On Whaleboat Road which is always busy with traffic I often go to meditate and figure stuff out.
The traffic starts very early in the morning and goes on all day, an unquenchable tide, and doesn't let up even late into the night.
Down on Whaleboat Road... in mid-afternoon... There I stand, in T-shirt, trainers, jeans. I have with me my ghetto-blaster, clutched by the handle. Looking sleepy at the grey road.
I loiter beside a big gaudily-coloured petrol station, whose canopy offers a sense of concealment. At one side is a bulky carwash, stationed beside which is a bank of buttons, and also a power point.
On the other side is a dull BnB with a gravelled drive.
I surreptitiously plug in the ghetto-blaster at the carwash power-point. On that bank of switches, of grim industrial plastic. Set it down, you can safely leave it plugged in for a while, the thing won't be conspicuous on that busy road if you want to run an errand or summat.
Take a selection say three or four CD's. Flip open the hatch and press it in. Glittering rainbow colours. Freebie CD's from fanzines are good, old unwanted CD's your friends don't want, ones with nice designs on, in glaring red or aqua-blue, gleaming and neat.
After your given, allotted time, or when fancy takes you, decide to go home. You're a busy man. With the grim, concentrated air of a council workman, taking no nonsense, unplug the ghetto blaster, and hoist it up by its matt black handle. Have a chat with a passing neighbour. Pass pleasantries, exchange banalities. Make sure the power-point is de-activated.
To get home, I go behind the petrol station to a rutted path and through a fence of trees to a disused railway line, which I pick my way along toward the house in which I live, which lies on a softly rising bank beside the rail-line. Waiting in the kitchen in the afternoon for my friend Mack to arrive.
He'd come in anxious in the yellowish, fading light, ready for an adventure of some kind. The notorious Mack, turning up unapologetically late, for an expedition to the town-centre, for a bus-trip into the wilderness. Might he bring his family? We'll all go on a trip! His hugely fat mother, her black hair and immense upper arms. His thin, smiling, authoritative father, in carpet slippers, with jug ears, from Derry. His amusing brother Terry, his pretty and convivial little sister. All come to see me.
At the carwash on Whaleboat Road, or waiting at home, what shall we listen to on this here cheap ghetto-blaster? Let's have some a that "alternative rock". No need to blare it too loud, inoffensive volume but of a decent loudness. Pop-punk is good for waiting... Of a Green Day type but not Green Day... Have you heard this band the Jimmies? From I believe the Pacific Northwest? Pennywise but avoid Fat Wreck... Mr. T Experience.... Squirtgun... Dreyfus!... the obscurer the better... such n such from blah blah Ohio... put out a cheap split CD... wholly typical.
Monday 31 March 2014
Friday 21 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 10 (Finale)
The legend of Alvin J. Crow came out in comicbook and movie form. You know, how the kid lured his fellow students into the museum by means of a spurious field-trip, how he detached himself from the group and hid behind a curtain, disguised as an exhibit, then dimmed the lights to create confusion and began picking off the students one by one, his special forte being decapitation. The movie version maybe went a little overboard with the special effects, but all in an attempt to emphasise Alvin's utter corruption, his inner depravity all let loose to transform his body into ashen, ancient white, and yet as raw as a fresh wound, evil personified. What movie audiences need is unique but blatant personifications of evil.
You should check out the comicbook version too: Centre-pages of issue #5 showed Alvin gloating over his harvested trophies. The little, blank-walled exhibition room, filled with pile upon pile of severed heads, most stacked neatly upright, but several tumbled loosely together, haphazardly thrown upon the heap. They filled the room to the depth of about a metre. The artist, faced with depicting a crowd of dead faces, has fallen back on his ruthless formula, and has inked with unusual deliberation and exactness, resulting in a mordant, even amusing illustration.
Pink faces, so neatly delineated in faultless black ink! Corn-yellow hair, still flowing and neat, on women's heads, a handsome young lad, with clear, regular features, hair an appealing chestnut-brown! Their eyes shut or rolled back in their sockets, their mouths gaping. No respect given to status, gender, or social class. The handsome kids, the respectable girls, uptown bankers and small time salesmen. All the heads flung in together. Victims of the infamous serial killer, Mr. Alvin J. Crow. Total head-count: 57. Dozens of other persons missing and suspected killed. Mr. Crow seemed to kill without discrimination, purpose, or reason.
