaches into my heart and tickles it.

I was so happy when she began to appear as a contestant on Wait, Wait Don't Tell Me.  If you could do scans of my brain while listening to Paula, you'd see the happiness part light up over and over and over.  When she says something hilarious, I laugh because it is a combination of surprise and recognition.

For example, if you ask her how she ended up with sixteen cats, she will tell you she had fifteen and then got one more.

She does have sixteen cats, and a couple of dogs so that people will think of her as a pet lover rather than a cat lady.  She has three adopted kids.  She has wrestled with her own demons, and she has wrestled with her kids and her pets.

I believe the idea for this book came out of her appearances on Wait, Wait.  She stops the show frequently when Peter Segal describes the results of a scientific experiment to demand to know things like:  who on earth would think of this?  and:  why would you even want to measure that? and:  I would like to know just how they got somebody to do that.

Putting two and two together, she came up with the brilliant idea of unscientifically searching for happiness.  She tries exercise, the internet, organizing, movie day, volunteering and more, and pseudo-scientifically describes in great details and tangents the results.

Last night I dreamed of my son, who is nearly twenty-six.  In the dream he was somewhere around four.  His image in my dream was so real I woke up smiling.  But in the dream he had come up to me and asked me if I would listen to him read, and I (lovingly) told him that I didn't have time right now.  That is the effect of being let in to Paula Poundstone's family.  It is the acknowledging of infinite love and innumerable shortcomings.

This is Paula:

Alley chose a college in Oregon.  I drove her the seventeen hours from here to there in time for her freshman orientation before I realized, I can't do this every day.  So I just left her.

My daughter would recognize me in that story.

Paula decided her family needed a movie day.  I have lots of movie stories, but two stand out.

One day, we went to a matinee (lower price) of a horror movie.  They were advertising a horror double feature later that day.  So we went out and grabbed a burger and came back for two more horror movies.

Another time, when my daughter was reading Macbeth in class, I suggested we watch some movie versions.  There were three at the library, so we spent a day watching all three and comparing them.  None of us to my knowledge is a big fan of movies of Shakespeare's plays, and honestly it isn't my idea of fun, but that day was fun.

A couple of years ago, I saw Paula perform at the Charleston Music Hall.  She began by telling the audience that she would love to talk to us after the show.  And then she performed for two full hours.  I hope she enjoyed it as much as we did, and that she didn't do it because she just couldn't think how to stop talking.  At one point, she lay down on the floor, I think to show us her socks.

She always finds a person in the audience to talk to, which is why I specifically ask for a seat farther back.  It is amazing when this happens, but I believe I would be the person who just sat there, unable to say a word.

Paula wrote one other memoir, in 2004, titled There's Nothing In This Book That I Meant To Say.  This means that I could be 79 years old when she writes her next one.  I can't wait.

Meanwhile she has a new podcast, Live from the Poundstone Institute, in which she continues her unscientific studies.  So that will help me get by while I wait for her next book.

Today is my birthday.  I am not with my family, but I have been so happy to spend the time with Paula and her family.  Thanks, Paula, for all the heps of happiness you have sent my way.

Harry Potter and the Aging Parents

Imagine my surprise to hear that Harry Potter turned twenty in June.  We all remember where we were when tragedy happens; I think discovering Harry Potter is one of those few and precious unforgettable joyful memories.

I remember the review I read that prompted me to pick up the book at our wonderful Emma S. Clark Library.  And I remember reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone on our patio in Stony Brook, Long Island, to my ten-year-old daughter and six-year-old son.  The dates don't seem to add up; it may have been an article about the book before the review, or it may just be magic.

It was always a beautiful summer day in my memory, so I will leave it as such.  In that following school year, in her sixth grade class, my daughter's teacher read the book to the students.

When we moved to Charleston in the fall of 1999, I began to volunteer at my son's school library.  When Harry and the Prisoner of Azkaban came out in 1999, the librarian, who was a wonderful woman who loved children and children's books, told me she would not be ordering a copy.  There were parents in the district who thought that the series was thought to advocate witchcraft, wizardry and... satanism.  She did not want to risk the can of worms that a challenge by an irate parent would open.  I was horrified.

But only a couple of years later, as an employee of the Charleston County Public Library, I saw that the tables had turned, and Harry Potter could not be stopped.  Not only were new books bought as soon as possible, but as soon as the book was on the library website, hundreds of requests for holds were placed.  In what I think was a questionable move on the administration's part, library employees were not allowed to place holds, not even when the book became available for hold to the public, until after the book was actually out and available.  No matter, it was one of the few purchases that was a given in my home.

I recall the excitement when the boxes came in to the branches, were loaded onto carts, as requests were filled and people came in to grab their copy.  I have never seen anything like it.

We had a tradition then in my family, that we would read the book together.  It is a tradition that I believe my daughter resents to this day.  Because she wanted to be first to read it, with all her friends.  I understand that now, but still put my foot down.  It was a family tradition that was golden, and I hated to let it go.  We sped the reading up, though, each of us grabbing the book to read chapters silently and then getting together at night to read one together.  A compromise, one I hope Antoinette understands.

Then there were the movies.  The search for Harry Potter.  Yes, I know I'm his mom, but there is no mistaking the resemblance:

I believe this is Harry with the Golden Snitch

Not just me -- for years his friends and even strangers would comment on Nik's resemblance to Harry Potter.

In 2004, I decided to start over, on my own, with Sorcerer's Stone.  I don't usually reread books; as the adage goes, "So many books, etc."  But this was special, and well worth it.

I know the play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, got great fanfare last year.  I read the book, and it was fine.  The movies were not as bad as the critics might lead one to believe.  But those seven books are miraculous.  They made our kids laugh and the dramatic adventures didn't just keep them on the edge of their seats, they were battles of right and wrong.  Kids that were averse to reading learned the pleasures that come from the pages of books.  They fired the imagination, created writers as well as readers.  They inspired independent and creative thought.  And they won the battle over censorship here in the town where my kids were growing up.

