Diary of a Blood Ray - January 19th, 2005

I just finished two books, both on subjects I find compelling. The books, unfortunately, let their subjects down. The Rise and Fall of the Broadway Musical by Mark N. Grant sounds a lot more interesting than it really is. There’s a lot of information in here, but reading it feels more like school than anything else.

The other book, The Golden Girls of MGM by Jane Ellen Wayne, was actually a much worse read, but enjoyable in a bad movie-ish sort of way. It may well be the worst written book I’ve ever read. Ms. Wayne has no penchant for turning a phrase, and neither she nor her editors seem to know that commas are a free and useful piece of punctuation that anyone may employ.

This weekend Asher and I watched Cinema Paradiso, which I had never seen. It was quite good, though we watched the three hour director’s cut, and I think I could have done with the theatrical version.

We also watched Michael, a film that was billed a “Gay-themed German film from the silent era.” It was German, all right. And silent, too. Boring as fuck? Check. Gay-themed …? As Asher said, you had to really be looking to find any gay subtext. And I fell asleep before I had a chance to look too hard.

Speaking of totally gay (see the first two paragraphs), we finished our weekend movie orgy with  Grand Hotel. Wow. Now that was a fucking movie. It may be slightly ridiculous to start gushing about a movie that is seventy-three years old and most everyone has already seen (except Shania, whose No Black and White and/or No Subtitles rule is pretty firm - which means she would have retched at Cinema Paradiso as well), but this movie just blew me away. Made before the cinematic reign of terror that was the Hayes Code, this movie hold us surprisingly well. From Greta Garbo’s freaky yet fascinating affected style of acting to the double Barrymore whammy, this movie really got to me.  If you can handle black and white movies, and haven't seen this one yet, I urge you to take a look. 

I mentioned to Asher that this was prior to Joan Crawford’s (alleged) abuse of her children, as he was totally unaware of Mommie Dearest. He seemed surprised, and a little saddened by it.

It’s interesting that as you learn details about the private lives of celebrities, or hear tell of their off-screen antics, how that can affect how you feel about their work. While I never cared for the music of Skid Row, I’m still revolted to this day by Sebastian Bach’s “AIDS - Kills Fags Dead” t-shirt. I think there was some incoherent attempt at an apology by him, in which he mentioned his grandmother died of cancer and he’d be pretty upset if someone was walking around wearing a t-shirt that said “Cancer - Kills Grandmas Dead.” To this day, I still get a little nauseated when I stumble upon him. I don’t like that he has a recurring role on Gilmore Girls.

Yesterday, out of the blue, Asher said to me, very seriously, “I’ve been thinking about what you told me and I just don’t think I like that lady, after what she did to her children.”

I hope he’s not a Skid Row fan.