Is “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” the answer to international relations?

Is “The Rocky Horror Picture Show” the answer to international relations?

This story has two equally sugary- sweet parts:

Part one: When I was 19 or so, my mom was dating around after getting divorced, and was into going to night clubs to listen to live bands and other fun stuff she could never do while married to my computer programmer dad. So one Halloween night, she was bopping in and out of her room getting ready to go out for an evening of fun and I was sitting on the couch, happily absorbed in an ancient, well respected holiday tradition—watching “Rocky Horror Picture Show” on VH1.

This love began long ago. When I was in high school, the dressing rooms for our stage were under the stage itself, tiny wooden labyrinths that rocked with the sounds of two tapes on repeat: The soundtracks for Grease and Rocky Horror Picture show. Hours were spent arguing over who would “play” who (it was decided that I would be Janet, as I was the most “sweet and innocent” of the group. Hey, I was the youngest, this was ultra-decadent Catholic school, and this was the theater crowd, here!) and the girls’ dressing room rang with the sounds of girls singing the kooky lyrics to “I can make a man of you.” So I’ve had a special place in my heart for the campy cult classic ever since.

So as my mom came out to get my opinion on her latest outfit manifestation, she became entranced with the black hole of charisma that is Tim Curry in full on Franknfurter mode- like a glam rock Freddy Mercury with a touch more of…edge? Glamour? Sex Appeal? Freddy always seemed heartrendingly sincere, whereas Tim Curry is menacingly vampy and seductive. It’s hard to make a man dressed as an ironic 1930’s cabaret vamp seem attractive to women (and believe me, he is INSANELY attractive in this movie, probably for the same reasons that, some years later, bands like Poison would become attractive to women) but Curry does it. Writhing around on stage and stomping his 5 inch sparkling platform heels, Curry owns it.

“Who is that! I want to do my eye makeup JUST LIKE THAT!” She was riveted. I remember her watching at least half of the movie and really digging it! (15 years ago my mom was much more of a free spirit than she is now, Post- Hippie Ex. Her usual taste runs to Frank Capra movies, Jane Austen, and Victoria magazine). It’s one of my favorite memories because she was so cool about it, especially considering the drugged out, oddball, over- the- top dance numbers, prominently featuring the type of freaks you usually only see hanging half way off the back of someone’s truck during Mardi Gras parades.

Anyhoo, I made a tradition of watching it on Halloween until I got into my later 20’s and was too busy partying to watch movies on Halloween.

So this past Halloween I asked my roommate if we could rent Rocky Horror and he gave me a blank stare. I attempted to describe it and settled for a mash up of a few lines of the most famous songs, and a breathlessly positive review based on the above story. Then I sent him this from IMDB.

Well, my roommate and I were at the mall today and were looking for the trailer for another holiday classic, “It’s a Wonderful Life” (after giving him the plot summary from what I could remember---I’m famously bad at such things, he was strangely hung up on the “suicide” angle (“But WHY was he trying to kill himself? WHY!!??”) and I was trying to show him that the film wasn’t really about that), and he reminded me “Oh, how about Rocky something or other?”

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, he was plunged into the “Time Warp” (a song they play on the radio during Halloween as well, unless I’m out of my mind) which he took to like a fish to water! He was singing the intro lines (ostensibly so I “could hear too” since only he had headphones, but I think it’s really because it’s IMPOSSIBLE not to sing along) and kept asking “I want to see the guy with the lipstick! When does the guy come?” (He means Tim Curry).

Well, at the end of “Time Warp”, Tim Curry has a solo number “Sweet Transvestite Transsexual from Transylvania”, which is the number my mom caught that caused her to fall fathoms deep in love with Curry’s eye makeup. We cued that up on YouTube, and… Whelp, same effect on my roommate. Despite being firmly hetero, he was tickled pink and clearly had a bad case of Curry poisoning, gleefully diagnosing “Oh, he’s a gay who likes manly men!” as if he alone “really understood” Franknfurter the way no one else would. As Tim Curry purrs out his first lines, curling his heavily lipstick-ed mouth, in that deep plum pudding voice of his, my roommate was about to propose on bended knee “Nice voice!” He grinned. Keep in mind that my roommate doesn’t drink, smoke, swear, or even raise his voice- he’s very conservative and old fashioned, he sort of disapproves of two piece bathing suits, and he was SUPER into this movie. Ah, Rocky Horror. The magic stays alive.

