La Vie La Cage

Managed to catch La Cage Aux Folles by 9 Works Theatricals last Friday, and enjoyed it so much I simply had to do an encore for their final performance Sunday afternoon.

What to say, what to say, really?

First off, I thought the production was appropriately splendiferous. The glitter, the glam, the shimmer and sparkle of the titular, legendary St. Tropez cabaret was captured in the fabulous costumes, dazzling confections created by members of the Fashion Designers Association of the Philippines. The stage sets by Mio Infante also evoked the ambience of the French Riviera, both in the interiors of Chez Georges et Albin, and the exteriors representing the resort town of St. Tropez.

The choreography and music were energetic, impressive, and riveting. The Cagelles - singly and as a group - fulfilled their promise in the opening song "We Are What We Are" that "you'll love us once you get to know us." Indeed, how could you not love the breathless tap dancing, the raunchy can-can, and the various individual vaudeville acts ( Hannah from Hamburg, j'adore!) ?

Indeed, La Cage gets off to a grand, fabulous start, and sets off from there like a psychotic horse towards a burning stable. 

But the musical play wouldn't have endured as a Broadway favorite if it didn't have more than razzle-dazzle to offer. And at its heart, La Cage is a very human story about perception, discrimination, and the things we do for love.

For those who haven't seen The Birdcage, the 1996 movie adaptation starring Robin Williams and Nathan Lane, a short synopsis would be in order. Georges and Albin (aka Zaza) are old lovers: the owner/emcee and the star, respectively, of the bawdy and beautiful Club La Cage - a famous cabaret featuring a drag queen revue. Georges has a son - Jean-Michel - from a brief fling with a beautiful English dancer named Sybil, who abandoned the boy to the care of the gay couple. Albin has, together with Georges, brought up Jean-Michel as his own flesh-and-blood son.

Jean-Michel comes home from university one day and announces that he is planning to get married to a beautiful girl named Anne Dindon. There's just a petit crise - Anne's father is the notoriously ultra-conservative Monsieur Edouard Dindon, the head of the Family, Tradition, and Morality Party that has threatened to sweep the Riviera clean of "immoral" establishments - such as the Club La Cage.

Anne's parents are coming over to meet their prospective in-laws, and Jean-Michel, eager to get their approval, wishes to present a "normal" family facade to the Dindons. That means inviting over his biological mother, Sybil, to pose as his father's wife. But more than that, it also means getting rid of Albin - and everything he represents - for one night.

Heartache - and hilarity - ensues.

In the role of Georges, Michael de Mesa is a revelation. Primarily because at some 50-plus, he remains a stunningly good-looking man. And secondly, the veteran actor brings a winsome accessibility to the character (which has been portrayed more gruffly in the original 1973 French film, various Broadway productions, and the Hollywood version with Williams). de Mesa's vocal range can be limited - he can be heard straining in some of the numbers, and in others his voice threatens to dip into nothingness in the low notes - but the emotion behind his delivery more than makes up for it. As a matter of fact, for the more emotional numbers like "Look Over There," de Mesa's breaking voice adds a definite resonance to the song.

Because I don't watch TV nor follow the local showbiz news, I don't know Steven Silva from chopped liver, but as the lovestruck but misguided son Jean-Michel, he brings a youthful joie de vivre. His pleasant tenor encapsulates the hopefulness and naivete of young love in the upbeat ditty "With Anne On My Arm." And while the character can come across as an ungrateful jerk and a spoiled brat, somehow Silva's pleasant good looks leaven Jean-Michel's less-than-stellar personality flaws.

