Yesterday my friend Adam came to stay with me in Hilton. He is one of the coolest people in the whole wide world, and I can even beat him at pool. Adam’s surname is Sadian, which is a very satisfying name to say out loud.

Adam and I had banana, mango and litchi smoothies for breakfast. I like sunshine coloured smoothies. They make you feel very healthy even if you eat chocolate ice-cream after drinking beer all night.

We went to Karkloof Falls to go swimming today. We discovered that the cool ferny things that cling to the rocks are actually homes for leeches. Sitting in them was probably not our finest idea.

“Adam! There’s a leech on my thigh! Get it off!”

“Kath, that’s your ass and that thing has jaws! Wow, it’s actually highly developed.”

“JUST GET IT OFF!”

“Okay but I think we may need to burn it off with a cigarette…”

We visited Wayno for touch rugby. Adam played ball with Wayno, and I took his dogs for a walk around my old school. I got crapped on by a pregnant teacher for letting Wayno’s dirty dog swim in the pool. She smelt awful though so she really needed to swim. The dog I mean, not the teacher.

Going back to your old school is very weird. It’s like seeing an ex-boyfriend from 10 years ago who you broke up with in a letter. I guess now we would do that by sms. Either way, it’s still a cowardly way out.

“What’s the weather like out there Roosevelt?”
“It’s hot. Real Hot! Damn Hot.”
“What’s it gonna be like tonight?”
“It’s gonna be hot and wet. That’s OK if you’re with a lady, but if you’re in the jungle, it sucks!”

And we aren’t even in the jungle. Rain has played it’s part in this weeks training. Seems like I can’t remember the last Sunday that didn’t have strong wind and significant rain. If it’s not raining it’s been mid-20’s temperature and what feels like 110% humidity. Anyway, can’t change it so have to deal with it as best you can. Let’s look at this week

Monday: Swim squad. Justine has made Monday “400’s day”, main set is usually 6 x 400 with changes of pace, ie build 200’s, build 50’s, keeps you from getting so bored and makes it harder to hold your pace by the 6th one of them. This session was pretty quick, very short rest, knocked over 4.4km with a promise of more distance if we keep that up.

Tuesday: Interval ride: 50km with a 20km and 10km time trial, then a 20 minute run off the bike. I enjoy these sessions, usually do an undulating course, I won’t see high speeds to impress anyone on these TT’s but the effort is there, a power meter might be interesting.

Wednesday Swim squad: another good swim session, made up of 800’s from warm up to warm down. Another pretty quick one. 800m timed effort with fins at the end softened me up for the rest of the morning.
Long run: 2 hours 25 mins along Lady Carrington Drive. This is a fire trail that follows the Hacking River from Audley upstream to Waterfall, it’s about 9km long, I add a bit at the beginning and end to make up the time.

Today it was drizzling, warm and extremely humid. There was mist, fog, rain, even some sun at the end. Carried 2 gel flasks and a 600ml water bottle. Was craving another water bottle by the 2nd hour but rationed the water to last the run. Lots of puddles and heaps of Lyrebirds. These are a cool bird, like a road runner, they come out of the bush and scratch around the leaf litter for bugs. Some of them take off when they see you, some just stare as you go past 3 feet away. I reckon I saw 20 today.

POST SCRIPT: 2 days later I noticed a thick, weird looking scab on the outside of my left ankle, it hadn’t actually scabbed but more just a lump of coagulated blood. I remembered seeing a blood stain on the same point on my running shoe and work sock. Did some internet research and discovered I had picked up a leech as a passenger along Lady C. I’ve since found out they are really common at the moment, it is a rainforest we’re running through down there. Aerogard in the shoes and socks is supposed to keep them away.