We could have had it all.

As usual, our heroine rides in on the coattails of a major social movement, dazed from the crash and burn through the atmosphere on the way back from the moon.

I was killing time between mock calls for certifications the other day by reading salon.com news about OWS (for my local readers, it's a social protest movement, the largest and most significant of its kind since the Vietnam War Protest "Occupy Wall Street") regarding the overweening greed, malfeasance, and bad decision making of Big Business in the US.

The slogan that's come out of this is "We are the 99%", meaning basically, that the stolen and cribbed wealth of the "1%" at the top should be redistributed to the rest of "us." The articles there say really anything I have to say better and more coherently, but as an American living abroad, there's something more than a little melancholy for me seeing this. When I left the country, I felt that I was leaving a beloved relative to die of cancer, and now it's like watching the desperate members of the extended family gather round to cast a spell to reanimate the dead body.

Tragic and frightening, sad, and something to admire in its intensity at the same time. I've never been an activist, it's something that I admire in others, but I have a tendency to think things are going to go the way they're going to go no matter what, and a candle has to burn out all the way, a kind of "We didn't start the fire" mentality. When I think of the scope and depth of the planet, and of history, the protests seem both large and extremely small at the same time. I'm proud of my countrymen who are taking a stand, and I also have to smile: Welcome to the way virtually everyone else in the world lives.

I too feel ripped off. I too mortgaged my life with crushing school debt with the promise of a "good" job after I did what I was supposed to do and got good grades, played the game, and rolled the dice. Well, shit, they came up snake eyes, and I found myself working in collections, alongside ex cons, women who had been laid off after 20 years in the same industry and who had to start over at 9 dollars an hour, and desperate people who had nowhere else to go.

Aside from my beloved friends and family, there is nothing in the decayed, corrupt, played out US for me. I was robbed, along with hundreds of thousands of Americans who bought into the American dream, which slipped through our fingers somehow, while we were bent over our books studying the past, hoping for the sunlight to touch our shoulders, our faces, our necks, to gild us the way it had everyone else, and would forever, and ever, and ever, amen.

From afar, gazing backwards, now I see it all, playing out on the world's stage, a sad and dingy affair, the gathering of the tribal bands that will dominate the wasteland that once was the mightiest land on the planet.

Some of us will go to colonies, some of us will stay and accept the "fait accompli", some will sink into despair at the sight, some will gather around the standard and fight, never knowing if their efforts will come to anything, or will just be another toy war with wooden soldiers.

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.'

I can see clearly now, the wallet is empty

When I was a kid, my parents, god bless 'em, deeded my sister and I with a series of gigantic, blush pink or tortoiseshell colored glasses that would have looked more at home on either Krystal from Dallas or a super hipster installation artists from Brooklyn. (Fig 01)
I really did not look this hot: Fig 01

There's photographic evidence, people. I mean, first of all, it was the 80's, and second of all, we broke glasses like it was our job, so if it were me I would have made my kids wear those basketball glasses that strap to your head with a rubber strap, so I guess we got off easy. Anyhoo, with the years, I've inherited their titanic miserliness when it comes to shelling out for eyewear. I often watched with envy tinged with scorn as my friends slapped down 700$ or more for glasses they inevitably sat on in a drunken scene at Nietzsche's (Buffalo dive bar) a week later. (Shout out!)

Thus we came to have the 150$ pair of "glasses" that came with an eye exam and a year's worth of contacts. The exam was performed by a beleaguered white guy in early middle age who looked stunned to find himself in a crumbling "mall" in the worst, most decayed section of Buffalo surrounded by Sean John glasses with anti theft tags obscuring most of the lenses.

