Ghost books, follow me home

I'm currently reading two books about ghosts and Venice: Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture, and Alberto Toso Fei's Venetian Legends and Ghost Stories, which jumped off my friend's bookshelf and thrust itself into my hands back in February, and so I obligingly took it home. The chapter titles alone fire the imagination: The Flight of the Witch, The Sigh of the Severed Head, The Sad Song of the Mermaid. Perhaps, as I move through the book next week and through the rest of the month, I shall post updates, imaginary travelogues, that take you and I through the very hauntedest haunts of the city watery graves! And, of course, a review of The Man in the Picture is forthcoming as well!

It's a great day for millinery

5:56 a.m. Kate's in the car! She went for the Grace Kelly look -- good call. That's what you wear to become a princess. I hope this spells the end of the strapless trend in wedding dresses for a little while.

I've been up since 5:30. The good china's out, the tea's on, and both the Queen and I are wearing yellow.

Update: For more on my extremely important impressions of the Royal Wedding, pop over to my Twitter feed!

Double update! The Toronto Star issued a special commemorative coin! I will try very hard not to lose it.

Triple update: Grace van Cutsem rules:

There's still snow in the colonies

I'm in Huntsville, Ontario. There are patches of snow on the ground. We're elbow deep in preparations for the royal wedding tomorrow. My Nana gave us a quick tutorial on how to sit whilst drinking tea (ankles crossed). My sister briefly read a recipe for scones, then seemed to get bored and wandered off to do something else. My niece is safely asleep in her Disney Princess sleeping bag. I'm enjoying this history on the creepy history of the royal family, watching as much pre-wedding coverage as possible and eating pie. That is all.

A Very Royal Weekend

Dear readers,

As many of you may know by now, I am flying to Canada tonight then driving up to Huntsville, Ontario to watch the Royal Wedding on TV with my Nana. Stay tuned for frequent updates on dresses (mine -- what, I'm going to dress up too, you know!), the tea I drink, the amount of whiskey I pour into my tea, and what I put on my crumpet.

Love,

Spinster Aunt

This just in: girls can drink whiskey now

According to my good friends at the Canadian Press, women are just discovering this awesome new thing called bourbon.

"I think there's this sense of relief that finally we were at a point where we can be taken seriously as women who enjoy bourbon and the lifestyle that accompanies it," said Mary Quinn Ramer, a founding board member from Lexington.

And man, what a lifestyle it is. It's pretty much all success all the time.

Here's another fun fact: "Bill Samuels Sr., concocted the Maker's Mark recipe in the 1950s, but it was his mother, Margie, who coined the brand's name and came up with the idea of adorning the bottles with dripping red wax."

I'm thinking Mama Margie's "idea" came about kinda like this: "Oh fuck me, I spilt the goddam wax again!"

Insidious (2011)

Insidious is a tautly-crafted, old-school, genuinely terrifying movie.

Some of the crappier reviews of Insidious throw around the word "cliche" but don't you believe it. Don't believe the inept and condescending critics who say things like "you'll like it if you've never seen a horror movie before." Genre is wasted on these dorks, who prissily sit there and tick off the things they recognize from other movies. Yes, the film references other movies in a fan-boy kind of way. Deal with it.

As for those who complain the scares are lame, well -- ! The much-derided baby-monitor scene spooked the hell out of me. I don't know, I guess I find simple things like demon voices on baby monitors frightening. I'm a simple woman, I guess. But the scene I really, really, REALLY loved more than anything else in the movie was the one in which the weird midget guy starts playing "Tiptoe through the Tulips" on the record player while Renai (Rose Byrne) is outside putting out the garbage. I love the way it's shot, with her hearing the record before glimpsing him through the window. I love the use of sound in both these scenes. (One critic said the film relied too much on sound. Say what?) And what about the scary old lady in the photos, getting closer in each picture? How on earth can anyone not find these concepts, these images, scary as hell? And don't say it's because you've seen a lot of scary movies before. If a 19th century newsie ghost started fucking around with your record player, you wouldn't act so cool.

Things do break down a little in the third act, I will concede that. I can see the necessity of the father fighting for his son, I liked the romp through the haunted house, I even liked the twist. (Again, as with the whole genre-versus-cliché argument, there's something satisfying about a twist that you see coming.) And oh how I loved all the ghosts crowding into the house. I don't know that I would have given up that pleasure, even though I sort of wish the story had diverged after the seance scene. (How I would have done it? Let the demon posses the boy, kill the boy. Maybe I would not have gotten a PG rating.) The break-down, as I see it, only stems from the necessity of tying up the story. In other words, there's less of that amorphous creepiness I so enjoy, and more plot strands dutifully tied up. It doesn't feel like a climax so much as a chore duly executed.

Luckily for me, the rest of the film more than makes up for the imperfect third act. The true genre pleasures are all present and to those who decry them as clichés, I have to ask them: "How would you have done it? What totally original spin on the concept of haunting would you have come up with?" Or, more theoretically, "Does it make you happier to deny yourself the pleasures of genre than to immerse yourself in them?" Likely I would be greeted with silence. But not an ominous silence because, you know, that's totally been done before.

