* (rerun/Halloween countdown post #18)
* borrowed from Taddle Creek

 

A is for All Hallows Eve, or Halloween. All Hallows, also known as All Saints’ Day, takes place on November 1st. It is a day when Catholics celebrate those who have been beatified. All Souls’ Day is the day after All Saints’. The church decreed it a day to pray for those poor souls in purgatory—spirits suspended between heaven and hell. In the Middle Ages, the days were known collectively as Hallowtide. On the eve of All Souls’, churches would ring bells to scare away the dead. Some churches rang bells all night long.

B is for Robert Burns, the Scottish poet. Burns wrote “Halloween” in 1785. “Some merry, friendly, countra-folks / Together did convene, / To burn their nits, an’ pou their stocks, / An’ haud their Halloween / Fu’ blythe that night.” The poem refers to the Celtic Halloween custom of fortune-telling with nuts and apple peelings. Emigrating Scots brought the custom to Canada. Other Halloween customs carried here by Scots and Irish: bonfires, begging for food door to door, playing pranks on those who would not furnish food.

C is for Caledonian Society. Founded in Canada, in 1855, by affluent Scottish-Canadians, the Caledonian Society held banquets across Canada on Halloween. “We are not divining the future, or burning nuts, or catching the ‘snap apple,’ but [we are] celebrating Scottishness,” a speaker told Caledonians in Montreal, in 1885. In Toronto, George Brown was active in the Caledonians. Halloween here was a night of feasts: besides the Caledonian Society, different regiments of the military held a Halloween dinner, as did colleges at the University of Toronto. A meat market ran this ad on October 29, 1903: “HALLOWE’EN POULTRY. We are having heavy enquiries already.”

D is for Dennison Manufacturing Company. “You would be surprised,” said a young lady in Bookseller and Stationer magazine, in 1924, “how many people give Hallowe’en parties the last two weeks of October.” The young lady worked at a Toronto store. She supervised the crêpe-paper department. Dennison Manufacturing, of Framingham, Massachusetts, was the country’s main maker of crêpe paper. Dennison had a Toronto office in the early nineteen-hundreds. It was located on Wellington Street West. They were the first to sell yellow, orange, and black crêpe paper. They sold crêpe paper printed with owls, bats, jack-o’-lanterns, black cats with arched backs. They published The Bogie Book, the Bible of Halloween party guides. Place cards, Spanish moss, blindfolds, costumes—The Bogie Book told how to make them all from Dennison crêpe paper. Crêpe paper is combustible. The parties were firetraps.

E is for Eaton’s. “Don’t Miss The Hallowe’en Parade,” read an Eaton’s ad in the Toronto Daily Star, in 1929. The Eaton’s Santa Claus Parade involved several floats and many paraders. The Hallowe’en Parade? “A big pompous general will lead Felix, Bluebeard—A gypsy, a Zulu, and other familiar folk in a march around Toyland.”

F is for Frankenstein. Billy Pratt was a British lad. In 1909, he was flunking out of King’s College London. He was studying Chinese customs and languages; he wanted to act. He travelled to Canada and wound his way to Toronto. The Canada Company office found him work in Hamilton. Pratt became a farmer, but after three months, he drifted westward, working as a ditch digger, a tree cutter. Soon he convinced a stock company in Kamloops, British Columbia, to let him join the troupe. He changed his name to Boris Karloff. Karloff was a surname of some of his relatives; Boris was a name he said he “plucked out of the cold Canadian air.” Karloff toured Alberta and Saskatchewan, then he headed to Hollywood. His role as the monster in Frankenstein made him a star.

 

 

H is for Dr. H. H. Holmes. Holmes built himself a hotel in 1893, in Chicago, that boasted, in the words of the crime writer Connie Fillipelli, “iron-plated rooms, secret passages, hidden chutes that ended in the basement directly above zinc-lined tanks, sealed rooms with gas jets, stairways that led nowhere . . . trapdoors, a dissecting table, surgeons’ tools.” The building was a blueprint for every carnival and amusement park haunted house to come. It’s believed Holmes murdered more than a hundred people there. Then he went on the lam, landing in Toronto. He buried more bodies in the basement of a house near Barrie, Ontario. Pinkerton detectives shadowed him. Again he fled. They nabbed him in Boston, tried him in Philadelphia. In 1896 he was hanged.

