The Friday Outa My Head for June 27th, 2008 - Crazy? or Crazy!

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, but a wee beastie has been gnawing at the edges of my buried subconscious. It’s just stuff I think about and not a real or authoritative comment on people. For that I defer to you. So - hang with me won’t you if you’d like to read a pointless examination of the human condition, or if you have ADD then skip to the end for a brief Q&A and decide for yourself what exactly does “crazy” mean.

This past weekend I had the wonderful opportunity to attend Monsterbash in Butler, PA. Monsterbash is a con devoted to the love of the classic monster movies from the days of Saturday night horror hosts when vampires ruled the night drinking fair maiden’s blood and never, ever looked like Brad Pitt or were ambiguously gay. I took the occasion to search for a movie I remembered watching on Pittsburgh’s Chiller Theater called “The Fearless Vampire Killers or: Pardon Me, But Your Teeth Are in My Neck” (also known as Dance of the Vampires). I have been plagued for years by a singular memory of one particular scene from this movie of the two vampire killers – Professor Abronsius (Jack MacGowran) and his assistant Alfred (Roman Polanski) racing off from Count von Krolock’s castle with Alfred’s infatuation Sarah Shagal (Sharon Tate) who they have just rescued from the vampire’s clutches. Of course little do they know that Sarah has already turned into an undead blood sucker and in the end scene she, unbeknown to the Professor who is driving them away in a horse drawn sled, attacks Alfred, who is at first surprised and then relents to his fate as the gorgeous vampiress partakes of a hemoglobin smörgåsbord courtesy of Alfred’s jugular. Anyway, I could only remember the final scene and had to do an extensive search of the Internet a few years ago to find just what the hell this movie was. It only took me this long to getting around to buying it.

I plugged it into my Blu-ray player on Sunday and had a thoroughly enjoyable time watching this flick from my childhood. Most of it was new to me due to my crappy memory, and while this flick is a bit campy at times, Polanski, who not only starred in but also wrote and directed Vampire Killers, brought to the world in 1967 a nifty little piece of horror comedy that still holds up reasonable well today. Afterwards I went to look up a bit of trivia because while I knew who Roman Polanski was – he created two of my favorite horror movies: “Rosemary’s Baby” and ‘The Ninth Gate” among many other movies - I couldn’t place the actress playing Sarah. Then it finally all connected together when I found out it was Sharon Tate – the tumblers of tragedy and real life horror clicked into place.

Vampire Killers was released in 1967. Polanski and Tate would be married the following year. Then in August of 1969 Sharon Tate, eight months pregnant, would become part of one of this country’s most diabolical events that made the name Manson synonymous with evil when she and four others were murdered by members of the Manson family while Polanski was away on business. He would later say that his biggest regret in life was not being home that night.

So where does real insanity come from?

Sharon Tate was an amazingly beautiful woman, not that that makes her life any more valuable than than someone who looks like Quasi Modo, but still I have to wonder what kind of person could kill another person, let alone a defenseless pregnant woman, in such a ritualistic fashion. So often in our haunted houses we represent psychopathic killers in order to add a gore filled element of terror to those that visit us. It works because nearly all of us are uneasy around those that . . . ahem, live their lives outside of social norms so to speak. When we’re not doing that – and I am right in there with yinz – we’re watching them in movies and on television. Most of the time we’re the nuts who cheer on the guy with chainsaw as he hacks up nubile young coeds. We do this yet none of us, well most of us anyway, would ever consider doing something like this in reality.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not proselytizing against what we do here. In fact I’d bet that most folks who love this stuff would have deep revulsion at seeing real photos of crime scenes and the deaths of very real people. So, I still have to wonder where that invisible line between social normality and what we call madness is drawn.

When does that quiet boy in the neighborhood decide he’d like to satisfy his curiosity about what human flesh tastes like?

I had a friend who was crazy. He and I hung around for a few years together and most of the time he was relatively normal except for the odd nervous tick. Then . . . there were those times he’d either go off his medication for his paranoia and schizophrenia or his VA psychiatrist, who he only got to see about once every six months or so (nice job taking care of our veterans there US of A), would play around with them making him think that God was telling him he was a Knight’s Templar. Basically he was good guy who had some bad experiences and even poorer genetics that blurred that line in his head I mentioned before. Fortunately he never got violent, but eventually, and I do feel a bit bad about this, I had to stop hanging around with him. His craziness was literally sucking the life out me because folks, I mostly tiptoe that line myself.

I don’t, however, have any recipe books entitled “Rachel Ray 30 Minute Meals To Make Out Of Your Neighbors” sitting on my book shelf or even a compulsion to lock and unlock my front door a prescribed number of times in order tosatisfy some unidentifiable need. Honestly though, I believe that most people, at least all the ones I have ever met – and I do mean everyone, when you get to know them actually do tiptoe that line. Really, admit it, we all have our own weirdness to contend with whether its some strange superstition about wearing the same red socks when playing baseball or a quiet and unnoticed compulsion to count the cracks on the sidewalk as we walk to and from work.

