Never trust a man in a blue trenchcoat, never drive a car when you're dead

[sovay]

The Hanukkah party went well and was exhausting. I slept nearly twelve hours last night. I must have gotten an assist from the fever: in among the expected nightmares of not enough money and not enough health and a Dickensian business transaction with some very polite smash-and-grab thieves with Southie accents, I dreamed of discovering a Kickstarter-funded anthology film with accompanying print anthology, the theme being music and the supernatural. It was recent but not new; Alan Rickman had done some of his last work in the Victorian murder ballad segment. My favorite was "White Pigeon Blues," a quiet, all-Black story about a short-order cook c. 1950 who turns into a bird in ways that might be linked to tales of the people who could fly and might be something entirely personal. I was also fond of the jokey one about the black metal band that accidentally summons something eldritch and, after some flying furniture and frantically ineffectual counterspelling, makes it their replacement drummer. The book-with-DVD cost me five dollars at a library sale and I really resent it not existing now that I'm awake. There was something with sharply feminist bubblegum pop and I wish I could remember what it was.

45 does not yet seem to have fired Robert Mueller, but I appreciate the existence of a rapid response network of protests if and when he does. There's one already planned for Boston. I also appreciate the internet presenting me with Bunny Roger, an anti-fascist I should indeed have known. The comments chiming in with additional anecdotes are great.

I am seriously considering going back to bed.

Comments

[movingfinger]

Bunny Roger's is included in the Fifth Book of Obituaries (Daily Telegraph, "Twentieth-Century Lives"), but they quote the line about the chiffon scarf and Vogue without going further into his war activities, spending more time on the apparently epic parties he held at the various mansions where he resided over the decades.

His series of New Year's fancy dress parties, given from the 1950's in his house in Knightsbridge, had themes such as Sunset Boulevard and Quo Vadis (when two Christians were rather unsuccessfully put to the torch in a damp London garden). [...] His last great party, on the theme of Hades, saw him appearing through flame and smoke in a sparkling creation of scarlet sequins to preside over 400 variously demonised guests. Characteristically at the time of his death he was planning the next party to celebrate his 90th. It was to be called the Haunted Ballroom.

[sovay]

His last great party, on the theme of Hades, saw him appearing through flame and smoke in a sparkling creation of scarlet sequins to preside over 400 variously demonised guests.

I have to say, a haunted ballroom would have to be pretty spectacular to top that. Also I hope someone got pictures of Sunset Boulevard.

(I did not manage to go back to bed.)

[gwynnega]

I wish that book-with-DVD existed.

[sovay]

I wish that book-with-DVD existed.

I would make you a copy if it did!

[thawrecka]

I wish that book with DVD existed, too! It sounds amazing. I like to think you just got a message from an alternative universe where it exists, because it's too awesome not to exist somewhere.

[sovay]

I like to think you just got a message from an alternative universe where it exists, because it's too awesome not to exist somewhere.

I like your theory. I wish I knew enough about the mechanics of film to make it exist in this one.

[vr_trakowski]

Wow, now I want to read those stories.

Huh. Maybe you could start a Kickstarter, for the anthology if not the DVD... :P

[sovay]

Huh. Maybe you could start a Kickstarter, for the anthology if not the DVD...

It's really tempting!