As Jean-Michel's objet d'amour, Missy Macuja-Elizalde (alternating with Joni Galeste), brings a combination of fresh-faced innocence and a certain continental je ne sais quoi to the Dindon ingénue. Macuja also does double-duty as one of the chorus girls, and her balletic pedigree certainly comes across in her very physical dance routines. Lisa Macuja's little girl has grown into a voluptuous young woman, and in a rather risqué outfit later on in the show, young Elizalde's patrician features, coupled with her full figure, reminded me of the riveting sensuality of Manet's Olympia. It would be interesting to see her tackle more daring and mature roles in the future.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention young but veteran thespian Noel Rayos. As Jacob, the family's unhinged butler/maid who desperately wishes for a chance to be a Cagelle, Rayos chews the scenery and threatens to upstage the principals as he struts through a series of hilarious costume changes. Jacob's entrances and exits are an outrageous parade of characters from various musicals, ranging from Little Orphan Annie to Cho-Cho San to the Mother Superior in Sound of Music. Rayos' Jacob is the comedy relief in a musical full of comic reliefs - a feat heroically performed by Hank Azaria as Agador in The Birdcage. Those are mighty big shoes to fill , but Rayos squeezes into those heels with madcap abandon, to the delight of the audience.

But of course, the star of the show is the Great Zaza/Albin, and Audie Gemora delivers a bravura performance. It's one of those transformative, transfixing star turns in which an actor inhabits the role so completely you stop seeing the actor and behold - and believe - the character instead. As Zaza la Diva, Gemora is all sassy bump n' grind burlesque, a confident queen holding court onstage. As the comically-fraught and hysterical Albin, he clearly takes his cue from Nathan Lane's take in The Birdcage, and he channels Lane's Albin not just through his acting and vocal performances, but he physically resembles Lane, as well. 

Gemora and de Mesa have great chemistry, and it was delightful to hear the audience so kilig over the lambings of this old gay couple. And that's one of the beautiful things about this musical: while it's very much a story involving gay men, it's not just a story about gay men. The longing, the love, the striving for acceptance while maintaining individual identity are universal themes, and the Gemora/de Mesa coupling manages to transcend the confines of sexual orientation. Their Georges and Albin come across to the appreciative audience as just another couple with their ups and downs, their silly little bickering and their big hurtful fights.

Just like "normal" people.

But while it takes two to tango, Gemora, a multi-awarded and veteran stage actor, is the heart and soul of this story, and delivers the evening's high point with his spare, wounded, powerful rendition of the musical's most famous song "I Am What I Am."

The song itself (from which the entire musical sprang) is familiar to anyone who's ever seen a drag revue or attended a Gay Pride parade, thanks to the commercial Gloria Gaynor version. But while the lyrics themselves speak of empowerment, in the context of the musical itself, "I Am What I Am" is more poignant, more vulnerable. Paradoxically, it's the pathos that makes the piece more potent.

There's a fascinating story about the song and how it gave birth to the whole musical:

Holt and Brown had produced the 1974 revival of Gypsy directed by Arthur Laurents, and they approached him with an offer to direct their new venture. Laurents was not a fan of drag or camp entertainment and thought Holt and Brown never would find enough investors to finance a gay-themed project at a time when, during the early years of the AIDS epidemic, homophobia was more intense than ever. He agreed only because Holt and Brown were close friends and he wanted them to remain on (Alan) Carr's payroll as long as possible, but his interest grew when he learned Harvey Fierstein and Jerry Herman had committed to the project.

According to Laurents, when he met with Fierstein and Herman for the first time, they had restored both the title and locale of the original play but had neither a script nor even an outline for the plot. All they had was the Herman song "I Am What I Am," and Laurents immediately envisioned it as an emotional outburst sung at the close of the first act. Laurents further claims that when he explained his concept to Fierstein and Herman, he inspired the direction they took in writing the musical. Herman tells a very different story in an interview included in the original cast CD. He claims that they were well into the collaboration when Fierstein arrived one day with an emotional fiery scene he had written for the end of Act I that included the words "I am what I am." Delighted, Herman asked to use the five words, boasting that he would have a song by morning, which he did.