I is for Isabel Grace Mackenzie. She died in 1917 and was survived by her son, William Lyon Mackenzie King. Mackenzie King became the prime minister of Canada. He hung a portrait of Isabel in his study, and kept it lit night and day. He spoke to her through a Ouija board and a crystal ball. He contacted her during séances. On October 6, 1935, his dead mother communicated the following to him: “Long ago I dreamt that you would succeed Sir Wilfrid Laurier. Long ago I knew God meant you to be prime minister. Long ago I [more than] knew that God meant that you would serve His holy will. Good night.” King was buried beside his mother in Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

 

 

K is for kisses. “Ducking for apples is rather out of late,” said the Everywoman’s Column of the Toronto Daily Star, in 1913. The topic: suggestions for Halloween parties. What did the column recommend? A taffy pull. “For the taffy pull, pull the taffy from buttered plates and save mother’s busy hands next day.” A taffy pull fulfilled two functions: it provided entertainment, and it provided eats. For hosts who didn’t have time to cook candy, stores sold it. At Halloween, a confectioner called Hunt’s sold a “Taffy Sucker, Face on Stand” for a nickel. In 1925, Eaton’s advertised a variety of taffies for Halloween: “peanut crisp, cocoanut and peanut, peanut and butterscotch.” During the Depression, the molasses kiss grew in popularity. No one seems to know why. Maybe molasses was cheaper than the ingredients for taffy? “Just In Time For Hallowe’en Parties,” read an ad from Loblaw’s, in 1933, “HALLOWEEN KISSES.” Fifteen cents bought a one-pound bag.

 

 

M is for David Manners, who played the handsome John Harker in Dracula. Manners was born in Halifax. His real name: Rauff de Ryther Daun Acklom. He studied forestry at the University of Toronto, and acted at Hart House Theatre. He hightailed it to Hollywood, where James Whale spotted him at a party. Whale cast him in his directorial debut, Journey’s End. Manners went on to work with directors Frank Capra and George Cukor. Tod Browning cast him in Dracula. In The Mummy, Manners played opposite Boris Karloff. In The Black Cat he starred with both Bela Lugosi and Karloff. He eventually abandoned the movies. Some suggest he quit, in part, because his studio suggested he marry a woman (Manners was gay). Retiring from acting, he retreated to the California desert. He wrote novels, and died in 1998. Horror movies, he once said, were his “only claim to movie fame.”

N is for noise. Making noise was at the heart of Halloween in its early days. Revellers tossed rocks and mud at windows and doors. They crafted noisemakers from tin cans, wooden spools, roofing tiles. A mid-century Halloween package produced for Canadian schoolteachers included instructions for making a Halloween megaphone. As early as 1900, Halloween noisemakers were being produced in Germany and exported to the United States. Styles for sale included horns, rattles, cranks, snappers, and clappers. “Weird Spirits a-gamboling,” said a 1913 ad for Mason and Risch Limited, of Toronto. “Witch Caps—Pumpkin Heads—Dominoes—Flowing Robes—Holed-Out Eyes. Strange phantasies they are! Yet, who and WHAT are they? Listen, then, they are the phantom witcheries of Hallowe’en!” The ad was peddling the Victor Victrola. “To sit snugly around the open fire, revelling in all the mystic rhythms of this bewitching fairyland of Hallowe’en, conjured up so wonderfully by the little Victrola, will make the evening’s frolics complete!” Which mystic rhythms did the store recommend? “The Dance o’ the Fairies,” “Peer Gynt,” and “Will-of-the-Wisp.”

P is for Philip Morris. In the nineteen-fifties he toured across Canada performing in a ghost show—a magic show with supernatural and horrific effects. His stage name: Dr. Evil. To garner publicity, he’d arrive early in a town and pull stunts. Drive a car blindfolded. Raffle off a “dead body.” The dead body was a frozen chicken. The R.C.M.P. once arrested him for dressing as a gorilla in public. Years later he invented an artificial spiderweb made of cloth. He made a killing.

Q is for Kew Beach. In 1945, Halloween hooligans burnt bonfires on Queen Street East. To feed the fire, they tore down fences and gates. Police were called. When they rode up on horses, they were pelted with stones and bricks. Hooligans blocked fire trucks with piles of concrete blocks. Thirteen troublemakers were taken in. A mob of seven thousand marched on the Main Street police station, hell-bent on springing the hooligans. Police cruisers rushed to the scene with tear gas. Water cannons dispersed the rioters. Five firemen were injured, as were a couple of cops.