I vividly remember trying to joke with him: "Does anyone really have lavender eyes?"

He gave it some thought. "No." He intoned with the seriousness of a judge handing down a verdict in court. Oof.

So after that was over I was allowed to choose a pair of "glasses" from the "poverty stricken" rack, which held a vibrant selection of huge 1970's aviator bifocals (which I probably should have went with, if I had the balls, but that look can only be carried off by the Amanda Beales of this world) horrifying flesh toned glasses that screamed "I am NOT a crook. I am a molester." and etc. I actually went to the "upgrade" rack and picked the least offensive glasses I could find, a pair of black wire rimmed slightly oval frames that my GIANT lenses threatened to break with their sheer thickness.

So I wore my contacts every day (which is what I took advantage of the special for anyway, since usually contacts alone are 150$), and I didn't think my glasses were that bad. Well, then I moved to the Philippines, where people think it's fun to shout out your every flaw at top volume in a crowd: "WHY ARE YOU SO FAT?!" "YOUR BRACES MAKE YOU LOOK LAME!" etc.

So one day my eyes were bothering me and I wore my glasses to work, expected SOME teasing, but not what I got, which was the kind of remarks people make after you've been in a disfiguring accident and no one knows what to say exactly. "Wow...your glasses are really....thick." they would whisper, shocked, like they were gazing on the dessicated body of a mummy, preserved for thousands of years by the harsh desert heat and dry sand. I can't lie, that hurt.

Well, anyway, when I went home to tell this to my supposedly sympathetic roommate, he concurred with all the jerks that stared at me, slack- jawed. "Well, when I first saw those glasses, I thought they made you look so old, and I wanted to say something, but I decided not to."

Gee, thanks.
Anyhow, I'm too cheap and stubborn to spend money on new glasses when I have PERFECTLY GOOD horrible glasses already, but fate intervened when I rolled over on them (I usually take them off and put them on the far corner of the bed when I sleep) and the bow snapped off at the hinge.

"My glasses broke!" I screamed to my roommate the next day.

"Good riddance." He drawled, sipping coffee.

Well, that's that.

The good news, is that while in the US, a decent pair of glasses that looks like you didn't get them from a cardboard box at the back of your local house of worship, costs about 500$ if you don't have insurance, over here it varies, you can spend that much, but you'll be rocking Dior or Chanel.

So I grabbed up Wills and went shopping. Most places had these "Euro Artiste" glasses everyone has now- slim rectangular lenses in black rectangular frames. I guess I feel like those are "run of the mill"---everyone has them. I had in mind something cool, something stylish, I did NOT want to settle.

So I tore out a picture of these cool, slightly over sized tortoiseshell frames, like 1950's librarian style (fig 02). I actually did find those frames (or very close) from Dior, and they were 11,000 peso, on sale for 30% off.

Dior Glasses: Fig 02

But I just couldn't do it. Visions of my sister and her infamous 5- glasses year (the year she broke five pairs in five equally dramatic scenes, one involving roller skating down a flight of stairs, the terminus of which was made of cement. Basement: 01. Glasses 00.) danced in front of my eyes.

So I shopped around and found a pair of Vera Wang on sale from 10,000 to 5,000, with about an extra 2k for the lenses. That I can live with.

When I put them on, they were a perfect fit for my face. They're a pale Venetian green tortoiseshell, slightly larger and more oval version of the rectangle architect glasses, with a little square gold initials button on the bow. They just really looked good- they didn't overwhelm my small features (I like to think of them as "dainty") or make me look like Ensign Geordie from STNG (NERDS UNITE!, those of youse who know what that is), so I said "sold". (Fig 03)
Fig 03: the Vera Wang glasses.

And now I have nice glasses. And they came in a mini bullet proof titanium glasses coffin that I plan on using, since they cost me the same amount that a civics lesson, a cultural tour of inner city Buffalo, a free heartbreak, a set of contacts, an eye exam, and a pair of "glasses" cost me five years ago.

Inflation. It's a bitch. A well dressed bitch. But a bitch, nonetheless.