How Mabel and Sally spent the hottest day of the year: Cleansing and cooling in a “Kid Wash” constructed from plans in Family Fun magazine.

The sign above the back boarded- up window of the Bullfinch reads “comfy.” it was originally an ad for a local brand of spreadable cheese–“makes the toast feel comfy!—but few who drink at the Bullfinch today know that, let alone know that before the Bullfinch was a full time bar it was a diner with one of the best cold lunch buffets in Christendom.
So our sweetie Millie has known about the sign for eons—like lots of optimistic patrons, she actually believed that the crusty old window could still be opened. Millie tried for over an hour, or for at least three gin and tonics, on a particularly hot night one summer, and got to know that comfy logo intimately. To our eternal amusement, she thought it was a slogan for the pub itself, not for some foodstuff.
But Millie’s “comfy” confusion led to a new bar challenge, a two-parter even:
1. What’s comfy about the Bullfinch?
2. What should the Bullfinch’s slogan really be?
We’ll print the best suggestions (that won’t get us permanently thrown out of the place) in a future column.

Bizzare bill at the Bullfinch: Appalachian ensemble Sounds from the Mountains and boogie-DJ The Original Transformer… Awesome Fences and Green Sea Urchins at Hamilton’s. We don’t mind all the covers when it’s garage and surf rock… An Evening with Dord and The Ghost Words at D’ollaire’s. This time the expense may be justified, since the band has reportedly been doing three-hour sets, with lots of patter explaining each sharply written tune…

Weird day of Mar and I wondering if each other would be capable of knocking over the Bagel place. Turns out it was one of the delivery drivers.

Hymns from the House of Horror Volume II

Rue Morgue magazine has assembled its second “Rue Morgue Radio” compilation, , a FREE 20-song download (with printable cover art) available here. The set’s only available through the end of July 2011, so act now or have your curiosity hacked to tiny pieces by a bloodthirsty maniac.

This is great chainsaw-and-daggers ammunition with which to convince naysayers that horror music isn’t all Goth, just as horror fiction isn’t all Stephen King.

Black Moth Super Rainbow’s “Born on a Day the Sun Didn’t Rise” is a commercial, rock-riff driven track for zombies and vampires who can dance. The Brains’ “Screaming” is a punkabilly horror short story. Calabrese’s “Violet Hellfire” hearkens to ‘80s metal. The Crypt Club’s “Crush” is Cure-ish prog-punk. Suck Me” by Spooklight featuring Ryan Lindsey has both Country/Western and New Romantic aspirations. There’s even a birthday song, by horror rappers So Sick Social Club. I’m, most partial to the clock-rocking “13 O’Clock Rock” by the Memphis Mortician (one of several tracks which evoke the masters of the B-movie retro-rock punk genre, The Cramps), the disorienting piano-calm “Bad Ritual” by Timbre Timbre. Best-known band on the comp is GWAR, with the glorious “Zombies, March!” and the slow-building rave-up “You Can’t Give Me Anything” by Kreeps.

The download also comes with a brief creepy baritone-voiced intro to the whole comp (which segues into one of the least frightening, straightahead rock tracks, “Shhh…” by The Darkest of the Hillside Thickets) and four hilarious radio ads for the icky fictional Z-movies The Kill Murder Killers, Zombies of the Dead, Day of the Rocks and Murder on the Gondola. The spots contain such come-ons as “You’ve seen all the other zombie movies. Now see this one,” “What could make ordinary people enter a stake of primal death murder for kick thrills?” and “This summer, stones will break your bones.”
For “Murder on the Gondola,” the title is intoned interminably while a huckster elaborates:
“The movie where one of the ushers is hired to actually stab the audience. … Don’t see it alone, or even with other people. Sensitive viewers will be provided with vomit bags filled with real vomit. An ending so shocking, we can’t even tell you that the killer did it. Starts this Friday. Ends this Thursday.”

I strongly recommend buying the print edition of Rue Morgue magazine which sponsors this comp, since it has four pages of lovely liner notes introducing you to all the bands. The May issue, leaving newsstands soon, also features a tribute to Vincent Price illustrated with fresh portraits of the sly stage/screen/radio sensation by 13 contemporary artists. The cover story’s on John Waters; that piece, “His Master’s Maniacs” by Rusty Nails, made me finally check out Waters’ 2010 book Role Models, a masterful memoir which I hope to discuss here at scribblers.us in the future.