Now as a kind of final stroke, or denouement, to our tale, wouldn't it be amusing if a head uppermost on the pile, say that of a small-scale coffee house owner, were all at once to flick open its eyes.
You know how the heads of guillotine-victims, when held up to the crowd, were reputed sometimes to roll their eyes, futilely, in stupefaction and bemusement? His expression can be like that.
His lips move, his vocal chords tense, he begins to form words. "They say it was the gas that did it... leaking fumes... chloroform, distilled in concentrate form... faulty piping, lethal... carbon monoxide... has killed us... ain't life a gas... (his eyelids drooping)... next time I'll count the heads..."
For Alvin, his lips softly moving, had begun to carefully count his trophies, his finger moving through the air.
End of movie. I've often lurched up from my cinema seat, puzzled and disappointed, and made my way too fast toward the exit, forgetting, already, the details of the plot.
You should check out the comicbook version too: Centre-pages of issue #5 showed Alvin gloating over his harvested trophies. The little, blank-walled exhibition room, filled with pile upon pile of severed heads, most stacked neatly upright, but several tumbled loosely together, haphazardly thrown upon the heap. They filled the room to the depth of about a metre. The artist, faced with depicting a crowd of dead faces, has fallen back on his ruthless formula, and has inked with unusual deliberation and exactness, resulting in a mordant, even amusing illustration.
Pink faces, so neatly delineated in faultless black ink! Corn-yellow hair, still flowing and neat, on women's heads, a handsome young lad, with clear, regular features, hair an appealing chestnut-brown! Their eyes shut or rolled back in their sockets, their mouths gaping. No respect given to status, gender, or social class. The handsome kids, the respectable girls, uptown bankers and small time salesmen. All the heads flung in together. Victims of the infamous serial killer, Mr. Alvin J. Crow. Total head-count: 57. Dozens of other persons missing and suspected killed. Mr. Crow seemed to kill without discrimination, purpose, or reason.
Now as a kind of final stroke, or denouement, to our tale, wouldn't it be amusing if a head uppermost on the pile, say that of a small-scale coffee house owner, were all at once to flick open its eyes.
You know how the heads of guillotine-victims, when held up to the crowd, were reputed sometimes to roll their eyes, futilely, in stupefaction and bemusement? His expression can be like that.
His lips move, his vocal chords tense, he begins to form words. "They say it was the gas that did it... leaking fumes... chloroform, distilled in concentrate form... faulty piping, lethal... carbon monoxide... has killed us... ain't life a gas... (his eyelids drooping)... next time I'll count the heads..."
For Alvin, his lips softly moving, had begun to carefully count his trophies, his finger moving through the air.
End of movie. I've often lurched up from my cinema seat, puzzled and disappointed, and made my way too fast toward the exit, forgetting, already, the details of the plot.
Sunday 16 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 9
Now the two girls huddle whimpering in a corner, crying grotesquely, in a grand portrayal of deep fright. They're hunched together, crouching in a corner, a blank plaster wall behind them.
Alvin propels himself forward once more, stalking, Frankenstein-like, slowly down the corridor.
Their burbling lamentations, hair in their eyes, clutching one another, every now and then letting out, as if involuntarily, a curse or yelp.
Here comes Alvin J. Crow, into the light, and it's here that the special effects make-up department comes into play. For Alvin is fully zombified and ancient, the ghost of an evil, corrupted old man, his ashen face glossy with lurid, festering scars, hair drastically whitened, as if with grey ash or a mound of talc, teeth dramatically yellowed, reddishly gleaming contact lenses in.
The way he shunts forward, grinning, it's as though he were blind, his hands held level in front of him in classic Frankenstein strangling pose, shuffling toward the two girls. All in all, a brave B-movie cliché, something as blatant and crude as a hammer horror zombie.
And yet, his intelligence! That festers and sparks on his dead face, twisted on his grin into perverted delight! A supreme diabolic intelligence, infinitely more harmful than the stupidity of a brain-dead zombie.
