Day: August 1, 2014

Bela Lugosi (is the King around here)

Click here if the embedded audio player doesn’t work for you.

It’s all about a fannish party that gets a little, uh, surreal.  The first two verses are more or less as it happened, and then it goes into the stratosphere of implausibility and meta.   Well my momma lived next door to Bela Lugosi – he kept trying to give her cigars – and I was too polite to say, “I think you’re lying,” so I said, “Alan, I think you’ve been working too hard!” He said, “No, she really DID live next door to Bela, call her in Ft. Lauderdale and you will see!” I thought, I gotta think of something to one-up this puppy, so I dug down deep in my memory (and said)

“I was seen by our Royal Queen in my crib when I was less than a year! And she leaned right in, and she cooed so loud, my auntie and my grandma could hear! And then… they misspelled my name in a newspaper clipping, if I clap my hands it appears….” and he said,

“That’s real nice, but it cuts no ice, cause Bela Lugosi is the king around here (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

Drunk woman interrupts: “Well I shared a cab with Sinead O’Connor.  I could tell she’d kill for a smoke. I said, “As soon as we get out and hit the sidewalk, we’ll go someplace quiet and crack some jokes… wish ta hell I could remember, what she said, it was a cutting remark and she cut me dead -”

(Allegra sings the chorus) “I live in mortal fear that we’ll run out of beer, but Bela Lugosi is the king around here!” (Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

Extremely high and goony woman interrupts, “Well I want you all to know I had an alien’s baby, and everything came out fine, but the eyes, and when she smiles, all her teeth are a little bit pointy, and she never seems to be the least bit surprised.  I showed her “Plan 9 from Outer Space” – she said, “That’s IT, I give up on the whole human race….”

Allegra exultantly sings the chorus, “HAVE NO FEAR, SOMEONE BROUGHT MORE BEER, And Bela Lugosi’s still the king around here….(Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiiii Bela Lugosi is the king around here, Bela Lugosiiiii)

So now you know the backstory for this song I wrote about 20-25 years ago, just after I met the gentleman in the first verse, whose mother DID live next door to Bela Lugosi.

Breakfast adventure

We braved the Vancouver morning rush hour to get to the Tomahawk, the lamentably named Vancouver institution which has been serving breakfast since 1926.  It’s also directly upwind from a mosque – how tired they must get of the smell of swineflesh cooking.  It was lovely; we got to eat outside in a lovely arbour, hemmed about with nicely draped weeping sequoias and enlivened with the cheeping presence of a white crowned sparrow.  The food and service were excellent, but since it involves driving across town in rush hour to do breakfast, we won’t be doing that agin except for very special occasions. Like Jeff’s birthday.

On the way we got treated to the excrementally bad signage (go right, no not here you idiot, ignore that previous sign), being forced to stop in the Cassiar tunnel, and you KNOW how I feel about being forced to come to a standstill in a tunnel, and the ludicrously self important driving of many, many miscreants.  We stopped off at one of Jeff’s clients’ place of business on the way back to save him a trip and I got a little work done on the novel.

The Amazing Spiderman 2 is one half of a good movie.  The script made me long for lightning to strike, somebody, somewhere.  Jamie Foxx was entirely wasted and the little nimrod who plays Spidey, whose name escapes, has all the energy of re-wetted papier mâché.  The action sequences had us cheering; the talking sequences had both of us begging for swift unconsciousness.

Jeff enjoyed Dead Snow II – a Nazi zombie movie sequel that was, so I’m given to understand, more inventive, scarier and funnier than the first.  Zombies using a length of intestine to siphon fuel?  Clever people, these Germans.

Sandra informs me that her cat, Shadow, has been stomping around the house calling me, which is funny because all I did was take pictures of her butt and skritch her a few times, also I did the doorwarden cause you have thumbs thing a couple of times.  She is a magnificent beast, and a mighty hunter, which when the cabins get varmints is a good thing.

I made a meatloaf!  It is so garlicky that vampires two counties away suddenly feel ill at ease.

Today I may or may not make coleslaw.