Pleasant Surprises

thrills2In the second issue of Bands I Useta Like, I drew a retrospective entitled “Thrills”, wherein I delineated the major moments of excitement from a lifetime of moviegoing. Thrills come in varying qualities and intensities, from “cheap” to “absolute”. A milder one, that is no less desirable, is the “pleasant surprise“.

One of the first pleasant surprises I took notice of was during the documentary Citizen Shane, from 2004. It tells the true story of Shane Ballard, a rotund, porn-loving oddball who ran for sheriff of his hometown of Lowndes County, Mississippi at 22. Ballard was a talented audiophile whose mother was murdered under mysterious circumstances when he was a baby. Not long after the documentary’s release, Shane Ballard and director Ron Tibbett would also be deceased, under mysterious circumstances. Subcin, the site where I saw the film, is not currently active.

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Shane Ballard was a man of many unusual predilections. His enthusiasm for self-love aside, he was a pen-pal to many infamous kooks, including incarcerated murder mastermind Charles Manson. Ballard had a home record label, and secretly hoped to bring Manson’s music to a wider audience. Endearingly, at one point in the documentary Ballard proudly claims “[Manson] is not a murderer.”

I’ve heard all this before. Manson’s cult is still a strong one. When I was in college, a buddy had Manson’s underground “album” Lie, which we got huge laughs out of. It sounds like the dumbest bunch of hippie bumpkins ever to fart into a microphone. The songs are basic and infantile.

It actually looks like a guy I went to high school with. No idea what happened to him.

It actually looks like a guy I went to high school with. No idea what happened to him.

One track, “Garbage Dump”, has lyrics that would garner a curbstomp from Wesley Willis:

O garbage dump, my garbage dump
Why are you called a garbage dump?

So I just took Shane Ballard for an earnest goofball at first, perhaps misguided, starstruck by the wrong kind of star. Meanwhile, as Citizen Shane rapidly careens to its finish, sensitive and complex guitar music increases its spectral presence. Ballard was a home recording artist, so I assumed it was his own work. But he was proficient on the piano, not guitar. Is it Django Reinhardt? It sure sounds like him, but I wouldn’t take Ballard for a fan of Gypsy guitar soloists. Wait a minute-

It’s CHARLES MANSON!! Charles, murdering-ass, MANSON!!! Singing “Invisible Tears”! I guess life in prison works wonders for musical skill! Why argue for his release? Look what a benefit incarceration has done him!

(I’m not linking to it. Here’s YouTube, type “Charles Manson Invisible Tears” into the search window. I don’t pay for web hosting to promote Chuck, he has plenty of folks willing to do that already.)

Despite the reminder of cult carnage of yesteryear, that was quite a pleasant surprise.

Recently, to drive the blues away, I’ve hunted a number of nostalgic “sweet spots”; moments in popular culture that bring to mind a more joyful era. I have great fondness for “British comedy”, and so I drank deeply of the long-running Carry On comedies. Inevitably, my socks were charmed clean off by the antics of Sid James, Barbara Windsor, and Kenneth Williams. Williams possessed the plummiest voice I’ve ever heard; like the almost plangent tones of Sir Patrick Stewart and Tim Curry combined, and multiplied in gravity.

Kenneth Williams was gay at a time in England when it was illegal and hidden. As a lad, his brutish father gifted him a pair of boxing gloves, which young Ken held up like a loaded diaper. “What are these?” he inquired primly.

Pop Williams sneered. “You put ’em on your fists, and you hit people,” he told Ken.

“No thank you,” Kenneth replied, dropping the gloves back into the box. So began a lifelong struggle, both internal and external, culminating in Williams’ tragic suicide after the dimming of an illustrious career, in 1988.

Part of hiding homosexuality in the UK when it was criminal involved the use of “Polari”, a gay encoded slang. In the late 1960s, Kenneth Williams and Hugh Paddick performed as “Julian and Sandy”, a “camp” couple who spoke heavily in Polari. Williams was wont to write in Polari in his diaries, which detail his secret affair with ill-fated playwright Joe Orton.

“Oh, what’s the bloody point?” -final words from Kenneth Williams’ diary

The deeper I dug, the sadder I became. This was a beautiful, brilliant man, whose voice I could gladly listen to for an eternity. Loneliness and despair finally got the better of him. So much for the “sweet spot”.

In my efforts to recapture various “sweet spots” of the 1990s, I have researched into the history of Jackass, and rediscovered one of its points of origin; the Big Brother videos. Big Brother was a skateboarding magazine that ran from 1992 to 2004 and was backed by Larry Flynt. It’s what you’d call a “sacred cow” of mine.

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Everything great that aired on Jackass originated with the Big Brother videos. Overall, the music is great, including old country tunes and that damnable Vengaboys song. As the end credits roll, there’s music that I assumed was Ween. It was an unfamiliar song, but the BB video was released just after White Pepper, so Ween was squarely inside the realm of possibility as the artist. Plus, Ween was credited… but it was a song I knew to be something else. I listened closer. The vocals were a bit more able than those typically attributed to Gene Ween. (Even though “I will gurgle from the circle” is a Ween lyric if ever I’ve heard one.) So I looked through the list to narrow my search.

It was Morrissey!!! MORRISSEY!!! Do you understand, I’ve been goofing on Morrissey since junior high?!? Do you know that this is a guy I wrote off decades ago, along with The Cure and The Smiths, as goth gobbledy-gook?! Do you realize that I’ve been impersonating Mike Nelson’s (flawless) evocation of Morrissey since it first aired??

(l-r) Frank Conniff, Nelson, Trace Beaulieu. Highly recommended.

(l-r) Frank Conniff, Nelson, Trace Beaulieu. Highly recommended television.

The title of this album has galled me since school- I took it for a flouncy tossed-off bit of nonsense to go with Moz’s aloof cover shot. It’s Polari, the secret gay argot I told you about before. It means “nice clothing”!!!

Is all this random? How could it be? However, as a price, I’ve had “Lucky Lisp” stuck in my head since all of this happened. I guess it wasn’t wasted on me.

That is a pleasant surprise: While trying to pull out of a funk, I clowned myself on my aversion to Morrissey, found something new, and cheered myself up better than I could’ve done intentionally.

Last night, while awaiting a ride home from the grocery store, I espied a person approaching. “Look at this femmy hipster twerp,” I thought disdainfully. “Ugh, look at his stupid man bun, and his girly skinny jeans… oh, shit. That actually is a girl.”

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