Booky-wooks

Here's a nice little list of "Old Fashioned Horror" books from Abebooks.com.

Old-fashioned. Doesn't that have a nice, wholesome ring to it?

In a completely unrelated story, my birthday is coming up soon.

"Miss Marple Resurfaces, And This Time She's No Spinster"

According to Deadline.com, "Disney has made a deal to revive the Agatha Christie mystery series staple character Miss Marple, but with one big difference: instead of the elderly spinster who lives in the English village of St. Mary's [sic] Mead and solves mysteries as a hobby, the new configuration is for Mark Frost to script a version where Marple is in her 30s or 40s."

That's interesting because I'm adapting an Hercule Poirot mystery for the Dizneee Channel wherein he is a 25-year-old Asian man played by John Cho who can communicate psychically with elephants. He works at the San Diego zoo and solves mysteries in his spare time, when he's not riding his Harley. Also, Veronica Mars makes a bunch of cameos.

A not-at-all-timely review of Breillat's Sleeping Beauty

It is axiomatic that fairy tales morph with each re-telling. This narrative shape-shifting lets each new version capture new anxieties, reflect new eras; each new author adds his or her own personal stamp. Catherine Breillat’s Sleeping Beauty is no exception. As the director said in a recent interview, “When I made the film I had to ask, ‘Why me?’ I have to become part of the story. I have to be it.” With Sleeping Beauty, Breillat re-imagines the plot by starting from the most seemingly obvious point: the heroine’s dreams. (After all, what else can you do with a character whose main action is sleeping?) Breillat imagines a girl who “wanted to be daring and do things that were dangerous, forbidding, and do them in her own way.” So the passive protagonist of yore becomes an adventurer, whose soul fearlessly roams the universe as her body lies asleep in a silent chamber. Or, as Breillat puts it, this is no “a little Barbie pink dream.” This decision is both brilliantly simple and dazzlingly inspired. Whether the film always holds up to this conception is a matter of debate, but as a guiding construct it is nearly perfect.

Want more? The rest of the review is here! Aren't you angry I'm making you click something?

In Which I Celebrate Drunken Irish Novelists*

Let's take some time out of our very busy day (accomplished so far: gone to deli for milk, learned how to pronounce Justin Bieber in Spanish, drank coffee, briefly opened windows, closed them again, now eating oatmeal) to pay tribute to some of my literary heroes who also happen to be Irish!

After spending much of yesterday arguing about the correct spelling of Saint Paddy's Day (D's, not T's people!) I got to thinking about words, language, and the old sod. Apparently James Joyce didn't give a shit about spelling and made up a bunch of 100-letter words in Finegan's (sp? who cares!) Wake. I don't know, I never read that fucker. I'm just not smart enough, honestly. Anyhoo, so then I thought some more and realized that two of my all-time favorite scribes were Irishmen.

One: first love, Oscar Wilde. I had a children's edition of The Happy Prince and other Tales when I was tiny -- illustrated by Arthur Rackham, sigh.... so beautiful -- and loved, loved, loved it. Later, as a teenager, I learned Wilde was master of the bitchy one-liner, and my devotion was renewed. I still heart you, fatty.

Two: Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The master, the absolute master, of gothic ghost stories. Along with M.R. James, one of my very very most beloved favorites, ever! There's a very comprehensive bibliography and link to articles here, and a very nice appreciation of J.S. by M.R. here. And here's a link to one of my favorite Le Fanu stories, The Sexton's Adventure!

Some smarty-pants critics have posited that some of Le Fanu's anxieties were rooted in his fractured identity as an Anglo-Irishman. Again, I'm not smart enough to know what this means. All I know is that he totally rules, so a toast to him! Hurrah for ghost stories, hurrah for mad novelists, and hurrah for holidays on which intemperance is celebrated, nay, encouraged!

* And here's a full list of Irish references on The Simpsons! You caught that Simpsons reference, didn't you? Of course you did, clever reader! That's why you really boil my potato!

Once upon a film

There's a delightful round-up of fairy tales on film over at Movie Morlocks; it runs the gamut from classic (Cocteau) to obscure (Valerie and her Week of Wonders) to contemporary (Red Riding Hood). Insightful readings add new dimensions to old favorites (Freeway's "subtext is not about sex, but about class and taste, as it reveals the hypocrisy and condescension of the liberal middle class toward the 'unfortunates' of society..." zing!) while her list also adds at least three previously unknown titles to my Netflix queue.
An excellent list that should inspire any fairy-tale fan, or fan of film for that matter. The only thing I might add to it might be Hawks' Ball of Fire, which bears a very loose resemblance to Snow White, as gangster moll Barbara Stanwyck hides out in a houseful of seven* mild-mannered professors who are writing a slang dictionary.

* There are eight, actually, if you count Gary Cooper, but we all know he's the Prince!

"Hey... they both wear capes!"

"Industry expert" Mark Lisanti on how fairy tales became the new comic books. Picture the phrase being uttered by a dim-witted studio exec and it actually sounds like a fairly accurate, or at least plausible, explanation. Add to that the two most beautiful words in the English language -- public domain -- and you've got yourself a trend!

