DIETROLOGY 11

DIETROLOGY 
Bingo And The Suicide Strategy

Don't ask why as I can't even remember myself how, as a teenager, I started going along to bingo evenings at the local Mecca, a gaudy cavernous hall in Brighton that had clearly once seen more elegance and glamour. Maybe it was just the allure of experiencing an unusual subculture; it certainly wasn't in order to meet anyone there, mostly frequented by  middle-aged or elderly women as it was. Each and every one armed with a drink and a fat marker pen, all entirely focused on their table array of bingo cards, readying themselves for eyes down.

Clickety Click, sixty-six. As a panicky neophyte fish amongst these experienced female bingo sharks, I found it surprisingly hard to keep up with the numbers, even with my one tragically solitary card. Two Fat Ladies, eighty-eight. Most of the other players would have, incredibly, by comparison, from six to a dozen cards each to keep track of. Kelly's Eye, number one.

The tension got really bad in the second game when all the numbers on my card started filling up. Fuck, I now only need the 11 to win! Legs Eleven, number eleven. 'Bingo!', I blurted out. There was a sharp disapproving collective intake of breath. Not only did this male interloper insult formal bingo protocol but he had the cheek to win the £50 prize with his lone card. Unlucky For Some, number thirteen.

It was in conversaton a few weeks later I made the facetious remark to someone that I was now qualified to write The Skill Of Bingo. Surprisingly, and unwittingly, that turned out to be an invaluable lesson to me, and formed the basis of a rather special longstanding theory of mine. Heaven's Gate, seventy-eight.

See, on the face of it, bingo is a game of pure chance. Ostensibly, there is no skill. But, upon reflection, I began to realise that there was quite a bit. But not in the obvious sense.

First, to get the best odds you should only have one card. Otherwise you're effectively playing against yourself in a game in which the house takes a percentage; a bit like for example the folly of backing the entire field in a horse race, or betting on every number on a spin of roulette.

However, more than that, the most important skill of all: you must cross the numbers off correctly.

One number mistaken or missed and you cannot win a game of bingo. Many of these older ladies are playing with far too many cards at once and often simply can't keep up. Why do they do it? Because it's edge play, it appeals to superstition, to marginalisation, it's more exciting, it appears to give them more winning chances. In truth, it's a suicide strategy.

It sounds too obvious, and yet this is a priceless transparent concession, one where delusion is the inevitable precursor to success, and failure to disappointment. In other words, what if the most critical skill isn't founded in doing something well, it's in the simple managing to avoid adopting strategies for self-destruction? The longer that resonates, the more it begins to make sense, in all kinds of unexpected ways. Staying Alive, eighty-five.

DIETROLOGY 10
DIETROLOGY 9
DIETROLOGY 8

AFTER SIGHT 14

FILLMORE DISCOS 60 - '80s RARITIES

The Unseen, 1980 (*****)
don't miss out on meeting 'Junior' waiting in the basement for you in this criminally underrated classic early 80s sleaze by High Rise director Danny Steinmann, never will you see mentally retarded done better; the only slight weakness for me is comedic thesp Sydney Lassick whose cheeseball horror-comedy performance seems incongruent with the otherwise darker mood of the film

Maniac, 1980 (***)
more creepy is less creepy: Joe Spinell overplays his role as the serial killer protagonist and never really convinces; that said, Tom Savini's effects and, in particular, the scene design of the maniac's small apartment are fantastic

Cruising, 1980 (*****)
William Friedkin's Cruising is not really such a rarity, indeed it stars Al Pacino, but it always surprises me to learn how few people have seen it; a cop goes undercover in the New York gay scene to investigate a serial killer preying on homosexuals, and what begins in sleazeball giallo territory ends in pure, yet oddly satisfying, enigma; top soundtrack too, a pertinent reminder that 70s/80s underground gay club music was far more eclectic than extended Donna Summer and Patrick Hernandez mixes and other stereotyping revisionism would credit it

Savage Streets, 1984 (*****)
incredibly enjoyable rape revenge sleaze masterpiece with Linda Blair and scream queen Linnea Quigley plus a perfect mid-80s rockin' AOR soundtrack to match

Silent Night, Deadly Night, 1984 (**)
the makers' ambitions were far greater than their budget or abilities, the acting is so bad (particularly the lead), the sets so cheap, and the script is so dull, that all the nice sleaze and gore moments ultimately fall rather flat; that said, the initial scenes with Billy in the convent school are superb

Crimes Of Passion, 1984 (****)
it's the captivating performance from the god that is Anthony Perkins that makes this (often overlooked) Ken Russell film so watchable; AP plays Rev. Shayne, a man riven with internal conflicts and demons, a man who becomes obsessed with China Blue, a part-time hooker

FILLMORE DISCOS 59
FILLMORE DISCOS 58 - JOE ESZTERHAS SPECIAL
FILLMORE DISCOS 57

AFTER SIGHT 13

PUFFERS 2

Just as mysterious as the Turin Shroud is the Voynich Manuscript (enter Voynich into the search string), a handwritten and illustrated book which is likely to also have been created in the early 15th century by author/s unknown. It is written in a language or code that, despite extensive research and theorising, to this day nobody has identified or deciphered. The book's contents appear to be subdivided into several sections that cover areas such as the astronomical, pharmaceutical, biological and so forth - indeed many of the favoured topics of the era's alchemists.