It's no surprise that "I Am What I Am" has become a global anthem for gay pride. Its lyrics are affirmative, defiant, and empowering. Nevertheless, even in the creation of the musical, some concessions to the general heterosexual community (and sensibilities) had to be made:

With gay-activist Fierstein and the political Laurents on board, the show could have "become a polemic diatribe on gay rights." However, Herman was a moderating influence. Having suffered a series of disappointments with darker-themed shows since 1969, he was eager to score a hit with a mainstream, emotional, optimistic song-and-dance entertainment that middle-class audiences would enjoy. The team opted to create "a charming, colorful, great-looking musical comedy - an old-fashioned piece of entertainment," as Herman recalled in his memoir Showtune. By "delivering their sentiments in a sweetly entertaining manner," the team was able to convey their gay-themed message with more impact than they could have with a more aggressive approach.

La Cage Aux Folles opened on Broadway on August 21, 1983, and the rest is musical history. The original production won six out of nine Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical, Best Original Score, and Best Book of a Musical.

The local cultural scene was very busy first quarter: between the many offerings of the Fringe Arts Festival, and the various PETA and CCP productions, it was convenient for me that La Cage had a longish run. But if I had managed to catch La Cage when it opened last February, I would've probably seen it every weekend. 

It was just that fucking good. And the last time I felt this happy after seeing a musical, Wicked was still sweeping town.

Fortunately, there are rumors that La Cage Aux Folles will have another run sometime end of June? If rumors prove to be true, do be sure to catch this wonderful, funny, sentimental, and touching show, and bring your own outrageous entourage. It had a special resonance for me, not just as a gay man, but more pointedly as an ex-owner of a club that also featured cabaret performers and their wild antics, their big heartaches, and the general rambunctiousness and unpredictability that make life la vie la cage aux folles.*

To director Robbie Guevarra and everyone involved in the production: Brava!

========================================

*La cage aux folles literally means "the cage of mad women." Folles is also slang for "effeminate men" aka "queens."

The more you know.

Cry Wolf

So.

It looks like Bench manipulated your outrage after all.

Quelle, quelle surprise.

Bisous, Bisous

For what it's worth, Happy VD.

The Last Dance

The Malate of our generation gained fame as a bohemian district dotted by edgy dance clubs, quirky cafés, and novelty restaurants. Its Renaissance in the early 90s was heralded by establishments diverse and colorful: Blue Cafe, Joy, Pepe N' Pilar, Batavia, and Sala, among others. 

Among these, Joy, the gay dance club, had the most meteoric rise, blazing bright and beautiful before it inevitably burned itself out. From the shimmering trail it left behind rose the next wave : Bath*, Acquario, and yes, BED. Red Banana emerged and, for a time, ruled. But when the WPD blundered through its doors one time too many, it self-immolated.

From its ashes, O-Bar took flight, and reigned on the corner of Orosa and Nakpil for seven years until it, too, just very recently abandoned Malate for Greenhills pastures.


And now BED has followed suit.


Last Saturday, BED - the last remaining vestige of the Malate renaissance - played its music one final time.



--------------------------------------

BED stood loud and proud as a Malate landmark for a good decade, a record that surpasses those of its predecessors Joy and Subway, and, to a somewhat lesser extent, Mr. Piggy's. 

The party fever generated by Joy could not be sustained by the short-lived pretender Bath, and BED quickly ascended the throne, eventually ruling the Malate gay club scene with a velvet fist. Anyone who was anyone had to be there, to see and be seen the same way we all did in oh-so-tony Giraffe or Venezia, ABGs and later on, down to Orange and eventually, Emba, Government, and wherever it is nowadays that the half-breed kids and aspiring models pose and preen.

But while these other clubs shared Makati and Taguig airspace, BED was singularly Malate, standing alone, its lofty position unchallenged. Expats, tourists, celebrities, social climbers of all stripes and various hangers-on shared the same smoke-filled air of BED, sipping their cocktails and swigging their beer, the occasional waft of amyl nitrate in the air mixing with the distinctive smell of the fog machine.