R is for rides. Leon Cassidy needed a “dark ride.” In 1928, Cassidy was the co-owner of a small amusement park in New Jersey. Lots of amusement parks had an “old mill” ride: boats floated riders down canals decorated with scary scenery. Cassidy couldn’t afford to build a boat ride. So he put dodgem cars on a twisted track in a darkened pavilion. The Pretzel, he called it. It was a sensation. He started the Pretzel Amusement Ride Company to provide Pretzel rides to amusement parks across the continent. In 1930, he came to Canada. He put down a floor base at the Canadian National Exhibition. He laid tracks on the base, then covered them in a black tent, covered by another tent. It was probably the first cartable dark ride on a midway anywhere.

S is for slogans. “Trick or treat!” It’s what children scream on Halloween. But “trick or treat” didn’t become the customary catchphrase in Toronto until sometime around the Second World War. Before then, kids yelled, “Shell out!” “HALLOWE’EN” said an ad for a grocery store chain, in 1929, “with its joyous merriment. . . . SHELLIN’ OUT to the district cut-ups, guessing who the strange figure is who knocks on your door.” From a Loblaw’s ad during the Depression: “When You Hear the Ultimatum! SHELL OUT. Be Ready with LOBLAW’S HALLOWE’EN KISSES.”

T is for Bill Tracy, a sculptor and engineer from New Jersey. In the nineteen-fifties, he revolutionized carnival dark rides by adding supernatural back-glows, glow-in-the dark stunts, trompe l’oeil to the decor. He created themed rides like the western ghost town and the haunted pirate ship. Sadly, he never invented safety features, like fire escapes. Wiring was makeshift. His rides tended to go up in flames. Very few still stand. The dark ride at Toronto’s Centreville Amusement Park—the Haunted Barrel Works—is decorated in a distinctly Tracy mode. And it is safe.

U is for University of Toronto. According to the historian Keith Walden, spontaneous Halloween celebrations erupted on campus in 1884. Students marched into the downtown core, singing, shattering lampposts, egging Eaton’s. Police dispersed them. Torontonians complained. The parade became an annual event. In 1899 students barged into the peanut gallery at Massey Hall, disrupting the evening’s performance. Veterinary students dangled dead horse parts over the balcony. Medical students banged human arm and leg bones. Some students slit open a political effigy, showering the audience below with chaff, hay, and excelsior. Hector Charlesworth, the future editor of Saturday Night, was sitting in the pit. His suit was ruined.

 

 

W is for whoopee cushion. In the early twentieth century, an American named S. S. Adams invented a plethora of classic pranks: dribble glasses, joy buzzers, sneezing powder. In 1930, a Canadian “rubber concern” approached him with a new novelty—a bladder that made a farting sound when someone sat on it. The rubber concern? The Jem Rubber Company, headquartered in Toronto, on Dundas Street West. It produced parts for printing companies. Adams turned down the fart cushion, so Jem manufactured it on its own. It was green, with a wooden nozzle. Stamped on the face was a picture of a Scottish lad. He sported spurs and a sporran, and carried a rifle. Wouldn’t bagpipes have been the obvious visual pun? The whoopee cushion was a sensation, even during the Depression. Adams ended up coming out with a copy of the Canadian cushion—the razzberry cushion, he called it.

X is for XEPN, a Mexican border-blaster radio station near the Rio Grande. In the late nineteen-twenties and early thirties, Bob Nelson and his brother Larry hosted an astrology show on the station. Listeners sent in a dollar and, in return, the Nelsons sent them a mimeographed horoscope. The Nelsons also operated Nelson Enterprises, of Columbus, Ohio, which supplied mediums and mentalists with fake fortune-telling equipment—mind-reading codes, mechanical crystal balls, two-way radios that could be concealed under capes or in turbans. “Be it distinctly understood,” said their 1931 mail-order catalogue, “that all effects described in this catalogue are accomplished by normal means, and are entirely divorced from any supernatural or supernormal powers.”

Y is for yellow. “Green and red have come [to] be the Christmas colors,” said a newspaper article from 1925, “just as black and yellow tell us of Hallowe’en.” An article in Bookseller and Stationer, from 1925, advised those celebrating Halloween to obtain “yellow and black crêpe paper for decorative purposes.” In 1927, an ad for crêpe paper in that same magazine recommended “Orange and Black for Hallowe’en.” In coming years, orange and black would come to be considered the Halloween palette par excellence. What changed? Why did yellow fade out and orange fill in?