Thursday: Raining again so didn’t go out on the road for my recovery ride. Did one hour on the rollers in the garage. Hadn’t used them for a year, I basically detest stationary training of any sort, be it bike trainer or treadmill. Managed to stay upright, getting a drink was a bit tricky, but the numbness was the main issue. Both my hands were absolutely numb in the carpal tunnel syndrome pattern, would have to shake them to get the feeling back every 5 minutes. Downstairs was a major problem as well. Basically anything inside my undies was numb as an anaesthetic. Disconcerting feeling, could have had that snip the wife is encouraging me to have and felt nothing. Returned to normal 5 minutes after getting off the bike. It is a problem only indoors, can ride for hours on the road and not have a sign of numbness in either area.

Friday: Sandhills run: small select group (the ones the coach didn’t SMS the day before to swap ride and run sessions around due to the rain ). Damp, humid again. Ran pretty well, always enjoy the sandhills session. Highlight was getting back to the carpark to discover a colleague had dressed in the dark and put his run shorts on inside out, with the inbuilt undies bit on the outside. I don’t think he’s heard the last of that. Lucky only 10 of us were there instead of the usual 50.

Saturday: Wild, windy and wet. Slept through my alarm, woke up in time for swim squad but missed a 50 minute run beforehand. Squad was good, did 4.2km then tacked on 800 to hit the 5km mark.

Sunday: Supposed to ride 170km. Not happening with the amount of wind and rain out there, don’t fancy riding in the dark, through the national park in the rain, trees and branches down, descending on the time-trial bike etc. Coach A’Hern had organized an indoor session at his factory for 6am. I got there 2 hours early, did a steady 2 hours on the bike trainer, then the rest of the crew turned up, did another 2 hours 15 of ride/run. Would have loved to do the long ride but doing the session with 20 others made the time go quickly and I actually enjoyed training indoors. As luck would have it, it hardly rained the rest of the day and the wind dropped, I would have ridden in those sorts of conditions.

Week in summary
Swim:   4hrs7mins   13km                                                                   32,110 heartbeats
Ride:     7hrs neat,     distance unknown with trainer riding, 49,140 heartbeats
Run:      3hrs 34,        35.52km,                                                           29,104 heartbeats.
Total:   14hours 41minutes,                                                              110,354 heartbeats
Cumulative total: 889,981 heartbeats

I recently received the annual catalog (2010 Edition one of the BEST around) from The Fly Shop in Redding, CA.It featured this useful tidbit on it’s fly patterns pages. One may now click on any fly in their on-line store and, along with an additional prompt to ” add to the shopping cart”, find the recipe for any and every fly in their catalog and some that are not.

*NOTE: I was informed that all of the recipes are not up as of this writing. The Fly Shop will be adding recipes on a regular basis until they are all up*

I found that I had to reload before this feature worked for me as I transitioned from pattern to pattern. I really enjoy visiting this store when I travel North, up the I-5 to Oregon. They have a great staff, excellent guides and a comprehensive selection of everything Fly Fishing.There are also some of the best rivers in the state to Fly Fish in the immediate area…

Their fly selection is overwhelming and this new feature is a wonderful plus for those who tie and are interested in fly ingredients…

Here is a direct link to TFS Flies…

PT/TB

When I was pregnant with my first child, people came out of the woodworks giving me their well-intended advice and helpful encouragement.

“Put her on her back to sleep” – “Breastfeeding is best” –  ”Don’t feel guilty about anything” – “You will forget the pain of childbirth once you hold that precious baby in your arms” –  ”Just raise them with love!”

Just love? My ass! I tried that out once and that whole thing went to hell just about as soon as it began.  Love doesn’t get them back to sleep when they wake up hungry every half hour!  The best advice I ever got, “Never wake a sleeping baby.”

Another thing people liked to tell me was, “You will just know what to do with them.”  Well, I don’t recall ever identifying with those words with at 3:00 am,  crying to Matt that I just don’t know what to do with this inconsolable, screeching overgrown sperm before shoving her into his arms and running to hide underneath the comforter. Bless him for being there in my moments of despair.

