The time then being come, when these three good seruauntes and holy Sayntes of GOD, the Innocent mother with her two daughters shoulde suffer, in the place where they should consummate theyr Martyrdome, were three stakes set vp. At the middle post was the mother, the eldest daughter on the right hande, the youngest on the other. They were first strangled, but the Rope brake before they were dead, and so the poore women fell in the fire. Perrotine, who was then great with childe, did fall on her side, where happened a ruefull sight, not onely to the eyes of all that there stood, but also to the eares of all true harted christians, that shall read this historye: For as the belly of the woman brast a sonder by vehemency of the flame, the Infant being a fayre man childe, fel into the fire, and eftsoones being taken out of the fire by one W. House, was layd vpon the grasse.

Then was the child had to the Prouost, and from him to the Bayliffe, who gaue censure, that it should be caryed backe agayne and cast into the fire. And so the infant Baptised in his own bloud, to fill vp the number of Gods innocent Sayntes, was both borne, and dyed a Martyr, leauing behinde to the world, which it neuer saw, a spectacle wherein the whole world may see the Herodian cruelty of this gracelesse generation of catholicke Tormentors, Ad perpetuam rei infamiam.

- John Foxe's Book of Martyrs

This man I just saw perform in Indiana:

Oh, Indiana.

"...My favorite thirty-second movie would open on an idyllic forest glade, with the faithful little boy—played by Roddy McDowall—nuzzling and petting a gentle collie dog, named Lassie; suddenly the dog would turn on Roddy and bite his head off, and the last scene would show Lassie as she was at the start but Roddy would be without a head. And then there would be an Orson Welles movie in which the camera mucked around on a dark stairway for two hours looking for Welles. I'd like to see a movie in which one never saw the faces of the players, and the idea would be that those people in the audience who could identify the actors from their bodies would be given free tickets to next week's show, in which only the legs of the players were shown; whoever could name the actors this time would be given tickets to a final performance where nothing was shown, and those who could name the actors this time would be made lifelong members of those actors' fan clubs."

- Manny Farber, New Republic, April 17, 1944

Click here for the final picture of the Cake in all its glory.

And now a lumpier, more patriotic Cathy:

"The reimagining of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Zombies became an international bestseller. Now you can finally experience the most famous and most beloved of German classics anew, for Karl May only told half the truth about the Wild West in his manuscript for Winnetou. Did you know that Old Shatterhand had a weakness for young werewolf girls? Or that Apaches howl at the moon and that pale-faces take refuge from the sunlight in coffins? Where werewolves hold swimming competitions and redskins scalp clueless tourists, so begins the adventure of Winnetou Among Werewolves. The greatest adventure of the Wild West - with an extra portion of werewolves."
[poor translation my own]

Melanie and I were listening to “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”, second only to the sublime “Teenage Dream” as the best song on Katy Perry's most recent album. It’s once again produced by the unstoppable Dr. Luke, along with his mentor, Max Martin, the man behind all of the boy band and teen princess hits of the late ‘90s. We knew it was just too good to not be released as a single, so looking ahead at the calendar, we predicted it would drop in late May or early June in an attempt to make it the summer jam of 2011. When it did show up on the radio, we were going to be prepared. The Heavy Boxes spent some time in the studio arranging a cover of the song, out-popping Katy Perry by reharmonizing the chords slightly and playing it like a ‘70s-AM-radio-soft-rock hit, along the lines of the Bay City Rollers or Pilot. While the original song's sax solo provided by Tower of Power/SNL's Lenny Pickett is good, we were going to blow it out of the water with the skronkiest free jazz freakout courtesy of one of Stuart's horn player friends. Then, after perfecting it over the next 5 months perfecting it, we’d bring in our film crew to shoot a nice high quality video of us recording it. It was going to be all edited and ready to be uploaded as soon as summer hit so we could piggyback on the inevitable success of Katy Perry’s original.

Then…we got busy. And it never materialized. Just as we expected, Katy’s single came out in early June, and now sits at #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 (her previous single, “E.T.”, is directly below it at #5). So here I remain, still wallowing in obscurity, with only you, Dear Reader, to keep me company. Perhaps someday I will upload the demo recording we made of the arrangement, so you can get all misty-eyed the way you do when you see the footage of Josef von Sternberg’s unfinished I, Claudius or Orson Welles’ Don Quixote and ponder what might have been.

In other news, Melanie and I are going to the Katy Perry concert at the Allstate Arena next week! AND IT'S ON A FRIDAY NIGHT!!!! You know what that means...

As today is Father's Day (oughtn't it be Fathers' Day?), let's start with an early '60s teen pop tribute to dads. Here are two rather unsettling paeans to papa:

Paul Petersen - My Dad

Paul Petersen was best known as the one of the two children, along with Shelly Fabares, on The Donna Reed Show. For the third season of the show, the producers forced Petersen and Fabares to record music that would be incorporated into the show. Fabares ended up with a #1 hit with "Johnny Angel," while Petersen released the sublimely ridiculous single "She Can't Find Her Keys." I've slowly been collecting all of Petersen's LPs, including this 1963 Colpix record that includes his biggest hit, "My Dad," a backhanded compliment about loving your father despite his mediocrity.

Marcie Blane - Who's Going to Take My Daddy's Place?

In 1962 Marcie Blane scored a huge success with her first single, the excellent "Bobby's Girl" about her desperate unrequited love for a boy. After that hit, poor Marcie never really got to sing a happy song. Either she was feeling sorry for herself and her loneliness ("Why Can't I Get a Guy"), getting her heart broken ("Little Miss Fool"), feeling scared about her new boyfriend's unwanted sexual advances ("What Does a Girl Do?"), getting taunted by other girls for dating a player ("Told You So"), or discovering her boyfriend has freely offered her up to all his friends ("You Gave My Number to Billy".) Even when she finally gets to date Bobby in "Bobby Did," the followup single to her hit, she is quickly dumped by him! In her 1963 b-side "Who's Going to Take My Daddy's Place", she muses about finding a strong boyfriend to serve the same function as her father in her life: "I need someone to scold me whenever I am bad!" It's sure to make you tap your feet, and sure to make you queasy.

URIAH S. (or Z.) GRAUNT—popular poet of ancient times in the Aztec provinces of the United States of British America. Some authors say flourished about A.D. 742; but the learned Ah-ah Foo-foo states that he was a contemporary of Scharkspyre, the English poet, and flourished about A.D. 1328, some three centuries after the Trojan war instead of before it. He wrote 'Rock Me to Sleep, Mother.'

These thoughts sadden me. I will to bed."

- Mark Twain, The Innocents Abroad