His cackle is transcendent: A great piece of sound effects trickery. The harsh, piercing sound of an old and thoroughly corrupted spirit delighting, with full childlike joy, in bloodlust. Note to the sound effects department; standard diabolic laughter, but the more blatant and maniacal the better. Combine it with, say, a wild theremin, a hollow sounding dully intoned note of doom, some shivering and swooping violins in agitation. This ain't the time for subtlety.
Alvin propels himself forward once more, stalking, Frankenstein-like, slowly down the corridor.
Their burbling lamentations, hair in their eyes, clutching one another, every now and then letting out, as if involuntarily, a curse or yelp.
Here comes Alvin J. Crow, into the light, and it's here that the special effects make-up department comes into play. For Alvin is fully zombified and ancient, the ghost of an evil, corrupted old man, his ashen face glossy with lurid, festering scars, hair drastically whitened, as if with grey ash or a mound of talc, teeth dramatically yellowed, reddishly gleaming contact lenses in.
The way he shunts forward, grinning, it's as though he were blind, his hands held level in front of him in classic Frankenstein strangling pose, shuffling toward the two girls. All in all, a brave B-movie cliché, something as blatant and crude as a hammer horror zombie.
And yet, his intelligence! That festers and sparks on his dead face, twisted on his grin into perverted delight! A supreme diabolic intelligence, infinitely more harmful than the stupidity of a brain-dead zombie.
His cackle is transcendent: A great piece of sound effects trickery. The harsh, piercing sound of an old and thoroughly corrupted spirit delighting, with full childlike joy, in bloodlust. Note to the sound effects department; standard diabolic laughter, but the more blatant and maniacal the better. Combine it with, say, a wild theremin, a hollow sounding dully intoned note of doom, some shivering and swooping violins in agitation. This ain't the time for subtlety.
Sunday 2 March 2014
Alvin J. Crow 8
But Alvin loomed out of the shadow and at a rush had barged into the room. What happened next scared the girls more than they would have previously thought possible.
Alvin began to speak to them in words they couldn't understand. His mouth hung gaping, fishlike, and his eyes held a strangely intense light.
The sounds he made phased and rushed, liquid-like, into one another, harsh and otherworldly. Then they realised what was happening. He was speaking backwards. And as they watched, Alvin seemed to rush, or be pulled gradually backwards, with slinking and fluid motions, back through the doorway until he was obscured once again within the shadow.
It was as though the rewind button had been pressed on a video, while Alvin continued to burble forth the strangely shifting sounds, and moved twisting backwards into darkness.
The girls got the message. They clung to one another, now crying and howling openly and hysterically. Their hearts shook and juddered within them, they clawed at one another, weeping and gnashing. They wouldn't have been able to say why they found it so frightening. It meant to them inversion, everything turned upside down, everything negated, the epitome of evil and wrong. Like when you play your LP's backwards it is rumoured you can hear the very voice of the Devil.
Now Alvin as we knew all along was and is the killer. It was he who had dimmed the lights, who had engendered the confusion. He it was who had been concealed behind the curtain, he was the torturer of bodies, the waxwork figure, the main exhibit. There he is at Madame Tussaud's, his face fixed, glassily staring, surrounded by his butchery.
Alvin began to speak to them in words they couldn't understand. His mouth hung gaping, fishlike, and his eyes held a strangely intense light.
The sounds he made phased and rushed, liquid-like, into one another, harsh and otherworldly. Then they realised what was happening. He was speaking backwards. And as they watched, Alvin seemed to rush, or be pulled gradually backwards, with slinking and fluid motions, back through the doorway until he was obscured once again within the shadow.
It was as though the rewind button had been pressed on a video, while Alvin continued to burble forth the strangely shifting sounds, and moved twisting backwards into darkness.
The girls got the message. They clung to one another, now crying and howling openly and hysterically. Their hearts shook and juddered within them, they clawed at one another, weeping and gnashing. They wouldn't have been able to say why they found it so frightening. It meant to them inversion, everything turned upside down, everything negated, the epitome of evil and wrong. Like when you play your LP's backwards it is rumoured you can hear the very voice of the Devil.
Now Alvin as we knew all along was and is the killer. It was he who had dimmed the lights, who had engendered the confusion. He it was who had been concealed behind the curtain, he was the torturer of bodies, the waxwork figure, the main exhibit. There he is at Madame Tussaud's, his face fixed, glassily staring, surrounded by his butchery.
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