The opposite of all that advice is closer to the truth.  Children come programmed with this sixth sense that they can just tell when mommy plans to be productive with her day, go to the bathroom, or just sit in solitude for five minutes. They smell it as soon as soon as you think it, as soon as they wake up!  It’s like waking up to the smell of coffee, only for babies. Those are the times that they are latched on to your leg and hip like a leech on a blood-filled water balloon. At any inclination of putting them down or leaving them for five minutes, the tears, shrieks, fangs, and talons come out. That’s when you think, “you know the public was really hard on Susan Smith.”

So here’s what all of these people should have been telling me.

-Your kids:

While you will love them more than life itself, you will never be so happy to get away from them.

They will make you cry more than any bump, bruise or breakup you’ve ever known.

They aren’t so cute if not fed or lacking sleep (you or them).

You will feel guilty for just about every decision you make for them.

You will worry about EVERYTHING, no matter how big or small.

You don’t get sick days as a parent.

You second guess everything you do, wondering if you are doing the right thing; knowing you are probably wrong.

Last but not least:

Nothing is better in the world than when your children wrap their little arms around you and say, “I love you Mommy!”

That makes all the other stuff worthwhile.

Marketing Best Practices

I just received an email inviting me to participate in another marketing best practices survey, this one being conducted by a well know analyst firm whom I respect. My first reaction was delight at being selected and even more so at the prospect of seeing the end results. Then I started thinking more deeply about the indiscriminate manner in which many of these Best Practices surveys are conducted. As you might expect, that led me to leeches and bloodletting.

For those of you not familiar, here’s a typical survey structure – “tell us what stuff you do and how successful it is, compare it to the other stuff that you do, and tell us what stuff you’re going to do more of and less of in the future.” Sounds simple enough.  The consolidated results should be a compendium of marketing best practices and be worth at least a couple grand to anybody yearning for validation.

I have a few problems with this whole process though; first is the unscientific and unverifiable element of self-reporting. Next, I don’t care too much for the variable scoring of results. What if almost everything a survey participant does is useless and just one part bites a little less – Viola! Now it becomes the best practice among all the lousy ones (yes, this is an extreme example but you get the point).

Nurse Jackie, More Leeches, Stat!.

For about 2,000 years, doctors believed wholeheartedly in the practice of bloodletting as the most effective cure for those who were ill. They often used leeches specifically for this purpose. Not too surprisingly, some of the patients actually survived and regained their health – absolute proof of the efficacy of leeches!  I’m sure that if one had surveyed the foremost medical practitioners of the time, they would have confidently reported that bloodletting truly works, or that leeches work best, or how much was the proper amount of blood to let, or from what part of the body bloodletting yielded the best healing – all elements that would have comprised best practices for some 2,000 years.

Turns out they were wrong, and our hypothetical medical best practices survey, like many others, was simply a popularity contest.

Here are the takeaways:

-          Believe in best practices. Always strive for best practices but don’t rely on a survey to help you find them.

-          Staying tuned in to new techniques. There are many great sources including MarketingProfs, MarketingSherpa, and countless others. Any marketer who doesn’t stay up to date on the newest tools will quickly fall behind.

-          Don’t be a Lemming. Think of the hordes of marketers that invested in creating avatars on Second Life back when that was the must-do for those addicted to the latest pop marketing trends.

-          Test everything and in a true scientific manner – If you don’t know how, then recruit an expert. They are less expensive than you might think and worth every penny. Trust your gut in deciding what to test and also listen to outside suggestions.  Celebrate when you are wrong – you actually learned something that your competitors (with equal insight and intuition) are not likely to guess.

-          Your ROI is all that matters – What works for other industries, regions, companies, and marketers may not work for you and your unique position. So, always explore, test, and prove your investments.

