Which reminds me of this sketch from Big Train that kills me:

1. Not really all that different from my embarrassing youthful subculture attachment though. EXCEPT that I didn’t hang out with living harlequin dolls –something too creeptown for even the gothiest of us.

Right. Yeah. I have no idea why, either.

Do Wah Diddy Diddy Performed by English beat band Manfred Mann.
Lyrics by Jeff Barry, Ellie Greenwich.

There she was just a-walkin’ down the street, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
Snappin’ her fingers and shufflin’ her feet, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
She looked good (looked good), she looked fine (looked fine)
She looked good, she looked fine and I nearly lost my mind

Before I knew it she was walkin’ next to me, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
Holdin’ my hand just as natural as can be, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
We walked on (walked on) to my door (my door)
We walked on to my door, then we kissed a little more

Whoa-oh, I knew we was falling in love
Yes I did, and so I told her all the things I’d been dreamin’ of

Now we’re together nearly every single day, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
A-we’re so happy and that’s how we’re gonna stay, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
Well I’m hers (I’m hers), she’s mine (she’s mine)
I’m hers, she’s mine, wedding bells are gonna chime

Whoa-oh, I knew we was falling in love
Yes I did, and so I told her all the things I’d been dreamin’ of

Now we’re together nearly every single day, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
A-we’re so happy and that’s how we’re gonna stay, singin’ “Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do”
Well I’m hers (I’m hers), she’s mine (she’s mine)
I’m hers, she’s mine, wedding bells are gonna chime

Whoa-oh-oh-oh, oh yeah
Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do, we’ll sing it
Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do, oh yeah, oh, oh yeah
Do wah diddy diddy dum diddy do

I understand this was 1964 but this is madness.

(I’ve been listening to the oldies station a lot lately. Expect this to turn into a theme.)

“They don’t think about how the popsicles got in the freezer,”

da-doo doo doo doo doo

“or where sidewalk chalk comes from.”

da-dum da da da da dum

“They don’t wonder how the hotdogs got on the grill.”

Da-doo doo doo doo doo da-doo doo doo doo doo

“To them, the magic of summer just happens.”

Da-dum da da da da dum

C’mon, I can’t be alone here.

In an accidental feat of awesome timing, Don Netflixed The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T and we watched it on Sunday before even realizing Monday was Dr. Seuss’s birthday. (Thanks Google!)

This live-action musical is visually interesting and perfect for a Dr. Seuss tale. The sets and costumes, and even the musical instruments have all of the whimsy required for a Suessian world. The 500 seat piano set is incredible and the furniture in Mrs. C’s and Dr. T’s suites are fabulously wonky. But the story and the characters were maddening.

Don’t let your little boys take music lessons or they’ll turn into fruity fascist wackos, says this film. No really. As the film progressed we found ourselves turning slowly to each other with our mouths open, our eyebrows at their WTF positions.

The incessant hammering of “musicians are queer” and “this is what happens when you don’t let boys play baseball!” was overwhelming to the point of absurdity. Boys must be allowed to be REAL BOYS. The horror of this mother being brainwashed into thinking piano lessons are something her fatherless son should do! It’s like seeing Touch of Evil for the first time and choking on your iced tea when you see Charlton Heston painted brown. First you think “How can this be real?” and then you think “How could I forget that this is totally real?”

Wikipedia notes, “Although he had written the original treatment and all the song lyrics, Geisel himself regarded the finished film as a ‘debaculous fiasco’ and omitted any mention of it in his official biography with Random House.” I want to read his biography to see what sort of mommy issues he had. Why the hatred of the piano? Why the need to swishify the villain? The whole thing just seems so shocking coming from the man who created lasting works that introduced children to political and moral issues like racism (The Sneetches), environmentalism (The Lorax), and internationalism (Horton Hears a Who!).

Here’s a clip of an awesome song sung by the villain as his team of dressing men help him suit up for the grand opening of his institute:

Art hid with art, so well perform’d the cheat,
It caught the carver with his own deceit:
He knows ’tis madness, yet he must adore,
And still the more he knows it, loves the more:
The flesh, or what so seems, he touches oft,
Which feels so smooth, that he believes it soft.
Fir’d with this thought, at once he strain’d the breast,
And on the lips a burning kiss impress’d.
~Ovid, Metamorphoses (Translated by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden, et al)

Dr. Gogol in his box seat, watching Mme Yvonne's torture scene.

In a twist of the Pygmalion story, German film director Karl Freund’s sculptor is a skilled surgeon shown as a benevolent doctor healing deformed children in his last film, 1935′s Mad Love. His Pygmalion, Dr. Gogol, played by Peter Lorre, is a study in loneliness and obsession; short, bald and, well, Lorre-esquely strange looking, Gogol never misses a public beheading or a night at the horror theater where Yvonne Orlac plays the role of a tortured dutchess.

