Tag: Goth

Film Review – 20,000 Days on Earth

20000days

For what I am about to admit, the great Goth council will show up at my door and take away my Goth Card ™. But… I’ve never been a fan of Nick Cave.

I appreciate what he does. I understand and respect his influence. But his music has never moved me, and he doesn’t make me swoon. So I was able to go into 20,000 Days on Earth with no expectations, knowing very little about it, waiting to see if it made me like Cave more… or less.

Knowing something about the film beforehand would have helped, actually, as 20,000 Days on Earth is a fictional documentary. It’s Nick Cave playing Nick Cave. There is no official Nick Cave archive in a bunker in Brighton, England. Friends and co-workers such as Kylie Minogue and Blixa Bargeld don’t actually appear in Cave’s car for a chat as he drives through the rain. (Digression – can I please have a documentary about Blixa Bargeld? Please?) Cave’s chat with his therapist is not real (the therapist, Darian Leader is a real psychoanalyst, but does not, apparently count Cave as one of his patients).

So what is the point of 20,000 Days?

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A Goth’s Christmas Story

Yes, that is exactly what it looks like. A black and silver Christmas tree – one of two types available at Honest Ed’s in Toronto. This one, at 7 feet and $99, is the nicer of the two, but even the 5 foot version at $59.99 was pretty cute (no twigs or pine cones on the smaller one). There was a time when I’d have killed for this puppy. Even now, years after my Goth phase has passed, I stood in the store going “Eeeeee!!!!” and fondling the silver-tipped branches.

It would be either a joy or a complete pain in the ass to decorate – finding lights on a black wire would be near impossible unless you shelled out the big bucks and bought them from a window-display place like Visualizer.

But imagine the tree decorated in silver, red and purple, with all the little Goths gathered around it on Christmas morning, hoping that Sandy Claws had left them a Sisters of Mercy CD, or a pair of bondage pants, or a new cape, or maybe a gift certificate to one of those fancy dentistry clinics where they give you fangs… it would be the best Christmas EVAH!

We need more eye of newt

You know, you can take the girl outta the goth; you can destroy her Sisters of Mercy albums, you can slather her in cold cream and get all that black gunk off her face, you can take her bat-shaped purse away, you can take her black clothes and… well, nevermind that. But sometimes you just can’t take the goth outta the girl.

Such is my love for Charles Addams. So when Greg called me up to tell me he was spending foolish amounts of money on the Deadwood DVD box set, he softened the blow and assured my co-operation by informing me that he had also ordered me the Charles Addams cookbook.

It’s not really a cookbook. It’s actually a collection of his food-related cartoons (many of which feature the Addams family characters), interspersed with recipes for various wacky and unappealing delicacies such as blood pudding, stewed pigeon and potted squirrel.

About half of the cartoons are new to me, many mere sketches that have never been published. I’ve got four or five Charles Addams books, so to find new stuff is quite delightful.

I doubt I’ll be making stuffed beef hearts any time soon, but the “Mushrooms Fester” sounds quite good, and there’s even a recipe for fiddlehead ferns, although if you followed the directions, they’d be overcooked and underseasoned.

I still don’t get how Morticia was ever able to cook anything without setting those sleeves on fire, but then she probably enjoyed it.