So this begs the question – how do we know when the line has been crossed. When does Crazy? turn into Crazy! I mean, other than finding the authorities knocking at your door because the little old lady across the street noticed a funny odor coming from under your house, how can we know when madness is near? Haven’t you ever wondered how many bug-eyed crazy fucks you pass on the sidewalk every day? How do you know your boss doesn’t like to dress up in woman’s underwear and cut himself in places it won’t show in order to keep the voices at bay? How many potential homicidal maniacs do we talk to at the grocery store or post office? What the heck is normal anyway, and who decided it was?

My friend never knew he was crazy when he was acting that way. Of this I am certain. So how do we know when we’ve lost it? More importantly how do we know the other guy has lost it and is aching to see what pretty colors human entrails are and if they can be used to hold up his pants? This is the shit I think of when I’m doing my job at the telephone company where I spend copious amounts of time by myself. It’s also the shit I think about when Steve from the Garage of Evil and I discussed the furries convention I posted about in yesterday’s Weekender. I mean, most of those folks are quite wonderfully normal – I think - , but there are the select few that become the critter they’ve dressed up to be and have the semen covered fursuits to prove it.

But who am I to judge. After all I spend thousands of dollars creating horrific props and a haunted house all for one or two days a year that makes me zero dollars. Many would call that crazy. And . . . I plan to be dressed in a kilt and cloak as King Oberon, High King of the Fae, and talking in a bad Scottish Brogue as I show it off this year. Still, though, I shan’t be wearing women’s underwear while I do it, nor will I, hopefully, actually believe that I AM King Oberon. It’s with all this stirring around in the craggy recesses of my brain that I offer you this list of questions so that we, together, may answer the eternal question we all ask about others and ourselves:

#1 You need coffee and cigarettes to get through the day. Crazy? or Crazy!

#2 You need a case of beer, eighteen joints, and four hits of amphetamines to get through the day. Crazy? or Crazy!

#3 While alone in your bedroom at night, sometimes you read Playboy and fantasize about the women in it being your sex slaves in order to relieve the stress of the day. Crazy? or Crazy!

#4 While alone in your bedroom at night, you habitually masturbate while looking at pictures of feet in shoe catalogs while fantasizing about the old ladies in the nursing home where you volunteer spanking you in order to relieve the stress of the day. Crazy? or Crazy!

#5 You are interested in body modification like piercings and branding. You decide to get branded by a searing hot piece of metal in the shape of a box fan because box fans remind you of a box fan your Grandmother had and you want to honor her memory in this unusual way. Crazy? or Crazy!

#6 You are interested in body modification like piercings and branding. You have more money than you need for your own good. Your identical twin brother is also interested in body modification. You decide together to have a disreputable surgeon remove your brother’s right arm and reattach it under your own. You honor no one by doing this. Your weird-ass friends think you and your brother are amazing. Normal folk who just get pierced, tattooed, or branded call you insane. Crazy? or Crazy!

#7 You develop a nervous eye tick every time the boss is around. Secretly you’re afraid he’ll find out you fudged numbers on your expense report about how much you spent on cellophane tape which you buy for scrap booking. Crazy? or Crazy!

#8 You develop a nervous eye tick every time the boss is around. Secretly you’re afraid he’ll find out you fudged numbers on your expense report about using your corporate card to buy latex body paint you slathered all over the two transsexual hookers you met in Toledo while there on business last month. Crazy? or Crazy!

#9 You have an extensive collection of human toenails. Crazy? or Crazy!

#10 You have an extensive collection of human toes. Crazy? or Crazy!

#11 Your eight cats - Miffy, Muffy, Fluffy, Mittens, Boo Boo, Snookums, Ginger, and Bob - awaken you each morning. You arise, speak to them lovingly like they are people, and feed them because they are your only friends. Crazy? or Crazy!

#12 Your eight cats - Anjelina, Lindsay, Paris, Nicole, Jessica, Beyonce, Princess Di, and Brad - awaken you each morning. You arise, dress them like celebrities, sodomize Brad while singing the theme to The Love Boat, and then feed them because they are your only friends (except maybe Brad who doesn’t really like you all that much). Crazy? or Crazy!

#13 You fantasize about the hot guy who moved in next door. You dream he’ll marry you and take you away to live in a castle and call you his princess. Crazy? or Crazy!

#14 You fantasize about the hot guy who moved in next door. You dream of flaying the skin from his body while he’s alive and begging for mercy. You want to hear him call your princess as you eat his eyeballs. Crazy? or Crazy!

#15 You take sewing classes. Then you order special furry fabric through the Internet that can’t be found at your local fabric retailer. Then you construct a fluffy chipmunk suit to wear to Furcons and call yourself Mr. Puffy Cheeks and speak only in chirps while your there. Crazy? or Crazy!

#16 You take sewing classes. Then you sneak into cemeteries at night, dig up recently deceased women, remove their skins and their naughty bits. Then you tans the skin and sew it together to make yourself a woman suit. You wear it around the house while beating a skull drum and admiring your collection of preserved vaginae. Crazy? or Ed Mother Effing Gein Crazy!

So folks, which answers did you circle? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

June 27th, 2008