"That oughta have a highball around it"

As anyone who knows me is aware, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is one of my all time favorite movies -- certainly my favorite Hawks movie, and that's saying something. I never understood criticism of the film; I remember vaguely hearing something to the effect that "those women" were gold-digging "monsters" who should be reviled. That maybe some boring old prude somewhere would like to toss them right off the great big cruise ship of life. Well let me tell you something, buster: those girls wouldn't drown.

I learned everything I need to know about life from Dorothy and Lorelei. (Well, those two, and the Golden Girls who, if you think about it, follow the same paradigm: Rose + Blanche = Lorelei, Dorothy + Ma = Dorothy Shaw.) For example, here's a little advice that comes in handy most any where, any time:

"If a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing well."

"If we can't empty his pockets between the two of us, we're not worthy of the name woman."

"A lady never admits her feet hurt."

"Nobody chaperones the chaperone."

And there's more! So if you've never seen it, go rent, steal, or charm someone into lending you Gentlement Prefer Blondes tonight.

As for me, I'd like to make a toast: to friendship, highballs, song-and-dance numbers, Henry Spofford III (and valet), and diamonds.... shiny, shiny diamonds.... I raise my glass and recite this little number:

There once was a fellow named Sidney
He drank til he ruined a kidney
It shriveled and shrank
But he drank and he drank
Well he had his fun doing it, didn't he?

I know another one: bottoms up.

Interview with Corinne May Botz

One need not be a chamber to be haunted,
One need not be a house;
The brain has corridors surpassing
Material place.

Ghosts have a strange relationship to their spaces: they are part of the home, yet they are frightening; they are unknown, and yet they reveal themselves to us. They are integral to the space, which may explain why so much ghostly activity comes from the house itself (moving furniture, smashing dishes, etc.). The house becomes its own agent, and yet is entwined with its inhabitants – and interlopers....

I write about ghosts, art and haunted houses in this interview with photographer, writer and all around nice lady Corinne May Botz. Read it if obsession holds no fear for you, if you can tread the darkest places of the mind without trembling....

Secret Beyond the Door

When I'm not writing random screeds against perfectly innocent children's movies, I craft thoughtful considerations of fairy tales on film: read my take on the Bluebeard-inspired Secret Beyond the Door at Cabinet des Fees!

The Little Mermaid

Five grown women gathered in a Brooklyn apartment one wintry Friday evening to watch The Little Mermaid. Why? That actually, I can’t explain. A mass email had gone out mentioning a “girl’s night,” that included, for reasons unknown to me, the mention of “a Disney movie.” Somehow this grew to mean the specific aquatic-themed Disney movie, and I was, if you will, hooked. Not so much on the idea of the film, but on the nautical concept surrounding the whole event. We were to eat fish and crab-cakes, and drink salty dogs. Swedish fish were in the offing for desert. One girl thought to bring a sack full of oranges, “to prevent scurvy.”

What can I say? I'm a sucker for nautical crap. I like to imagine I’d enjoy being an explorer on one of the early journeys to map the New World, though my husband assures me these trips were terrible. (I know they were, but wouldn’t the thrill of discovery outweigh the inconvenience of being eaten by your starving shipmates when you ran out of rats and mast-bark? Some people have no sense of adventure.)

So it was this, more than the prospect of the Disney movie, that drew me in. To be frank, I never cared for this particular studio offering. In general, 1990s Disney always struck me as too precious and cloying, too snide and self-congratulatory. I don’t hate Disney. I respect the animation and even like some of the songs (though not all – again, many of the ‘90s songs struck me as too Broadway, and I despise Broadway musicals). And there are some sequences in Disney films that are almost literally enchanting: the dwarves’ “Whistle as you Work” song in Snow White, the terrifying spindle-pricking scene in Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella’s opening credits. And Alice in Wonderland entranced me as a child (it still does). Though I can respect, appreciate and even enjoy certain aspects of the Mouse’s imagined universes, I can’t help but loathe certain Disney princesses.

Some are less irritating than others – Sleeping Beauty, for instance, I find quite elegant. But I have the usual feminist gripe with Walt’s stable of fair maidens, and little Ariel seems to bother me most of all. Her unnecessarily enormous eyes, for instance. All Disney heroines are wide-eyed, but there’s something about her proportions that irritate me. Obviously I’m not looking for verisimilitude in a cartoon character; I just don’t find her aesthetically pleasing. I do like that she has red hair, though, so I’ll give her that.

I have another issue with The Little Mermaid: I think it frankly butchers Hans Anderson’s exquisite story. I realize it is irrelevant and useless to compare filmic adaptations of literature to their source material in such a way. There’s nothing worse than hearing some nerd whine, “It wasn’t like the booo-oook!” Film is an art form unto itself. So I will concede this point is critically irrelevant but note that it biases me against the film from the get-go, since I cherish the tragic original story so very much.