Now, back to completing that survey…

Come with me on a picnic;
Let’s dine without table or chairs.
Come make love in the forest;
Let’s frighten the owls and the bears.
Come swimming in this warm pond;
Let’s leave our clothes here by the tree.
Bad place for you to get leeches-
Come to the ER with me.

http://www.punkreas.net/
www.myspace.com/punkreas

ROCKER HOUSE c/o PALAPORADA-SEREGNO (MB)
Via alla Porada – Seregno (MB)
Apertura Cancelli H 20.00
Ingresso: 10.00 €
info: www.rockerhouse.it

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http://www.punkreas.net/
www.myspace.com/punkreas

ROCKER HOUSE c/o PALAPORADA-SEREGNO (MB)
Via alla Porada – Seregno (MB)
Apertura Cancelli H 20.00
Ingresso: 10.00 €
info: www.rockerhouse.it

VIA AUDIO RECORDS
http://www.viaaudio.it/
www.myspace.com/viaaudiorecords

http://www.punkreas.net/
www.myspace.com/punkreas

ROCKER HOUSE c/o PALAPORADA-SEREGNO (MB)
Via alla Porada – Seregno (MB)
Apertura Cancelli H 20.00
Ingresso: 10.00 €
info: www.rockerhouse.it

VIA AUDIO RECORDS
http://www.viaaudio.it/
www.myspace.com/viaaudiorecords

http://www.punkreas.net/
www.myspace.com/punkreas

ROCKER HOUSE c/o PALAPORADA-SEREGNO (MB)
Via alla Porada – Seregno (MB)
Apertura Cancelli H 20.00
Ingresso: 10.00 €
info: www.rockerhouse.it

VIA AUDIO RECORDS
http://www.viaaudio.it/
www.myspace.com/viaaudiorecords

Do you ever wonder about what we read, watch and hear in the news these days? Do you ever ponder exactly what the news really means? Well, I, Dr. I. M. Pistoph have a truly amazing gift. I am able to decipher the news with the greatest of ease and simplicity. Let’s take a look at some recent news stories and I will interpret them for you.

News Item #1 – 980 Pound Man Needs Life-Saving Operation. This British guy eats 20,000 calories-a-day. Now he’s a giant walrus and needs a $33,000 operation to save his life. What a crock! Take this guy to the London Zoo and let the buzzards and jackals perform their “surgery” on him. I’ll bet they can administer a pretty rapid weight loss program.

News Item #2 – Astronomers Find a Whopping 32 New Planets. Who cares?

News Item #3 – Oil Rises Above $80 to Hit One-Year High. So? The fat bastards over in Saudi Arabia put another gazillion dollars in their pockets, bought 80 more 747s along with half of Phoenix (it’s hot there too). Nothing new here.

News Item #4 – Police Use Blood Extracted From Leech to Solve Crime. This happened in Australia. Apparently some guy murdered an old woman and a leech dropped off of him providing DNA evidence showing that he was the murderer. I say strip the guy naked, tie him up, put him in a bathtub and dump in about a million leeches. No need for a trial.

News Item #5 – Balloon Boy. By now everyone has heard this story. A wacko father in Colorado made a large balloon; let it loose; created a media circus; told the crazed reporters that one of his kids might be in the balloon, and then the proverbial excrement hit the fan. This one is very simple. Send the wacko father up in the balloon about 1,000 miles above the Pacific Ocean.

Give me some real news and not this drivel. Sheesh.

Featuring: Blackout Midnight (Free Font!)

I miss you.

David Cassuto

Viktor Korotayev / Reuters File

In case anyone was thinking that animal law is always depressing, here’s a story about a leech that cracked a cold case in Tasmania.  8 years ago, a 71 year-old woman had her home invaded and was beaten and robbed.  An engorged leech was found at the scene.  Samples of the DNA from the blood in the leech were added to the police database.  When Peter Alec Cannon was picked up for another offense and his DNA cross-checked — voila!  He pleaded guilty to robbery last Monday.

A feel-good story about a leech.  Truly, a banner week.