 

 

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p.s. Hey. It has become an annual tradition here that Halloween on the blog isn’t itself without the reposting of Derek McCormack’s beautiful ‘Halloween ABCs’, maybe like when broadcast television was the big show and yearly Xmas showings of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ were de rigeur. So this year the blog is seeing out the holiday’s build up in that most appropriate manner. Absorb all the timely pleasure it provides, please, and my recurring and eternal thanks to Mr. McCormack. ** Shane Christmass, Hi, Shane. Nah, ‘Rubber’ is a solitary weirdo, I think. I too think Gysin had very interesting ideas and was an interesting fella, but he wasn’t a good writer. Excellent painter, though. Happy almost Halloween, man. ** Quinn R, Hi, Quinn. Oh, yeah, anxiety and me are begrudging pals, for sure. For instance right now with the confinement kicking in. I think the Gysin review must be in ‘Smothered in Hugs’, but I’m not totally sure. I hope you and your guy find a treasure or two in the post. Afloat I am. Keep bobbing on the surface of your worldly mess too. xo. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. The horror genre seems virtually bottomless. ** Golnoosh, Hi, Golnoosh! Lovely to see you! Thanks about the confinement. It is not easy, but it will be survived by necessity. Keep forging safely through the UK’s own chaotic attempt to thwart. Oh, I just got Julia’s book in the post yesterday. Thanks a lot for sending it. I really look forward to reading it. My grim Halloween will be spent locked in my apartment, but I’ll try to make do with some horror movies, I guess. I hope yours will be more externalised and festive. Sending love right back to you. ** Bill, Hi. Yes, props to TheNeanderthalSkull. Savvy human. I already look back fondly on the curfew. Now I’m a prisoner allowed a single 1-hour-long daily furlough within a strict 1 kilometer distance from my cell. But what can one do. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Well, I handled it for two months starting in March, so it’ll get handled, I guess. What do I know, but I think as long as pubs, etc. remain open, you guys are not going to rid yourselves of this. Hope I’m wrong. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Well, to try to be objective and logical, COVID is spreading here much faster and more violently than it was when we were confined in March. There is a case, even maybe a solid case, to be made that the right approach is to just go all the way and try to kill it once and for all. The piecemeal approach of semi-closing up is nothing but a compromise, and, as you guys in the US can certainly attest, it doesn’t work in the end. So maybe this is the way to go. We’ll see. It’s just really hard to deal with, although I and everyone will adjust because humans naturally do. My big dread is that they say it’s only for a month, but it’s obvious it won’t be. If COVID is worse now than in March when we were confined for two months, it’s pretty naive to think it’ll die off more quickly now. God, I hate media generalisations. France has a real Islamophobia problem. So does every country in Europe. Ours is newsworthy at this moment because of the Charlie Hebdo caricatures-related beheading of the other week and now the Nice killings and Macron’s heavy-handed, insensitive response which has only exacerbated things. It’s a real problem that needs to be addressed in a fundamental, dedicated way by the government. But France is not ‘tearing itself apart’. That’s a simplistic, overheated spin of the type that the US media seems to always employ when addressing problems in other countries. Well, and in the US too, obviously. I haven’t heard the new Oneohtrixpointnever album, no. I want to. I hope the fun and weirdness and off base strengths of his earlier work is still present. ** Marcus, Hi, Marcus! I love your avatar, btw. Glad you’ll get to be transformative for Halloween. Thanks about the confinement. I just read that Melbourne finally lifted its lockdown after it being there forever, and I really shouldn’t complain comparatively. Happy that Diarmuid’s book is proving useful. Yeah, what are you working on right now or recently? Will there be evidence for us overseas types? Take care, man. ** Brian O’Connell, Hey, Brian. I haven’t seen ‘Ganja & Hess’, but ‘Rubber’ and ‘Tetsuo’ are both blasts. Yeah, cases have severely spiked here. It’s worse than it was earlier in the year. Like I said to Steve, there is logic in just going whole hog and attempting to kill the thing rather than trying to trip it up in little ways to keep people happy. So I get the reasoning, but it’s hard on the soul or whatever. Thanks for the thoughts. I can’t imagine the US will go this far because people would riot in the streets, but, just in case, enjoy the freedoms you have du jour. And have a lovely day in any case. ** Right. You are in the capable imagination of Derek McCormack today, and act accordingly, and thank you. See you tomorrow.