So maybe I should check myself here, and try to locate the locus of my hatred: other than twisting a delicate tale of love and loss into a cheerful fable about “being yourself” and spoon-feeding it to hordes of already over-entitled, delusionally self-confident little girls, is the movie really so bad? I don’t know. Plot-wise it dutifully hits all the requisite points. Song-wise, I guess it’s all right, if a little poppy (thought thankfully nowhere near as appalling as The Lion King). The sidekicks are average, neither especially charming or especially annoying. The sense of place is nicely rendered. It is mentioned at one point that they dwell in the Caspian Sea, and Prince Eric’s seafaring kingdom boasts a dreamy beachside castle. (Though I would have liked to spend more time in the undersea kingdom; I think the lack of time spent in this world merely demonstrates the lack of imagination put into this film.) There are interesting little touches here and there (Ariel’s stash of human detritus includes a de la Tour painting of “A Penitent Magdalen,” an interesting choice). So far, it seems to be coming up a draw. Now what about the villains?

This may be the only area where The Little Mermaid really shines. Ursula the Sea-Witch is the best Disney villainess since the evil queen in Snow White.

Her oozing flesh jiggles and quakes monstrously, as she quivers with delight in her own evil. Her big musical number is actually pretty decent, very lurid and smoky and filled with obscene suggestion. I’m unclear as to what her motivation for evil is exactly, other than mere generational jealousy – she seems to motivated partly out of an admirable desire to displace King Triton and rule the sea (who wouldn’t want to rule the sea?) and a generalized dislike of the willful, self-regarding Ariel – obviously something I can understand. Whatever the reason, she pursues evil with resounding style, from her clip-on earrings to her fire engine lipstick. Her flabby, fulsome body is a masterstroke of monster design; you can hardly tell where her back-fat ends and her octopus legs begin. And the final showdown, in which she turns Triton into a weird sea-ghost, raises a thunderstorm, and attempts to murder both Eric and Ariel, is an astoundingly frightening climax for a children’s movie. You can’t help but respect Ursula.

Overall, there is a nullity to The Little Mermaid that I just can’t quite get behind. I feel hollow after I watch it, experiencing neither joy for Ariel nor pity for her father, the imposingly rendered King Triton, who sacrifices everything to let her join Prince Eric’s kingdom. I don’t even feel feminist rage* at Ariel giving up everything she knows for a man, because all she ever knew before was a petulant, sullen sort of discontent. In essence, she gets everything she wants, no matter how many people she has to destroy (Ursula) or almost destroy (Eric, her father) to get it. When the movie begins she is spoiled and selfish, and when it ends she is spoiled and selfish. (How many months will go by before she wakes up one morning next to Eric and says, “Darling don’t you that I long to live in the air!”?)

But most of all (and I realize now I veer dangerously close to "it wasn't like the book!" territory here) this is a tragic tale of longing (not petty whims, Ariel!) and loss, utter, utter loss! This is not a peppy story, it shouldn't have a happy ending, damn it. The message of The Little Mermaid seems to be “let your children do what they want.” Surely this isn’t a lesson American parents need to learn.

* On a side note, Disney's pandering to feminism is quite blatant and enraging here: Ariel finds her voice, don't you see? I'm not buying it, no sir.

This self-promotion fills me with shame...

...but Spinster Aunt's alter ego, A.J. Sweeney, has a short story up at Flashes in the Dark! Normally Spinster Aunt is too reserved to toot her own horn like this, but that A.J. Sweeney is a cold-hearted, fang-toothed hussy.

Goblin markets

Lately I've been getting back into fairy tales, having read some great contemporary updates in recent months (e.g. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg) and I'm pleased to see the form is thriving online. A couple of intriguing sites I've stumbled upon recently include Cabinet des Fees, Enchanted Conversation, and the sensibly named Fairy Tale Review. I like the sense of continuation and collaboration as new stories from multiple authors mesh with existing narratives. The Fairy Tale Review organizes its issues by color -- this month's is red, abounding with tales of the girl in the riding hood, and an upcoming issue will be gray. Enchanted Conversation favors story-based themes, with every issue focusing on a specific fairy tale. Upcoming: Rumplestiltskin. EC's editor also has a blog called Diamonds and Toads, where she muses on all things fairy tale with great passion and visual panache. Finally, Cabinet des Fees is a quasi-highbrow affair that tempers whimsy with some sturdy academic offerings, making it a good source for further (non-fiction) reading in addition to its short stories. My only problem at this point is finding enough hours in the day to read everything therein, so if anyone has any spells for stopping time, let me know.

Winter...

I like to imagine I live in an enchanted secret world about 90% of the time... a soft blanket of snow and a hushed, empty park help me do that splendidly...


It's lovely to see this meadow so child-free...

I chose this angle to hide the blue smear of spray paint on the rocks...

......
.......
.........

Critters

I've been having weird dreams lately (I don't know why I bother to use the word "lately") about sinister little forest creatures.

In one dream, I have a pet who is a re-animated taxidermy squirrel named Mabel.

In other, an owl is stalking me. He perches at my window and stares...

According to dreammoods.com, to dream of an owl symbolizes -- wait for it -- wisdom! And to see a squirrel in your dream indicates that you are involved in a loveless, pointless relationship, an unprofitable business project, or are pursuing empty and fruitless endeavors!