Joy may have started the party, but BED pumped up the volume and rocked the house. And that house party raged and raved for ten long years.



--------------------------------------

The death knell for BED Malate came as a surprise to many; my only surprise was that the owners were able to keep such open, common Malate knowledge secret for so long.

One of BED's principals stated in his FB page that the crowds simply dwindled over the years. This much is true, although the presence of cheaper alternatives such as O-Bar Malate and Che'lu surely siphoned off a good chunk of BED's clientele.

But there was no denying that times were a-changing. At its zenith, the door policy in BED was a formidable thing, as daunting as the long lines snaking a path to its hallowed portals. A serpentine, testosterone-fueled procession of young men, offering themselves to worship at BED's altar. Even with a steep door charge, people were flocking to BED on the weekends. It was, quite simply, Party Ground Zero.

But after its last (and, as it turns out, final) renovation, the writing revealed itself on the wall. BED never looked so good. From the hottest gay disco in town, BED had transformed itself into a super club comparable to what the best in the region had to offer. The owners seemed to have spared no expense in turning BED from a local clubbing legend to an international phenomenon.

And yet sometimes, if you build it, they will not come.



--------------------------------------

There was a lot of talk and movement in Malate even before BED made the announcement. Malate being Malate, there was advance knowledge of the looming void, and as naturally as the muscled hustlers hanging around the Orosa-Nakpil intersection eye drunken Malate habitués, certain sectors were hungry to fill the black hole BED would leave behind.

But some voids cannot be filled; not because they are unique and irreplaceable, but because they are products of their place and time. 

Now, clearly, inexorably, that time has passed.

And soon, so shall the place.



--------------------------------------

There is talk of a loose consortium formed by at least three of the remaining gay establishments left in the Orosa strip. And that this Trinity was hoping to take over the newly-renovated space where BED used to be, and convert it into a multi-level, multi-establishment venue: shades of the old Streetlife in Glorietta, or the various dance clubs and videoke bars that sit cheek by jowl in Soi 2, Silom Road, Bangkok - otherwise known as the DJ Station alley.

However, there appears to be an unforeseen development: one that the Three perhaps hadn't anticipated. If rumors are true, the owner of the property vacated by BED may not be keen on renting out the place to anyone at this point. Apparently, no matter how grand our schemes are, there's someone whose plans are even bigger.



--------------------------------------

If you've found yourself in the Malate district anytime lately, you'd have noticed the proliferation of mid-level buildings: gray, characterless concrete monoliths reaching for the sky. Along Orosa itself, the beautiful white architectural marvel with graceful, sloping curves that used to be Acquario - as well as the lovely structure that used to be its sister establishment, Raj - have both fallen into a gaping hole in the ground where a mid-rise condo will eventually flip a middle finger to bohemia.

That middle finger is Progress.

And as surely as the backhoes claw empty spaces into the earth, Progress will reduce the Malate we know into Nothing, before rebuilding it into Something Else.

Buildings! Condos! As high as the dubious ground beneath water-logged Manila will allow them to rise. Ave, Ave Avida!

And for this brand-spanking new district of middling condos and multi-purpose, anonymous buildings to rise, something else must first fall.

As all the once-mighty do.



--------------------------------------


The formidable owner of the section of Orosa where BED - and before, Komiks, The Rainbow Project, Pride Xchange, and other establishments once clustered - has been famously known to remark that "It doesn't matter to me whether someone rents out the place or not. My price, take it or leave it."

It is truly marvelous to be so rich that one could simply shrug one's shoulders and let prime property stay idle. But rich men do not become - nor remain - rich by sitting on non-performing assets.

The current conjecture is that the reason the Trinity's plans may yet go up in smoke is because the owner may very well be planning to sell the property to any of the big realtors gobbling up the city, one old neighborhood at a time.