* (Halloween countdown post #16)

 

‘Guro, also sometimes called Ero guro (エログロ), is an artistic genre that puts its focus on eroticism, sexual corruption, and decadence. As a term, it is used to denote something that is both erotic and grotesque. The term itself is an example of wasei-eigo, a Japanese combination of English words or abbreviated words: ero from “ero(tic)”, guro from “gro(tesque)”, and nansensu from “nonsense”. In actuality the “grotesqueness” implied in the term refers to things that are malformed, unnatural, or horrific. While items that are pornographic and bloody are not necessarily ero guro, and vice versa, the term is often used to mean “gore”—depictions of horror, blood, and guts.

‘Ero guro nansensu, characterized as a “prewar, bourgeois cultural phenomenon that devoted itself to explorations of the deviant, the bizarre, and the ridiculous,” manifested in the popular culture of Taishō Tokyo during the 1920s. Writer Ian Buruma describes the social atmosphere of the time as “a skittish, sometimes nihilistic hedonism that brings Weimar Berlin to mind.” Its roots go back to artists such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi, who, besides erotic shunga, also produced woodblock prints showing decapitations and acts of violence from Japanese history. Ukiyo-e artists such as Utagawa Kuniyoshi presented similar themes with bondage, rape and erotic crucifixion.

‘Ero guro nansensu’s first distinct appearance began in 1920s and 1930s Japanese literature. The Sada Abe Incident of 1936, where a woman strangled her lover to death and castrated his corpse, struck a chord with the ero guro movement and came to represent that genre for years to come. Other like activities and movements were generally suppressed in Japan during World War II, but re-emerged in the postwar period, especially in manga and music.

‘There are modern guro artists, some of whom cite Erotic Grotesque Nonsense as an influence on their work. These artists explore the macabre intermingled with sexual overtones. Often the erotic element, even when not explicit, is merged with grotesque themes and features similar to the works of H. R. Giger. Others produce ero guro as a genre of Japanese pornography and hentai involving blood, gore, disfiguration, violence, mutilation, urine, enemas, or feces.’ — collaged

 

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Q & A

Posted byu/albert_ara
I do not understand how people can be into gore/guro Pornography.

If you do not know what that is, please don’t google it.

Guro is a category of porn (I hope always drawn, usually in an anime style) where for example someone is having sex with another person they just cut open their stomach and their intestines are gushing out while that person is in agonising pain. Just explaining this makes my stomach turn.

I just want to understand why someone would like that without being completely crazy (I knew a girl that was alright but liked guro, she wasn’t willing to explain why). I just want to understand why.

Posted by Crayshack
Most porn contains an idealized exaggeration of something that the consumer is attracted to in real life. For most people, this is only slightly exaggerated, but for others it is exaggerated past the point of the fantasy being something that is realistically attainable. For example, someone who is attracted to fit women might look at porn like this. At the same time, some people might look at a version exaggerated past the point they are likely to ever encounter such as this. It is the same concept, but taken to the extreme. When you enter the realm of drawn images rather than simple porn photos, you can take the extreme even further past the point of what is even physically possible such as this.

Unrelated to that, sadomasochism exists. It is completely understandable why some people might have difficulty grasping why someone might be a sadist or a masochist, but for me the reason is quite simple. When you experience pain, your body releases adrenaline. The purpose of this is so that you can feel the pain and know something might be damaged, but then have the pain dulled enough to continue whatever task you are doing. However, under the right conditions for some people they can trigger an adrenal release that is more powerful than the pain they experience. For these situations, it turns experiencing pain into a literal high. Once you have enough experiencing pain as way of accessing an adrenaline high, you build a Pavlovian relationship in your mind and start to enjoy the pain itself. Sadism is simply being the one on the outside.

When you combine the concepts, there is a very clear pattern. There is porn of realistic depictions of pain play that do closely resemble how most people do it in real life. Then there are depictions that go beyond what most might try in real life but are still physically doable such as this. Then you have the ones that are physically impossible (at least without killing your partner) such as this.

For both examples of the gradient, some people will realize that they are getting into weirder and weirder shit as they make their way down it. However, sometimes they won’t notice until they are pretty far along because there will not be many sudden jumps. Instead, they are one day asking themselves “What the fuck did I just fap to?” and find that even once they acknowledge it is fucked up it still turns them on because sexual attraction is not something decided by the conscious part of the brain.