If there’s one thing that really gets on my wick, then it’s so-called ‘psychics’. The fraudulent nobodies who make their money from other people’s grief. Charging above the odds (I read one ‘psychic’ charges people ‘A modest £40′-Fourty quid, is that modest for someone who’s ripping people off anyway?) they exploit people who are desperate to get a message from ‘beyond’ regarding a deceased loved one, not to mention the other people who go for a variety of reasons. A few years ago I saw a very interesting documentary on these charlatans and watched a heartrending segment of a couple, whose only child had died in a car accident. Utterly grief stricken, they were unable to move on from his death and had preserved his bedroom just as he’d left it. They travelled around the country to these awful shows all the time, heartbroken and desperate, hoping their son would come through to contact them. You can bet that these greedy, avaricious leeches happily collected money from the couple, never once allowing their consciences to trouble them that they were actively defrauding them in their grief. Now I see a well-known ‘psychic’ is set to ‘contact’ Michael Jackson in a seance on his pap tv show. As if his children haven’t been through enough at only 12, 11 and 7 having lost the parent that was closest to them, now this person is shamlessly pressing on with his circus, obviously desperate to keep his name in the headlines no matter what the personal cost to others. He’s not the only one, I read tonight in the Daily Express that another so-called ‘psychic’ has written a book about the Soham murders. In it he gloats over being the one who told Mr and Mrs Wells that their daughter was dead and claims to have accurately described Huntley and Carr (which he didn’t). I cannot understand why this person thinks it’s ok to make money from writing about the murder of two 10 year old girls. These two are only a small example of a problem which must be worldwide. I have nothing but sympathy for people who have lost a loved one and nothing but contempt for those who exploit their grief to further their own ends. Thanks for reading.

This article popped up on my google reader this morning via my CNN feed and i had to post it….In what Australian officials are calling a first in their country — and possibly in the world — police used DNA extracted from a leech that bit Cannon eight years ago to convict him of robbing an elderly woman. See the rest of the article here.

Manzara is TravelPod’s Local Expert for Turkey. He’s always got a funny street sign to share with us or an interesting travel news update. Besides that, of course he is well versed in all things Turkey. He took the time to answer some questions about living in Turkey for me.

David Chadwick is TravelPod's Local Expert in Turkey

Why did you become a Local Expert?

Travel is very important to us. We usually plan a four-week ‘long-haul’ holiday each year, in addition to exploring Turkey where we now live. We research our holidays in deadly detail and for a number of years have been offered excellent advice from forums such as TravelPod. Becoming a Local Expert, allows me to help ‘pay back’ the superb help we have received in the past and which has ensured our holidays have been enjoyed to the full.

What are the best and worst things about living in Turkey?

There are so many good things about living here and we have had no regrets following our decision to abandon the UK Rat Race. We now enjoy a much simpler and more relaxed lifestyle; live in a safer environment; eat more healthily with so much fresh food on offer; and, of course, living in a small fishing village on the tip of the Çeşme Peninsula, we have a choice of so many spectacular beaches with crystal-clear waters for relaxation.

After living in Turkey for over twelve years, what we would have considered the ‘worst things’ in our first few years, are now considered simply ‘minor irritations’! Turkish bureaucracy, for example, can often try your patience. We used to miss some of our favourite foods but the choice of products here has grown tremendously in recent years.

What are the top five things for travelers to do outside of Turkey from your personal experiences?

(In no particular order)

1. Snorkel in the Red Sea
2. Visit Jordan and include Petra and floating in the Dead Sea on your itinerary
3. Spot a tiger, leopard and other exciting wildlife at Ranthambore National Park, Rajasthan
4. Swim and snorkel off Elephant Beach, Havelock, Andaman Islands
5. Explore the paradise beaches of Zanzibar (such as Pongwe Beach) and find time to visit Jozani Forest to see the Kirk’s Red Colobos Monkey, Zanzibar being the only place in the world to see this rare, endangered (and very playful) species.

What are some of your best and worst travel experiences?

As we plan our holidays so carefully, we haven’t had any really bad experiences. The reason I spend so much time researching them is that although we don’t mind surprises on holiday, we don’t want any bad ones!