Interestingly enough, to dream that you are trying to run over squirrels with a lawn mower means you are looking for some form of acceptance.

Life imitates art

Merry Christmas!

I hope you enjoy this lovely gingerbread graveyard I baked just for you. In truth, the gingerbread looks more like gravestones without the candy on it, but frankly I plan on eating this sucker. Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See you in 2011!

Ghost Building

Last week my friend Mike and I went walking around the financial district to gaze at old graves and dream of Dutch colonial things but, this being the financial district, couldn't help but crane our necks upward and get carried away by skyscrapers. Inspired by the hollow grandness of the bank buildings, I blathered on a bit about how I love narratives of financial ruin, the sheer drama of histories of crashes and panics. Then we stumbled on a gorgeous Art Deco building at the corner of Wall and Pine, and, well, witnessed history.

Fascinated by its sleek elegance, we trotted round and round the edifice, vainly looking for an open door, but all ingress and egress was blocked off and everything was shuttered up tight. Odd, considering it was five o'clock on a weekday afternoon.

At last we found a single open entrance and passed through a revolving door into an unusually
quiet lobby suffused with warm-colored marble. (I remember it being a gingery gold color, but memory is fallible. I should have snapped a picture, darn it.) A plaque informed us of the building's ownership, and we walked through the hushed, utterly deserted interior to the only people in the place: two uniformed security guards. They stood amidst the silence and half-packed cardboard boxes.

We greeted them and asked, "Is this the AIG Building?"

The kinder of the two guards replied slowly: "Used to be."

We spoke to him some more, and he revealed to us that the building had been sold "to the Koreans." I asked him if he would keep his job. "I don't know. I'm just living from day to day," he replied. (Reverting to a strange Little Orphan Annie diction that overtakes me sometimes, I piped up, "You're real nice, mister, I'm sure you'll keep your job, sure you will!") The other guard stood stoically, as soundless as the empty lobby.

At one point a slim young man with light-brown hair and a sad face came into the building. He was dressed in what I imagine bankers wear on weekends, and had on a backpack. As he passed by the stack of boxes, I realized he was likely going upstairs to pack the last of his work things into that backpack.

We waved goodbye to the friendly security guard (I really do wish I had more of a controlling stake in the universe so I could ensure him a job with the new owners) and headed back into the darkening afternoon. As we left, we saw a lone, white-haired lady, perhaps some ancient secretary, shuffle noiselessly across the floor, swipe her ID card at a golden turnstile, and move toward the elevator bank.

***

P.S. Did you know there are no happy hours in the financial district? A waitress explained, "We don't really need them down here."

Bacon Porn

My new Hams & Jams catalogue came in the mail today, and when I say "new" I mean my first ever. I have no idea how they got our address, but frankly it doesn't matter. When you're pitching meat-in-the-mail, I'm buying.

To start, I think I'd like the Sizzle Pack, featuring one pound of Country Smoked Bacon, 1 lb Belgian Waffle and Pancake Mix and an 12 oz bottle of Maple Syrup. Then I'll move on to the Loveless Smokehouse Special, featuring:

• 1 lb Country Smoked Bacon
  
• 2 lbs Country Smoked Sausage
  
• 12 oz Center-Cut Country Ham Slices

Then maybe I'll grab a nice jar of pumpkin butter to go with my Butter My Biscuits! gift pack, and, finally, top it off with a nice bag of Piggy Popcorn, that is to say, popcorn popped in bacon grease sprinkled with Real Country Smoked Bacon Bits.

And if that's not enough, I might for for a Whole Hog Gift Pack or two.

Teeny tiny deadly things

"Morgues and crime scenes were hardly places for ladies of good breeding to discuss, let alone visit."

So, in characteristic fashion, I discover Frances Glessner Lee long after the rest of the world does. What can I say, it isn't easy living in a state of calculated obliviousness. In any case, it isn't when you find her, I suppose, that matters: it's finding her at all. Imagine my euphoria when I learned that not only was this woman a fellow dioramist, but she made tiny dioramas of real-life crime scenes! What's more, she was a society woman, which made the contrast between her gentle good breeding and the gruesomeness of her chosen art all the more delightful.

Observe:

"Conducted within the contours of conventionality, Glessner Lee’s activities were consonant with the one career she was expected to assume, that of society matron. Her tables were elegantly appointed, her fortune endowed a worthy cause, and her leisure time was productively devoted to a hobby many women enjoyed: making miniature scenes."

Oh yes, please continue!

" [H]er dinner guests dissected grisly details of crime scenes over their consommé [and] within her dollhouse dioramas, cheery dotted-swiss curtains and floral wallpapers belied the presence of dead bodies..."


As if that wasn't enough, the brilliant woman gave her circa-1940s dioramas the best name ever: The Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death.

Sigh.