Most people if you ask them, would not be able to articulate this process of how they got into what they are into. At best, they can give you some of the details they fixate on and what little things turn a gore pic from general gore to porn for them. However, that does not mean that they have not gone through this sort of development. Everyone goes through a similar kind of association when it comes to sexual attraction. They start by being attracted to something simple and common, but then they start seeking something similar to that initial influence and start building associative relationships. However, most people simply find themselves spinning back around to something else that is common (for example, someone instinctively attracted to breasts might have known a large breasted redhead when they were younger and they are now also attracted to redheads). There are just a few fringe groups that have managed to developed a sexual association with something more bizarre. Guro is not the only strange fetish you can find on the internet, it just might be the one that is the most disturbing to anyone who has not found there way to it naturally.

 

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Except where identified in the image the artists are unknown

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** Marcus Whale, Marcus! It’s so great to see you! It’s been ages and ages. How are you? What’s going on? Me too re: doing my annual Halloween in LA, except my plan was extremely tight. I’m still hoping for 2021. Take care, man, and Happy Halloween whatever Australia causes that to mean. xo. ** David Ehrenstein, Yes, indeed. Actually quite a number of the home haunts and haunted house attractions offer ‘lights on’ visits for nerds and people with small children. I love them. One of my big dreams is riding all the rides at Disneyland with the lights on. Minus one week and counting! ** Quinn R, Hi, Quinn. That’s definitely healthier, I think. It’s logical, and I’m kind of a very logical person. For me, the heavy or haunting effect of their deaths didn’t really hit me for while. I think this says more about me than about death, but one thing that really weirds me out is that, I mean, they were two people who, for better or worse, were really significant to me. I knew them thoroughly for most of my life, and they made me, obviously. They were pretty old when they died (mother in her 80s, dad in his 90s), and now basically all of their friends and colleagues are dead, and apart from their kids who had mixed feelings about them and some scattered younger people they interacted with casually, they’re gone, forgotten. They weren’t artists or inventors or anything who left something concrete in the world that has a chance of retaining value without them being present. There’s something about that erasure that really haunts me sometimes. I don’t know if that’s a weird thing to say or makes sense. I think almost every book and movie I really like is about death, ha ha. Strange. So it would be hard to know where to start. I think what with COVID and the election and so on, everyone I know, including me, is feeling a weird combination of slow and kind of frantic. What a strange, strange time. I’ll look for the review today. I think writers need to have challenging reviews. I think writers having to question their work via an objective opinion is kind of invaluable. I will do a Stephen Wright post. I’m on it. Thank you for your thoughtful comments too, sir. And please send my hello back to Ed. I hope one of these days I’ll get to see him again. ** _Black_Acrylic, Loveable is a very good word. Loveable is how I feel about them too. Cash their check! Or cheque in your country’s terms. Have you heard back from them? ** Bill, Hi, Bill. What is it, 6 days to go until the big day? It’s going to be a long, long week. Thanks for the link. That gig looks delicious. ** Steve Erickson, Hi. Even way over here, the stress is constant. I keep trying not to pay attention, but I just can’t seem to make an escape. Sounds like an antibiotics situation to me, yeah. They cancelled the Halloween parade in NYC, right? Understandably, rightfully. ** Brian O’Connell, Hi, Brian. Oh, thanks, I’m really happy they impressed you. Haunted house attractions are like cockroaches. They’ll survive the plague. Their makers are hardcore believers. The SCOTUS confirmation thing is so horrifying that I am blocking it out as much as possible to preserve what little peace of mind is currently available. I think if you direct your interest in films away from Ozon’s oeuvre, you’ll be just fine. Gisele’s work hasn’t been performed in the States very much. It’s weird/sucks because the work plays all over the world constantly, but the US is a toughie. A couple of pieces (‘Jerk’, ‘Kindertotenlieder’) made it to NYC and ‘Jerk’ played in LA, and I think one piece (‘The Ventriloquists Convention’) played in Chicago. Importing European theater is something few US venues have the dough to do. Our most recent piece, ‘Crowd’, will play in NYC and maybe do a small US tour sometime next year. ‘Hausu’, right? One of a kind. Yes, may our weeks be very pleasant bosom buddies at minimum. ** Right. I decided to use the happy occasion of Halloween to foist another galerie show of guro on you today. Sorry and/or you’re welcome. And bon appétit! And see you tomorrow.