One big cash-out, no more headaches about the turnover of tenants who cannot rekindle the faded magic of Malate.

One simply cannot blame the man.



--------------------------------------

And when one gleaming, cookie-cutter condo rises, like a cancer made of concrete, others shall quickly follow.

It isn't far-fetched to presume that the strip on the other side of the street - the famous line-up once headlined by Café Caribana (then the short-lived lesbian bar Ladida), Pepe N' Pilar, Joy, Café Breton, and Batavia - will also fall to Progress' irresistible march.

Already, one by one the lights are going out. O-Bar has extinguished its presence from the area. And half in its place, Midz rages, rages valiantly against the dying of the light. Che'lu stands impassive, a poker player holding its cards close to its chest. Beside it, the nameless Korean videoke/resto seems to be clueless about the neighborhood's impending demise.

And as-yet unconfirmed rumors say that Dados, that refreshingly anachronistic throwback to the old Malate watering holes, has closed its sentimental doors for good.**

There is something sadly poetic about establishments that come alive only at night being swallowed by the darkness one by one.

--------------------------------------

Whatever the ultimate fate of Malate - particularly the "gay nexus" of Orosa and Nakpil - BED will always stand as a glittering disco ball point in time. A time when we were young and beautiful, and our eyes sparkled with all the possibilities of youth. When life was full of fun and laughter, full of music and dancing.

BED was a beacon, summoning the scattered members of the LGTB community from the dark. Beckoning them to come one, come all, to dance in the spotlight and embrace the nightlife. To flirt, to grind, to cruise and be cruised; to live in wild abandon, if only for the night, all cares thrown to the winds as we celebrated to a different drumbeat.

There will come a time - soon, some insiders say - when Malate will no longer be recognizable to those of us who were fortunate to have witnessed the glories of its ever-changing face. The charming cafes and defiant old mansions of the elite that used to reside in the once-exclusive district will soon all give way to the new lords of progress.

When the last café made of antique wood and decorated with memorabilia probably more suited to a Segunda Mano bazaar is demolished under Progress' heel, then the Malate we knew and loved will pass into myth. 

And then, like the fabled Coco Banana, a new generation will only know it as legend.



--------------------------------------

To BED - the last gasp of the Malate renaissance.


Thank you for the music.


And now, a moment of silence for the late, great Malate.


Where the band plays on, not knowing - or caring - that the music has died.







------------------

*And MINT, of course, how could I forget? Thanks, JM!

**Good news. Reports of Dados' death were exaggerated. They merely shut down for a few days for renovations. Fight the good fight, then.

Hello, Young Lovers

For Desole Boy, and others who have not yet taken the leap of romantic love.

"It is also good to love; because love is difficult. For one human being to love another human being; that is perhaps the most difficult task that has been entrusted to us, the ultimate task, the final test and proof, the work for which all other work is merely preparation. That is why young people, who are beginners in everything, are not yet capable of love; it is something they must learn. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered around their solitary, anxious, upward-beating heart, they must learn to love. But learning-time is always a long, secluded time, and therefore loving, for a long time ahead and far on into life, is-: solitude, a heightened and deepened kind of aloneness for the person who loves. 

Loving does not at first mean merging, surrendering, and uniting with another person (for what would a union be of two people who are unclarified, unfinished, and still incoherent-?), it is a high inducement for the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become world, to become world in himself for the sake of another person; it is a great, demanding claim on him, something that chooses him and calls him to vast distances. Only in this sense, as the task of working on themselves ("to hearken and to hammer day and night"), may young people use the love that is given to them. Merging and surrendering and every kind of communion is not for them (who must still, for a long, long time, save and gather themselves); it is the ultimate, is perhaps that for which human lives are as yet barely large enough.

But this is what young people are so often and so disastrously wrong in doing: they (who by their very nature are impatient) fling themselves at each other when love takes hold of them, they scatter themselves, just as they are, in all their messiness, disorder, bewilderment...: And what can happen then? What can life do with this heap of half-broken things that they call their communion and that they would like to call their happiness, if that were possible, and their future?