Oh and, sure, yeah, they were scientifically significant and had some major impact on criminologists at Harvard, etc. But for me, I think it's just enough that they are. Would I have liked them better if they served no purpose? No. I'm just sayin. I mean, sure she revolutionized the science of forensic pathology, but it would have been as charming coming from someone who wasn't a millionaire heiress? I mean, I'm picturing her as a sort of Katharine Hepburn/Carole Lomard type, you know? Or maybe, in her later years, a J.B. Fletcher type:


Anyway, this completely badass woman who took dentist's drills to her dollhouses is now the subject of a new film:



Let's all just bask in her awesomeness. And perhaps I can convince my more ghoulish family members to buy me the book.

P.S. Scholarly sources on the preceding quotes can be found here. More info on the amazing woman who took these photos can be found here and here.

Spinster Travelogue: Green-Wood Cemetery

We all know how much I love cemeteries (I'm sure I've alluded to rambling madly over the tomb-strewn hillocks of Green-Wood before) but as I am camera-averse and rarely document anything, I have never actually bothered to post photos of the excellent locale.

Until now:

This is one of my favorite, and most vampirey-looking graves.

A tree. No more, no less. I thought the color was rather nice.

Surely Aunt Abbey was a Spinster Aunt, no?

The grave of Charlotte Canda, which I walked past many times without noticing. Why? Because the False Japanese Cedar always stole my attention. Incidentally, I have written rather an excellent ghost story about Charlotte and her diabolical aunt. (Disclaimer: there is nothing anywhere in written history that proves her aunt was diabolical. This is merely a figment of my fevered imagination.)

The chapel. I like the dusky autumn light.

Again, color!

The path of life leads but to the grave!

Where the dead come alive (metaphorically)

Hey everybody, just wanted to announce that I'm now leading walking tours of lower Manhattan!

I offer non-cheesy walking tours of the historical variety... contact me if you love the Dutch colony as much as I do, and I'll give you my Stuyvesant special (just a fancy name for a Colonial-themed walking tour of lower Manhattan).

Enjoy!

I like it when worlds collide

So the other day I go to Green-Wood's art show, and one of their notable artists is George Catlin, right? Then I go to a lecture on Five Points over at the Smarmy Marxist Tenement Museum (I love them, but geez, sometimes it's all a bit much) and what do I see? This painting of Five Points, by George Catlin:

Boom.

Artists in (Permanent) Residence

Panther Shooting, Brazil (George Catlin, 1854)

This weekend there is a free art exhibit in the Green-Wood historic chapel of many of the artists buried in the cemetery. I'll be going, so, you know, it'll be awesome.

Teeny tiny seedy things

My new favorite thing in all the world are these tiny, seedy sculptures by Alan Wolfson, which I found over at Vanishing New York. My favorite, of course, is the Triple-A Detective Agency (pictured above), but his wee Times Square peep shows and dingy hotel rooms are worth ogling, too. Visit his fun world-in-miniature website here. I really need to beef up my dioramas after seeing this.

I feel like I'm turning into one of those people who insist on showing their vacation slides* because all my recent posts have been, "Here's what I've been up to this weekend," while really no one cares. But I really did take some tremendous walks -- despite the heat -- and I saw turtles! Tiny frogs! Flowers! Bees! And it was so exciting, really it was, that I whipped out my camera-phone in a great passion and snapped things that seemed terribly important at the time...

I saw very gorge roses:


... and butterflies... ... and scads of other lovely things, but since I'm not really a good photographer I won't embarrass myself with awful snaps of the turtle (especially since the poor creature was shrinking from the attention and begging not to be photographed, really) and other things, but I do have to leave you with one lovely bit of whimsy -- my bagel took the shape of a heart, when cut (or rather the centre of it did) and whenever my food accidentally takes on a heart shape there's a part of me that can't resist:


So there: hearts and flowers and butterflies. It's been that kind of weekend. But don't think I've gone soft on you: I can still kill a man twenty-seven different ways with a hairpin and 9-volt battery.


* Do those still exist?

Olmsted docu at Prospect Park, August 4th

I had a pretty magical walk in the park today, which reminds me to tell y'all that the film I worked on this winter is screening at Prospect Park this coming Wednesday!

THE OLMSTED LEGACY, featuring the voices of Kevin Kline and Kerry Washington, premieres in Olmsted and Vaux’s classic park–under the stars, and free for all.

Wednesday, August 4

8pm

The Celebrate Brooklyn! Stage at the Bandshell, Prospect Park.

Come nerd out with me at the park!

Weekend Projects a la David Lynch

I'm gearing up to start my summer diorama, which I'm very excited about. The spring diorama was a great success, and I'm sorry to see it go.


The narrative here is that Victorian street urchins discover a magical world of giant toads and flowers. Sorry about the glare in this photo. These were taken with a camera phone under high lights, with shiny paper, and I realize you can't even see the toad here. I'll have to take some more before I dismantle it.

I started creating dioramas in my living room earlier this year, when I noticed that an empty air-conditioner hole just begs to be turned into a tiny theatre of wonders. This was my winter diorama. It's sort of a Russian fairy-tale version of Red Riding Hood:


Not to give too much away, but my summer diorama will involve nuns.

Au revoir, Madame Devereaux

I know this happened three days ago but I just can't stand to be party to the vulgar internet eulogizing in which many of my peers indulge, so I held off until I felt it was decent.