A labor of gore-love all around, Rue Morgue is a great underground dwelling during the summer heat.

My friend and longtime colleague Josh Mamis finished up his seven-year gig as publisher of the the New Mass Media chain of alt-weeklies earlier this month, a result of the latest round of corporate cutbacks at Tribune Corporation, which owns The Hartford Courant, which owns New Mass Media, publisher of the Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate and Fairfield County Weekly.
Before he became publisher, Josh was co-CEO of New Mass. Before that, Group Editor. His longest stint was ten glorious years as editor of the New Haven Advocate, during a time of great growth and prestige for that scrappy paper.

I won’t dwell on the downsizing—there are no surprises, only sighs, in print journalism job-slashing these days.

I left full-time Advocate duties myself three years ago, by my own volition. (I still freelance regularly for the papers.) I occasionally pop in to clarify some business and wave at friends.

I will miss seeing Josh at his desk. I would come in complaining about some recent injustice and exit whistling a Sondheim tune. Josh has the amazing ability to turn any conversation with me into one about the state of American musical theater. He was also an attentive editor who, whenever I overwrote (which was always) would resist the slash-and-burn approach and provide thoughtful line-edits which would

My time at the Advocates actually predates Josh. I remember him coming in for his interview as editor. The buzz in the office was that he was the only candidate who hadn’t worn a tie. He had lived many places, including New York City and South Africa, but he was then living in Vermont, a place I’ve come to learn that is distinguished by its passion for community journalism and local activism.

When then-publisher Gail Thompson gave Josh the Editor job, he visited all the writers at their desks, gave us pep talks, and calmed our fears about the transition. The paper he’d been at, the now long-defunct Vanguard, had once done a story on my father (who toured Vermont annually with his marionette theater), and we talked about that. Throughout the search for an editor, I had been badgering Gail Thompson not to avoid the most common sort of candidate—writers with inflated opinions of themselves—and to find someone with actual editing skills. Josh had those skills. He immediately formatted the paper so it flowed more easily from news to features to reviews to comics to personal ads. He gave the writers, especially myself and news junkie supreme Paul Bass, extraordinary freedom and leeway. A lot of people think it was my doing, since I was always the designated comics-lover at the paper, but it’s Josh who initially conceived of our groundbreaking All Comics issues, in which every story in the paper was rendered in comics form, requiring our usual reporters and columnists to collaborate with local illustrators. We did that logistically harrowing issue for three years in a row. Among the finest of the freelance artists we’d contract for those issues was Josh’s wife Julie Fraenkel, who for one Comics issue memorably visualized a Letter to the Editor regarding an obsessive Kiss fan, and for another, graphically blandished the lunchtime crowd at a strip club.

Some of the old Advocate gang held a shindig for Josh last night at BAR. It was funny to be with them again and be thinking of the 1990s as the good old days of the Advocate. There were some tortures then as there are now—being thinned down so we could be sold to the Courant, seeing some fiery colleagues implode before my eyes. But, in hindsight, this was indeed the golden age. The papers were fat, informative and entertaining. We not only gained readership but (with Gail’s stewardship) developed previously lackluster advertising bait like our dining listings and “Best Of” awards into powerhouses of profitability which somehow also maintained an air of journalistic integrity. The Advocate began to have a shape, an image, an influence.

That was Josh at the Advocate. There will still be Josh as a friend, and since it’s been years since I gave up my own desk there, for me it will be swell to chat with him without having to discuss work. We can cut right to the Sondheim songs.

Yesterday is done
See the pretty countryside
Merrily we roll along, roll along
Bursting with dreams

Bending with the road,
Gliding through the countryside.
Everybody merrily,
Merrily,
Sing ’em your song,
Rolling along!
—Stephen Sondheim, “Merrily We Roll Along