The other thing about Rowling's masterpiece is what the series did for children's literature.  Writers were inspired to write children's books that challenged the imagination.  Publishers, learning the lesson from those who had rejected Sorcerer's Stone, were willing to take a risk on new voices.  Stories were more courageous.

So, twenty years later, they may be fond memories for me and millions of others (and I may just take the time to read the series yet again), but Harry Potter and his adventures could be the most influential books in the history of children's literature.

So, if you haven't been to Hogwarts lately, you might just want to grab a handful of Bertie Bott's Every Flavour Beans, and that well-worn copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and enjoy the journey.

All I Know -- Mothers Day Ruminations

I became a psychologist, as many do, to find answers to my own questions.  Much of the time I can sort my way through my angst and agita, but right now I am at one of those points where there are just too many bits colliding.

Part of it has to do with missing family.  Part of it has to do with the chaos and destruction going on in a country which liberties I had taken for granted most of my life.  Right now quite a bit of it has to do with chronic pain, and the piece that makes all the other pieces throb: money.

I am a smart person, I was a good psychologist, later I had a job I loved at the library, but a combination throughout my life of bad luck and timing and tough decisions has meant that, except for very short periods, I have lived with financial insecurity.  And right now, there are unique aspects to this financial insecurity, not unique to me but unique in this later part of my life.

My mother's death in 1983, at 63 years old, was the first tectonic shift in my perspective of mortality.  Over the years after her dying, I realized that I had come to see my own life not moving past 63 years.  When my husband developed pancreatic cancer and died at age 77, my fear of death and denial-based perspective finally went out the window, but not in a bad way.  I would no longer play that game of, “when my daughter is _____ years old, I’ll be….”

Somewhat to my surprise, I turned a fairly healthy sixty-three.  And during Stephan’s dying, I talked and read about mortality.  Christopher Hitchens had died too young of cancer; Terry Pratchett was dying at the time, and gave us a last gift of allowing us to walk with him awhile as he approached his death.  Today, I don’t do that math game, but think more short-term of family visits.  I appreciate the fact that despite my bad knees and arthritic body, I am playing tennis again.  The most exciting part of which is the feeling of being totally in the moment:  watch the ball, anticipate your opponent’s next move, and get there.  When I am on the tennis court, I may occasionally spazz out as my hand loses its grip on the racket, and when I run I still don’t get there fast enough, but I feel more graceful than I do anywhere else in my life.  And for that, that I thought I had lost forever, I am grateful.

But over the years, even though I have exercised some discipline with a budget, there was always a little more savings.  I’ve always loved to get away, family visits and beach vacations, and even on a budget they have been times away that I lived for.  And then I realized that the savings were really finite.  And shrinking fast.  And the wolves in congress are circling the poor and middle class, which angered me but didn’t frighten me, until lately, as the dollars and cents of health care costs have been eating away at my savings.

I worry about leaving the house, more so since my old car, getting ready to roll over 200,000 miles, finally had that big breakdown that I knew was inevitable.  The getaway I had planned so I wouldn’t be at home alone on my birthday just wouldn’t work with the thousand dollar car repair.  The car repair is a gamble; if it is going to be the first of many I will be shoveling money into it that I should be spending on a “new” car, but if it is going to be fine for awhile, it is a bargain.

And yet, it is a bargain I can’t afford.  I can’t afford all the insurances that we all pay out, but I have to pay them out.  With less than 18 months left on my mortgage, that $500 a month is a modest cost for housing, but last year began with expensive plumbing repairs and ended with Hurricane Matthew finishing off my roof.

I am really, really good at stretching a dollar.  But at this point, the things I know I will need to cut are those things that give my life meaning.

I’ve talked in my other blog about the greed and ignorance by which most Americans are victimized, so I won’t go on about it here.

But that financial insecurity is at the root of the sadness and depression that play in the background of my life these days.  My desire to close myself off from others has more to do with the cost of leaving the house than any wish to be alone.  The anxiety of being stranded by my old car, exacerbated by the costly and somewhat frightening breakdown, can’t be understated, because that is my lifeline.  The cost to visit my family, all too busy and far away to come here, breaks my heart.

The mental math I try to avoid these days has to do with whether my meager savings will last as long as I do.  If I have a short few years remaining, I may not have to wrestle with running out of savings.  But I get tired, tired, tired of the acrobatics it takes to save a few dollars, only to get hit with an unavoidable bill that mocks the dollars saved:  after paying $300 for a fairly routine dental visit, I got a bill a few weeks later for $58.  No, it wasn’t a mistake.  No, they didn’t know why I hadn’t been billed at the time of the visit.  Did I want to split it into two payments?  No, I said, because I wasn’t going to have any more next month than this month.

And I don’t mind not living high.  I don’t need all that much.  But having to agonize over every dollar I spend wears me out more than the chronic joint pain.

So as I am sitting on the porch this beautiful Mother’s Day, I am wishing I had more energy and more joy.  I know I am not special.  In this time, in this country, too many of us share these anxieties.  My daughter and son won’t have the luxury of going from good job to good job the way I did; they won’t have the pensions, and maybe not even the social security that has been chipped away at for decades.  I was lucky to have savings so many others don’t have.  When the powerfully stupid went to war in Iraq and spent our fortunes, it was the fortunes of people like me and you, not the fortunes of the rich.  As they are about to do again.

And yet I am going to turn off my computer and go outside and continue to read a gripping mystery by a writer I enjoy immensely.  I may not find joy today, but I will sort my anxieties out here, and then put them aside for today.

And that is all I know.