All I shall say is this: Blanche was, is and always will be my soul mate (though in my dumber moments I'm very Rose, my heart will always belong to the Slut). And we have the exact same reaction to form-letter rejections:

In which I trivialize Memorial Day

Well, I'm back. Although I grew tired of blogging and went into a self-induced semi-retirement back in January, I now realize I have far too many hilarious photos and trivial anecdotes to share with the world, and must return to the blogosphere to, at the very least, keep those Chinese spam comments from gathering in the comments section of my blog like cobwebs.

To celebrate my triumphant return from obscurity, here is a photo from my Memorial Day celebration, in which I re-enact the Battle of Gettysburg using blue and gray cupcakes:

As a great man once said, "You're welcome America."

Brevity

Hey ladies and gents,

Posting in the upcoming months is going to be light and sporadic so there won't be much going on around here, but why not follow me on Twitter? I'm much easier to take in small doses.

http://twitter.com/SpinsterAunt

Or take a gander at www.andreajanes.com for new short stories and other updates!

In the meantime, I'll be staying at my friend Jack Handle's.

Stay gold,

A.

Christmas Ghosts: The Third Story

OK, I upped the cheese factor for this one, a retelling of an urban legend about jewel thief Estelle Ridley, a.k.a Fanchon Moncare. Like a souffle that doesn't quite rise, this story is missing something -- I think the tone is a little off.... it came out sounding a bit Dan Brown (or Caleb Carr!), when I was going for Stephen King. Anyway, hopefully you, dear reader, can overlook its flaws and enjoy the pulpy, silly goodness.

Happy New Year!

Why story #3 is taking a little while....

"Setting aside the highest masterpieces of literature, there is nothing more difficult to achieve than a first-class ghost story."

- Montague Summers

Christmas Ghosts: The Second Story

Click here to read "Notes Taken At Keen's."

Christmas Ghosts: The First Story

Telling ghost stories while sitting round the fire (or, if you will, space heater) is a time-honored holiday tradition, one I've promised to share with my readers and fellow spinsters-at-heart this year.

The first is a local tale, from right here in Brooklyn. Gravesend, in fact. It's rather a spooky name, isn't it? Indeed. So without further preamble, here is a very chilling story I heard around the fire tonight; its author claims it is completely true but, of course, punch was served so there may be embellishments here and there, which is to be expected, of a ghost story.

Click here to read "Lady Moody of Gravesend."

Feelin' Christmasy Part Deux

Yaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!

I know technically it's impossible for a person without a "real job" to have a holiday, but I've been verrrry busy lately and today, just today, I seem to have gotten the last of my errands and things-to-do out of the way! Hurrah! Which leaves, between now and Christmas, a delightful window of time to fill however I please, specifically, in the following ways:

1. The baking of cookies

2. The baking of cakes

3. Ditto pies

4. The brewing of punch and drinking thereof

5. Ghost stories!

6. Gingerbread house diorama contest (contestants: self)

7. Prezzies! The buying thereof. Particularly for long-suffering husbands who may or may not have endured a rough week with their insane spinster-wife ("Is my hair turning green? I'm convinced it's turning green.") And holiday cards!

8. Movies!

9. Winter solstice walking tours and Knickerbocker lectures

10. Various festivities, possibly including Festivus... and.... ice skating!

Also, I will be following the Bowery Boys' delightful "A Very Special New Amsterdam Christmas," in which they detail how many of our (national!) Christmas traditions have their origins not in the stuffy Massachusetts Bay Puritans but in our own delightful rollicking roistering Dutch colony. Hurrah!

Why I love old ladies -- Reason #294

294. They nonchalantly bake fifteen-layer cakes

'Many experienced cooks in the South assume that everyone knows how to bake. Virginia Willis, author of “Bon Appétit, Y’all,” sent me a coconut cake recipe she got from an 80-year-old family friend from Augusta, Ga. It begins: “Make a yellow cake.”'

Bond No. 9 Signature Perfume is Gold

What does it take to make me shill a product here on Spinster Aunt? Specifically, a product that retails for $330 an ounce and comes in a gold bottle? In a word: oud.

Bond No. 9 continues to send me free samples of their glorious perfumes, some of which are more memorable than others (my favorites are Saks Fifth Avenue For Her and Chinatown; my least favorite is Nuits de NoHo) but I treasure them all.

Well, a little gold vial showed up at my house last night, and while I was at first merely pleasantly amused by the copy ("Here is the incomparable beauty and derring-do of our island metropolis distilled in liquid form!" Tee hee, I love it!) my benign amusement suddenly turned deadly serious: this is THE BEST THING I HAVE EVER SMELLED. Seriously. I can't stop smelling it.

Do you want to know what it smells like? This is what it smells like:


Will they churn out a version in a non-gold, more reasonably priced bottle? Should they? Who cares! For now, I am going to deck myself out in this powerful sample for as long as humanly possible.... and breathe....

Feelin' Christmasy

1) A rather excellent Patricia Highsmith article in the NYT: "To all the devils, lusts, passions, greeds, envies, loves, hates, strange desires, enemies ghostly and real, the army of memories, with which I do battle — may they never give me peace."

