I'm not much of a horror movie fan. Give me vampires, werewolves, zombies, or any other supernatural creature that politely announces its arrival and I'm fine. But spiders? Bugs? Any creepy-crawly thing with more legs than common sense? Absolutely not. The very thought makes my skin start scheduling emergency evacuation procedures.
Every other year or so, our house becomes the filming location for a nature documentary called Me vs. Eight-Legged Terror.
For some reason, giant spiders decide our front yard is prime real estate. And when I say giant, I mean they're approximately the size of Cincinnati. Scientists may argue with that measurement, but scientists have never walked face-first into one of these monstrosities at 5 a.m.
These creepy little architects spend the night constructing enormous webs stretching from the tree to the ground right across our path. Not off to the side where sensible creatures would build them. No, directly where Cooper and I are guaranteed to walk the next morning.
Nothing gets the heart pumping quite like strolling through the yard in the dark and suddenly spotting a massive web suspended in front of you. It's the closest I've ever come to discovering a hidden superpower. If startled badly enough, I'm convinced I could clear a six-foot fence without touching it.
Of course, Cooper is no help. He just happily trots along while I'm scanning the horizon like a paranoid cryptid hunter searching for signs of arachnid invasion.
Thankfully, this was one of the years they skipped town. No webs. No eight-legged nightmare fuel. No impromptu cardiovascular stress tests before sunrise. I'm not saying the spiders hold conventions and only visit every other year. I'm just saying the evidence is starting to pile up, and I'm not brave enough to attend the next meeting.
"What has become of Millicent Frastley? Is there any hope that she is still alive?"
Now that's how you open a record.
I bought this new back in the day because I was already a huge Camper Van Beethoven fan and knew about their side project. Back then I was happily throwing money at mail-order catalogs from every interesting Washington State label I could find: Sub Pop, Estrus, C/Z. Buying this was less a decision and more a reflex.
The 10-inch picture disc is absolutely gorgeous, but thankfully the music lives up to the packaging. Far too many records treat the artwork as the main attraction and the songs as an afterthought. Not this one.
Years later I discovered the song was adapted from an Edward Gorey poem of the same name. Gorey was still alive when this was released, which makes me wonder if he ever heard it. Did he smile approvingly? Did he raise a skeptical eyebrow? I'd like to imagine Gorey emerging briefly from a cloud of ravens and Victorian gloom, listening with perfect indifference, then pronouncing it “reasonably bleak” before disappearing back into the ether.
Because if you stop and think about it, this is a remarkably strange piece of writing. A missing girl, unanswered questions, lingering dread, and a uniquely piece of writing making the absurd feel unsettling and the unsettling feel oddly funny. It reads like a supernatural mystery narrated by someone who has seen entirely too much and plans to explain none of it. Looking at the illustrations online, I can imagine a parent flipping through the book in a bookstore in 1963 and thinking, "Oh, what charming drawings..." only to find themselves several pages later wondering, "Wait...this is for whom exactly?"
The Monks understood the assignment perfectly. They created a musical backdrop that feels like wandering through a foggy cemetery with a faulty flashlight while a distant voice calmly recounts events that are becoming increasingly impossible. The result is charming, creepy, intelligent, and just weird enough to linger in your brain long after the needle leaves the groove.
Much like poor Millicent Frastley herself.
No comments:
Post a Comment