And so each of them loses himself for the sake of the other person, and loses the other, and many others who still wanted to come. And loses the vast distances and possibilities, gives up the approaching and fleeing of gentle, prescient Things in exchange for an unfruitful confusion, out of which nothing more can come; nothing but a bit of disgust, disappointment, and poverty, and the escape into one of the many conventions that have been put up in great numbers like public shelters on this most dangerous road. No area of human experience is so extensively provided with conventions as this one is: there are life-preservers of the most varied invention, boats and water wings; society has been able to create refuges of every sort, for since it preferred to take love-life as an amusement, it also had to give it an easy form, cheap, safe, and sure, as public amusements are.

It is true that many young people who love falsely, i.e., simply surrendering themselves and giving up their solitude (the average person will of course always go on doing that -), feel oppressed by their failure and want to make the situation they have landed in livable and fruitful in their own, personal way. For their nature tells them that the questions of love, even more than everything else that is important, cannot be resolved publicly and according to this or that agreement; that they are questions, intimate questions from one human being to another, which in any case require a new, special, wholly personal answer -.

But how can they, they who have already flung themselves together and can no longer tell whose outlines are whose, who thus no longer possess anything of their own, how can they find a way out of themselves, out of the depths of their already buried solitude?

They act out of mutual helplessness, and then if, with the best of intentions, they try to escape the convention that is approaching them (marriage, for example), they fall into the clutches of some less obvious but just as deadly conventional solution. For then everything around them is - convention. Whenever people act out of a prematurely fused, muddy communion, every action is conventional: every relation that such confusion leads to has its own convention, however unusual (i.e. in the ordinary sense immoral) it may be; even separating would be a conventional step, an impersonal, accidental decision without strength and without fruit."

- Rainier Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Protect Me From What I Want

Not usually a huge fan of gay indies - especially what passes for them in these parts - but this little gem of a 13-minute short resonated with me.

Maybe because at one point in my life - and not too long ago - I knew exactly how Saleem felt. About what he wanted. And the shame and confusion and longing and desire and everything that's part and parcel of coming to terms with who we are.

     

Enjoy.

Hollow Ween

So for the first time in what - 3 years? - I found myself in town and unhampered by anything work-related on a Black Party night. Of course, what's known as the Malate Black Party is a relatively new phenomenon: a 3-year-old cash grab, essentially, that reduced what was once a rambunctious, giddy, open Halloween street party into a gated, bouncer-guarded, pay-per-entry abomination.

Sure, there was a loud hue and cry at the time, but like other holocausts that preceded the Appropriation of the Malate Halloween, once the cries died down all that was left was to dispose of the bodies - figuratively, of course.

It was like the Rape of the Sabines - only screechier.

I've been a Malate denizen far longer than I care to remember, and perhaps it was nostalgia that goaded me to attend last Saturday's event, despite three friends bailing on me for various reasons.* ("I'm suddenly sick because we drank till 4 in the morning", "I'm boycotting those evil greedy motherfuckers", "I saw dead people in your house while we were dressing up and now I'm not in a party mood anymore.")


Wisdom, as usual, is a function of hindsight.


From where my date and I were seated, we could not see the two shrieking banshees that were drafted in from some ancient nightmare as the evening's "hosts." Perhaps I've been away for too long, but I did not realize street parties had any need of "hosts." Unfortunately, while our location spared us from the sight of the duo, our ears were still within reach of their fingernails-across-chalkboard voices, and the constant stream of babbling stupidity backing up out of their mouths.

This is how I pictured the evening's hosts -

but without the entertainment value.

There followed a couple of "games" worthy of your local baranggay fiesta - that is, if your baranggay was sponsored by Jack Daniels or Jose Cuervo instead of Ginebra - then some well-meaning AVP about HIV or something that I'm sure enraptured the crowd the way a complex algebraic equation would delight a roomful of ADD kids.