2) Ghost stories. I've been into them lately. Today I had a marvelous experience at the Brooklyn Public Library after a wondrous wintry walk: I got The Hours After Midnight (J.S. Le Fanu, who I've been loving recently) and The Lottery (which I've been dying to re-read; I may love Shirley Jackson even more than Highsmith). So this kick I've been on, it started with the ghost stories of Dickens, moved on to M.R. James, and in the past month has expanded to Le Fanu. I am completely entranced by his "Ghost Stores of Chapelizod" and "Dickon the Devil" (which I have the unfortunate habit of referring to -- in my head -- as "Dikon the Radish," which just makes it kind of cute instead of scary). What am I getting at with all this?

The Point.

3) It's Christmastime (almost) and apparently, in England, telling ghost stories is a Yuletide tradition. Now I reckon there's about two weeks to Christmas, and I really want to write some ghost stories, so here's what I'm proposing: a story or two every couple of days until December 31st (I need an extension on my deadline already!) in rough form, right here, the best of which I shall revise and post on my website. Hopefully I'll get a few good tales out of it. Then again, in England they drive on the wrong side of the road, too.... so....

4) ... oh yes, punch. In Le Fanu, his protags are always drinking "punch." By the fire. With booze in it. Warm and wintry, indeed. In an attempt to be more ghosty, I have made a rather tasty punch of my own, currently simmering on my stove. Which means I stop typing.... now....

The Best of The Aughts...

I think my love for old-timey things is starting to rub off on my long-suffering husband: check this out! It's a run-down of the best short films of 1900-1910, in honor of all the "best of the aughts" lists that are circulating these days, heavy on the Porter and Melies, and totally freaking awesome. Porter's 1907 "Dream of a Rarebit Fiend" didn't make the cut, but I want to include it here since I love anything that has to do with eating too much late at night/bizarre dreams:

Green-Wood's new blog!

The loveliest place in Brooklyn finally has its own blog! It's my most favorite place in the borough, and if you haven't done so already, make the time to ramble through it. But if you have no time today, enjoy a virtual ramble right now!

The weirdest *$%#-ing book EVER

So I'm reading Spindrift: Spray From A Psychic Sea and -- what, you've never heard of it? Well, let's see, how to describe it? Frightening? Strangely mesmerizing in a horrible way?Completely effing bat-poop?

Let's take a look at that cover flap, shall we? "It started out as a search for an apartment, changed to a ghost hunt, became a deeper spiritual search that led through the occult and the esoteric philosophies, and concluded with [author] Jan Bryant Bartell's death a few weeks after she had completed this manuscript, which recounts her experiences!" Eek! But wait, there's more: "Like a game of Ten Little Indians, deaths began to occur in the house. The first to die was a dog, Jan's own beloved Penelope. But within twenty-four hours, she was to learn of the death of the first human tenant. Whether by heart attacks, suicide or murder, the deaths came in rapid succession.... In terror, with nine little Indians gone, the Bartells moved far away from Greenwich Village. But the haunting followed them. After the completion of Spindrift, Jan Bartell became the tenth."

Seriously, this might be the most macabre marketing ever. Even for a publisher.

So, to back up a bit, Jan Bryant Bartell was an actress who moved into an apartment on West Tenth Street in 1957 and started feeling chills and things bumping in the night almost immediately. Her husband was a skeptic and no one else saw the ghosts, leading her to undertake a solitary, Rosemary's Baby-like research into psychic phenomena. The thing is, nothing she sees is actually, well, very convincing. It reads like a manual for errors in formal logic as Bartell refuses to consider any number of very real alternative possibilities for the "psychic phenomena" she encounters. Take this whole dog dying business: her dog was 10 years old and epileptic. A sign that someone is reaching out to you from the other side? Or an old dog? You decide.

Also, despite claiming to be an actress, composer, and sometime author, Bartell seems to have spent most of her time decorating and puttering around the apartment. Seems to me like batty housewife syndrome (or "BHS"). She was, apparently, mentally unstable in real life, and her writing certainly brings this across. It's written in an strangely disjointed style, with awkward flourishes, odd imagery, unfathomable turns of phrase ("I was in a state of deferred feeling") and Bulwer Lytton prose: "I was face to face with the unseen!" Oh, and lots and lots of exclamation points! Like this! Far be it for me to diagnose, but her descriptions of sluggishness followed by dazzling bursts of creativity sounds a wee bit... manic-depressive?

And yet...

Her house on West Tenth Street really has been reported to be haunted. And, despite her wackiness, there's something that makes me keep reading this book. Maybe it's just the fascination of trying to figure out if the woman was an insane 1950s housewife who let her neuroses consume her or if she really saw something in that place. Or maybe it's the feeling of dread and unease that I get when I read the damn thing. Seriously, this is not the best book to read before bed (though that's totally what I'm going to do right now). There's something unsettling about it that I can't put my finger on yet, but I'll let you know more when I finish it.

Until then, you can read more about Jan Bartell and the "murder house," here.

"I'm the last of the Tiddly-Winking Leapfroggers of the Golden Summer of 1914"