Plan 9 from Outer Space

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd share one of my favorite (non-) scary movies: Plan Nine from Outer Space. It's a delight, and an absolute disaster.

The film is remarkable for several reasons. Aside from being known as one of the "worst" movies ever made, it's the last film to feature actor Bela Lugosi (the guy who played the O.G. Dracula in 1931). Lugosi died before production really took off, so director Ed Wood hired a random actor to replace him. Wood still had footage of Lugosi, however, and he opted to simply splice the two actors' performances together.

Most audiences were unimpressed.

Now the movie has a quasi-legendary status. Almost everything about it is, by conventional standards, terrible. The acting, the writing; the production. Even when I first watched this as a naïve and impressionable six-year-old, I knew it was not a well-made movie. But that's its whole charm: as ridiculous a film this might be, it never takes itself too seriously.

For your enjoyment and chagrin, here's the whole thing.

- Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959), directed by Ed Wood

Dream Variations

The below poem is by Langston Hughes, a fellow Missourian.

Langston Hughes, February 1959

"Dream Variations"

To fling my arms wide
In some place of the sun,
To whirl and to dance
Till the white day is done.
Then rest at cool evening
Beneath a tall tree
While night comes on gently,
     Dark like me—
That is my dream!
To fling my arms wide
In the face of the sun,
Dance! Whirl! Whirl!
Till the quick day is done.
Rest at pale evening . . .
A tall, slim tree . . .
Night coming tenderly
     Black like me.

- by Langston Hughes, from The Weary Blues (1926)

The True-Blue American

Tomorrow, I leave on a roadtrip to Richmond, Virginia. I'm tagging along with two of my favorite found-family members, my friends Cat and Jill. In acknowledgement of this All-American trip, and in response to the repeated and frightening rhetoric of the Republican National Convention, I share a poem by the writer Delmore Schwartz.

"The True-Blue American"

    Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,
For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must
Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,
Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,
Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity
For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and
Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah
Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split
He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it
Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:
Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;
Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;
Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing
         in his breast
                  The infinite and the gold
                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.

    “Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American
In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed
         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,
Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of
         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,
Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and
         Shining in the darkness, of the light
On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures,
The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light
Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,
         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

- by Delmore Schwartz, from Summer Knowledge: New and Selected Poems, 1938-1958 (1959)

Mr. Blue

It's cloudy outside, and I need to sit down and make plans for my spring break (which is next week).

This song is by a group called The Fleetwoods, and was really popular at the end of 1959. I don't know how the charting system works for popular music, but I guess this was #1 for a while.

And now they're just another group in the annals of pop history.

- "Mr. Blue" by The Fleetwoods (1959)

Finals Week

Finals week is nearly upon us, and with that comes a whole slew of emotions and obligations that I can't even begin to process. Mainly I've just been trying to sleep and not scratch my hives while retaining my sanity. I'm extremely excited to go home, but very nervous to say goodbye because a) I hate goodbyes and b) it's very unclear when I'll next see a lot of people here.  That's the way it goes, though, and that's okay.

Anyhow, because I know I won't have time to write a well-reasoned post every day this week, and that most of the things I post will likely be songs, here is the first:

- "Mack the Knife" by Bobby Darin from That's All (1959)