As you begin to survey its pages, the pareidolia kicks in hard as you vainly try and make sense of it all; just as the potential value of its meanings and revelations increase in direct ratio to its tantalising incomprehensibility. It's an undeniably fascinating process. Yet not only must we accept ignorance of what's being said, in what language or code, we neither know whether it says anything at all.

In the case of the Voynich Manuscript, the range of theories put forward are impossibly, exquisitely balanced between the plausible and implausible. Exotic, hybrid, or constructed language? Meaningful or meaningless? Glossolalia? Outright hoax, ancient or modern? None of them entirely convincing, yet all make a little bit of sense. To each our final preference, to each our personally honed romantic notion.

In contrast are the shelves of texts and books for which we'll never demonstrate the slightest interest, their crime merely to be in a familiar acculturalised form.

PUFFERS

SATURNALIA

There may not have been many posts recently, but, to those that have written in asking, rest assured that (contrary to wicked rumour) I'm still alive! It's been a difficult few weeks with a combination of not feeling too great and assiduous, if not downright pedantic, attempts to finalise the mixing of the last two Cut Hands album tracks, Stabbers Conspiracy and Shut Up And Bleed. Fuck, I hope it'll be worth it.

DUKE OF YORK

AMUSICALITY

Lazily stumble across a Guardian article about a scientific, ahem, test that BBC Radio 3 are conducting online into people's musicality, and of course you can't then not do the damned test afterwards. However, now I'm floating on air after snagging 18 out of 18 for pounding the beat out on my Vaio spacebar compared to the painfully and unjustifiably smug John 'Jesus And Mary Chain' Moore's 15. I defy anyone not to beat his paltry scores. In everything. By contrast, I was pretty hopeless at arranging the half-second snippets into their various genre categories. Based on the results, the BBC then suggested I might like to spend Sunday evenings in the company of Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone radio show. No thanks.

Enthusiasm For Music 99% : Musical Perception 100% : Emotional Connection 100% : Social Creativity 70% : Musical Curiosity 94%

YELLOW REFLECTIVE 10

Baby snatch.

YELLOW REFLECTIVE 9
YELLOW REFLECTIVE 8
YELLOW REFLECTIVE 7

FILLMORE DISCOS 59

So much seasonal catching up to do, a real bonanza.

Black Christmas, 1974 (*****)
the original and still the best slasher film bar none; more disturbing, more enigmatic, and thus more memorable than the derivative Halloween - it also seems to have a weird understated eroticism behind the narrative, but maybe that's just me

Black Swan (*****)
as impressive as The Wrestler wasn't; a sumptuous feast of uncompromisingly dark psychosexual intrigue and rivalry at a ballet company - Mila Kunis, in particular, is out of this world; this, along with Exit Through The Gift Shop and Saw: The Final Chapter, would be my main nomination for 2010's best

Catfish (****)
ideally seen without any knowledge or expectations whatsoever - in that spirit I shall say no more other than that I thought Catfish was totally porno

Trash Humpers (*****)
the brilliant Harmony Korine outdoes himself once again with this collection of crudely edited vignettes of the activities of a group of elderly sociopaths; it's fascinating to see how the applied masks so dramatically affect the behaviour of the participants; as with say The Blair Witch Project, the use of crummy VHS tape is more than stylistic, it's part of what makes the actions so much more believable and threatening

The Night Listener (**)
The Night Listener, about a gay radio host becoming obsessed with the case of an ill 14 year old boy, is frustrating for being so near to being very special indeed; Toni Collette, as the boy's mother, is as amazing and as memorable as Robin Williams is miscast in the lead role

Talhotblond (***)
you might be noticing a theme appearing by now... enthralling, at times shocking, documentary of an online love triangle which ultimately led to murder

Xtro, 1983 (***)
crude but charming offbeat science fiction horror with neat synth soundtrack

Pray The Devil Back To Hell (*****)
don't be fooled, this film documenting the rise of a group of Liberian women of various faiths and backgrounds against their male peers responsible for a climate of dismemberments, rapes, and other catastrophic mayhem, is incredibly moving

Life As We Know It (**)
as much as I enjoy Katherine Heigl's undoubted charms, the whole baby thing is way scarier than any horror film that is conceivable

Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup (****)
probably the most effective and certainly the most polished of all Dylan Avery's Loose Change documentaries, even though I still prefer the written word for these types of analyses

Mr. Death: The Rise And Fall Of Fred A. Leuchter Jr. (***)
great character study

Capturing The Friedmans (****) 
compelling docu that reveals far more about the Long Island vice cops' insane and preposterous sexual fantasies, and quite possibly inherent antisemitism, than it does the Friedmans, an admittedly weird family (though aren't they all?)

I Saw The Devil (***)
this typically stylish Korean revenge drama with lots of explicit gore starts out in fine style before sinking into a miasma of gratuitous implausibility and unnecessarily overscripted dialogues between a ludicrous all-purpose serial killer and the enraged fiancé of one of the murder victims

FILLMORE DISCOS 58 - JOE ESZTERHAS SPECIAL
FILLMORE DISCOS 57
FILLMORE DISCOS 56