Georgia’s white flesh, the peachy southern soul band, has gotten round and fuzzy, and not in a good way. The band recently regrouped after a long hiatus, and casual observers learned who was actually in charge all these years. You might have thought it was frontman Singing Sam, but Sam got sacked, as did keyboardist Chris “Cringe” O’Leary. Married rhythm section of Pete and Mary Papadumus hold the reins, which includes the rights to the band’s far from worthless name and mailing list.
In reviving the GWF, Pete and Mary are going the showbiz route, hiring a new keyboardist who’s really big on special effects, impersonations and really bad jokes. Last Wednesday at Hamilton’s he even pulled a rubber chicken out of hits top hat, we kid you not. This guy sings when he’s not doing magic tricks, but most of the vocals go to new rhythm guitarist Mal Hohner. The band’s old guitarist, Benny Rabbit, is back pin boats. And when we say old, we mean old; he announced from the stage that he’d just turned 72. Other returnees: fiddler Lady Min and all- purpose hornman Patches Smith. We got the feeling that Rabbit and Min weren’t on board with some of the changes—they didn’t join in the kickline (!) or comedy routines, for instance. But we weren’t able to ask them directly, since the Papadumuses, sensing how appalled we were at some of the theatrics, warned their bandmates (pawns?) to steer clear of us after the set.
That’s OK. We’d seen and heard enough. We know an overripe peach when we bite into one.

Asian fusion act Dip Noi and experi-instrumentalists Telesstei at the Bullfinch, for an unshakably calm end of the week… The Audax (featuring Arch Elon
and Ishie Rose) plus Style Mys, slinging the hits at Hamilton’s… Aging boy band Testudo, on tour with the hitmaker-of-the-moment who will soon overtake them in the public’s affections, Chrys Emys. Go to D’ollaire’s just for the kiddie catfight…

Someone robbed Bagel Place. And ripped down the much-despised timecard machine, so it must be an inside job.

Body Language, At a Glance/Timed Pleasure. What’s with remixes that make songs LESS danceable? Or with bands called Body Language that sound lethargic and inexpressive?

My sister used to live in Ann Arbor, and on a trip to visit her in the late 1980s I remember paying homage to the Borders bookstore there. This was not the original Borders, a small used book shop which had opened in the early 1970s, but the rebuilt flagship of what was quickly becoming the second largest bookstore chain in the country, after Barnes & Noble.
I could have sneered. I was the owner of a hip little bookshop in New Haven at the time, one which was having trouble staying solvent thanks in part to the discount-happy Waldenbooks outlet in the Chapel Square mall. Big bookstore chains, we were told, would bring hasten the death of the independent bookseller.
Yet Borders was undeniably impressive. It wasn’t just touting volume (the stores were massive) but authoritative knowledge. There were specialists for each section of the store. They ordered and stocked titles which redrew the boundaries of what chain bookstores usually carried. Small publishers and obscure but vital publications were well represented.
Meanwhile, at the time, Ann Arbor had a host of other independent bookstores.
I thought Borders was a good thing, and I held that opinion at least into the mid-‘90s, by which time the chain had finally come to Connecticut bigtime and had also experienced the first of several wobbly moments in its corporate health. When it started to lose its luster, the chain diversified. But for a time it did so with the same specialists’ zeal with which it had originally distinguished itself. CD racks appeared, but offering a number of exclusive recordings by the sort of articulate singer-songwriters who might especially appeal to those who browsed at Borders.

A host of articles in the Detroit Free Press and elsewhere suggest that the ultimate demise of Borders, which shifted its corporate strategy from bankruptcy protection to outright liquidation this week, was due to diversifying too much. A lot has been written about Borders turning a dark corner when it started pushing stationery and hand lotion. Some might defend those products as in keeping with certain rarefied needs of obsessive book-readers. But much of the analysis concludes that where Borders really blew it was in devaluing the need for experts to manage its book sales. Without an informed, invigorated, enthusiastic staff to tout titles which customers would otherwise not have known about, Borders became indistinguishable from other gigantic places that sell books cheap.

I’ll save the corollaries to other struggling industries (newspapers) for another time. I don’t believe that the major brick-and-mortar book chains didn’t see the rise of internet book sales and e-book readers coming from years away—back in the ‘80s, when I first visited a Borders, there were already frequent articles in mainstream media about e-books and new electronic distribution systems. Where they lapsed was in good old-fashioned qualities like knowing one’s stock and being able to recommend it. Many of the small, independent bookseller who (unlike Borders) understand that are still around.

Extinct’s first single, “Art Smart” (formerly just “Smart”) has been released to radio. You can buy an actual vinyl copy at the band’s next gig, Nov. 16 at the Bullfinch. That’s right—from unknown Wednesday “new sounds” opening act to headlining “national recording artist” in three short months. … The Blits, by the way, appear to have broken up. (Nobody tells me anything.) So have The Blats. Sonny Blitt has a solo acoustic show during the Hamilton’s Happy Hour Thursday. We are of many minds about this abrupt development, since we had only recently begun to take the band seriously. …