I think I was on my second bucket of San Mig Light when Sweet-Mother-of-God-what-IS-that Lapuz ascended the stage. His voice was as silken as sandpaper on cactus lightly dusted with glass shards, his personality as charming as a government clerk five minutes before lunch break, and the entire exchange onstage as sincere and authentic as a Nigerian prince promising riches for a small favor in your Inbox.

I don't really know what the heck that queen and those two jesters were prattling on about at that point, because I, an obstinate relic from the Old Kingdom, was busy staring ruefully at the oddly-lifeless denizens of the New Queendom, feeling all the futility of Ozymandias.**

My baleful Sauron gaze then turned from the gathered Orcs to my companion: a handsome young heterosexual colt, just recently turned 21, in his first-ever Malate Halloween. A lean moreno yin to my out-of-shape yang, the wide-eyed ange to my jaded démon.  I had persuaded this young man to attend this Halloween party in costume, promising him that it was going to be fun and that he would be enjoying himself immensely.

I see dead people.

Little did I know we were both in for a schooling.


Despite wearing a mask to hide his identity, he was sheepish and awkward at all the attention being showered upon him by people - both gay, straight, and anything in-between - asking to have their picture taken with him all night long. Being the veteran and ex-camwhore, I was the one who had to gently prod him to be game and smile for the nice souvenir snappers.

Presently I yanked the boy through the oxymoronically-thin crowd - curiously bereft of costumed revelers - and made a beeline for the old sanctuary: Bed. But once in front of its new portals, I suddenly paused. Like a seasoned wizard who actually knew the password to the Mines of Moria - and prescient to the horrors lying in wait deep within - I changed my mind and steered my young charge, with occasional interruptions from more people wanting pictures, back to the bar from whence we came.

I guess we shall not pass, young Hobbit.

From that perch, I drowned my disappointments and sorrows in drink.

And came to the night's epiphanies.



The old Malate of yore is dead. No nostalgic pilgrimage will resurrect it. Its corps has been dismembered and scattered to the four winds, lost to age and death and other journeys, and its esprit...well, perhaps it's taken on a new form.


A reincarnation that I no longer recognize.

On a night calculated to preempt the actual All Hallows' Eve in the name of commerce, it was cruel poetry, in the end, to dance on the grave of a beloved, now forever lost in time.


Then again, perhaps it's for the best.

Because we all know what happens when you try to bring back the dead.



And it ain't pretty.

Shokot akesh.

======================


*All apparently true.


**I met a traveler from an antique land
Who said: two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half-sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survived, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

- Ozymandias, Percy Blythe Shelley

Glory Be

This being a Sunday, here's a Missouri pastor thundering on about gay rights going 


"...against the plain truth of the word of God. As one preacher warns, Man, in overstepping the boundary lines God has drawn by making special rights for gays and lesbians, has taken another step in the direction of inviting the judgment of God upon our land. This step of gay rights is but another stepping-stone toward the immorality and lawlessness that'll be characteristic of the last days. This ordinance represents a denial of all that we believe in and no one should force it on us.

It's not that we don't care about homosexuals, but it's that our rights will be taken away, and un-Christian views will be forced on us and our children, for we'll be forced to go against our personal morals. Outside government agents are endeavoring to disturb God's established order; it is not in line with the Bible. Do not let people lead you astray. The liberals leading this movement do not believe the Bible any longer but every good, substantial, Bible-believing intelligent Orthodox Christian can read the word of God and know what is happening is not of God. 

When you run into conflict with God's established order, you have trouble. You do not produce harmony. You produce destruction and trouble, and our city is in the greatest danger that it has ever been in in its history. The reason is that we have gotten away from the Bible of our forefathers."




And now that you're frothing at the mouth, be sure to watch until the end of the speech for the surprising twist.