The film opens with him ogling a wax statue of her character in the Parisian Theatre des Horreurs before her final performance. After the show, he brings flowers to her dressing room and professes his love and deep upset at her leaving the stage. She explains that it really must be her last performance as she is meeting up with her husband, famous pianist Stephen Orlac, that very night so that they can finally begin their life together as a married couple. After an awkward, creepy exchange, someone comes in to bring her down to her farewell party that has begun downstairs, and seeing her biggest fan the respectable Dr. Gogol there, insists that he come join in the festivities.

At the party everyone is stepping up to give her farewell kisses (in exchange for cake) and yet another oblivious numskull suggests Dr. Gogol have a go — which he uses as an invitation to introduce her to his tongue. The assembled French actors shrug it off assuming it is some custom from his strange foreign country full of short creepy fellows, and they proceed to emulate what I can only imagine becomes a new trend in fashionable molestation.

Perhaps mortified by her reaction, or upset by the frenzy of ridiculous kisses that he’s started, Dr. Gogol leaves in a hurry, passing some workmen taking down the wax display of Mrs. Orlac. He bribes them to deliver it to his home instead of the melting pot. There are all sorts of other things happening in the film, but for our purposes here you only need to know that he has his housekeeper brush her hair and maintain her see-through flow-y robes, while he plays the organ to her, calls her Galatea and discusses with her his crazy scheme to get Stephen Orlac into the loony bin and have the real Mme Yvonne for himself. You’ll have to watch the film yourself to see the Pygmalion/Galatea story played out in its tragi-comedic way. This was Lorre’s first American film, and it is no wonder he became a horror favorite.

Parting ways with the original book, Maurice Renard’s The Hands of Orlac, the story here is not about Gogol as a scientist/medical genius playing God. Initially he saves Stephen Orlac with the best of intentions. He did it for Yvonne, and because he was the only one who could. The results (as preposterous as they are) could not have been known to him, silly horror-”science” aside, he’s accomplished something miraculous — the first successful hand transplant. This is the story not of his scientific obsession, but of his misguided idea of love making him a monster.

“I have conquered science! Why can’t I conquer love?”

In the following scene we watch the further unraveling of Dr. Gogol:

Why is he so crazy? Which came first, the craziness or the loneliness? Surely someone would be so impressed by his brilliance, and his kind focus on treating unfortunate children and mutilated soldiers, and being surrounded by the lovely nurses at his practice, he could find someone to be with? Is his mistake thinking he could attain a gorgeous actress? Does your pity end when he persists after discovering she is married? Or does it linger, tugging your heartstrings over his sad eyes and obvious mental illness? I, myself, am not sure when or if I ever stop feeling sorry for this fellow. Clearly we are meant to think him out of his mind to consider that Mme Yvonne would return his feelings; her a beauty, and him an odd foreign unlovable beast.

Ignoring the superficial aspect of the film entirely, let’s look at a redeeming quality. Perhaps this does not do anything to further the Hollywood image of scientists as non-creeps and people with normal, fulfilled lives capable of healthy relationships — but I was surprised by the fact that this wasn’t about a lost soul wearing blinders to keep out everything but his great work that will help the world while destroying the lives of those around him. The Pygmalion addition to Renard’s story gives it more depth than if Freund had followed a more familiar science fiction tale. Even the other film paired on the dvd with Mad Love, Devil Dolls, is a heavy-handed tale of Evil Scientists too single-minded to even know how evil they are. Mad Love is not a brilliant film, and the story of recycled body parts has been done over scores of times before and since. But it does stand out for me after being positively buried in anti-science films. I don’t normally like remakes, however I would love to see this done with a different type of casting for Dr. Gogol, but with the same treatment of love being the monster-maker.

Tomorrow –Friday– is the first Pittsburgh Drinking Skeptically get together.

Saturday is the bike race and sidewalk sale, so I’ll be assisting Mom at the boutique for the greater part of the day.

Sunday I’m hoping to catch up on my neglected apartment maintenance. Is it difficult to re-tile a floor? Doesn’t seem like it would be too complicated… (I say that now.)

OK, but the reason for posting today:

Um. Ok, the chicken fried bacon is horrific, but I’ve seen whole deep fried cheeseburgers before, so this isn’t so shocking. But I have to admit I died a little inside when they added the southern style gravy.

Seriously, I ask you, could Isabella Rossallini be any cuter?

I really like her thoughts on producing film for “the fourth screen” and I would love to see more shorts in this unique style. The pools of paper blood in Bee are actually charming.