Probably our best experiences have been the superb snorkeling in the Andaman Islands (especially Havelock) and in the Red Sea, and the sensation of floating effortlessly in the Dead Sea during a visit to Jordan earlier this year was quite amazing!

I suppose the worst experience was in Sri Lanka when, on the penultimate day of our stay. We had arranged for a car and driver to take us from our hotel in Unawatuna to the capital Colombo for our flight home the following day. Looking at the map, it looked as though we would have plenty of time to visit (not enough research here, David!) Sinharaja Rain Forest – Deniyaya entrance. I think the problems began when our driver couldn’t find the Deniyaya entrance and consequently the experienced guide we were supposed to meet there. Anyway, our driver who wasn’t to be beaten ‘picked’ up a passing wood cutter and ‘employed’ him as our guide. To be honest, we didn’t see a great deal of exceptional flora and fauna apart from a few purple-faced Langur monkeys high up in the trees. But there were the leeches of course – always included in abundance in any respectable rain forest.

Tracker Elaine (always prepared for everything, clever so and so) placed plastic bags over her socks which stopped the leeches dropping down the sides of her shoes and attaching them to her feet. I didn’t and the result was typical. I had leeches all around my feet and legs. Then a long drive – five hours less would have been a bonus – to Colombo and our overnight stay. Not one of our better days out!

What is your proudest accomplishment?

I hope I am allowed to substitute the word “accomplishment” with “experience” on this occasion. Call it writer’s license. I have to go back to the mid-1970’s. I was traveling through India with a colleague monitoring foreign aid projects on behalf of UK voluntary agencies. We were fortunate enough to arrange two meetings with Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity convent at 54A Lower Circular Road, Calcutta.

We met in her modest office and although a tiny, almost frail looking woman, her spirituality, gentleness and quiet determination filled the room. I shall never forget spending time at the convent, meeting the other sisters, joining them in the chapel for early morning prayers with the whole group singing “in our honour” their hymn ‘Something Beautiful for God’. A truly amazing experience.

Where are you planning on traveling in the future?

Well, we always seem to adding to the ever-increasing list of places we plan to visit. Malaysia is certainly one and possibly one or two of the South Pacific islands if our budget will allow. However, some travel decisions are suddenly being made for us. With a son now living in America and a daughter moving to Western Australia in January 2010, another two destinations are now in the pipeline!

What do you do with most of your time?

Elaine would say I spend most of my time at the Laptop! It’s not strictly true, but I keep up with the TravelPod Forum (of course!), I am Destination Expert for Çeşme on Trip Advisor; SuperMod (think that’s a misspelling of SuperMAD!) on Turkey Central; and complete the occasional questionnaire on behalf of Lonely Planet’s Travellers’ Pulse. Oh, and there’s always the next holiday to research, of course! We also enjoy quiet socializing with friends at our house or theirs. Only very rarely does this involve a bar or restaurant. Our social spending is on our overseas trips and enjoying different food in hotels and restaurants on our travels – and ensuring our shared children and grandchildren enjoy their holidays with us here in Turkey.

What’s a typical day like for you?

The answer to this depends whether it’s summer or winter. In the holiday season, we welcome guests to our two self-contained apartments in the picturesque fishing village of Çiftlikköy, close to the resort centre of Çeşme in western Turkey. Elaine is busy preparing the apartments for arrivals and ensuring the change-over day cleaning is carried out to her (very high) standards. I sort out the administration and communications concerned with inquiries and bookings, carry out airport transfers personally and offer a varied selection of full day and half day trips to places of interest – the usual’ must see’s’ of this area such as Ephesus, for example, but also visits to places well away from the usual tourist spots. The summer is also a busy time for family visits, too.

The winter months are much quieter. A time to relax, do some exploring ourselves around the region and beyond. Visiting friends or welcoming them to our home for quiet socializing over tea, coffee and home made cake. Maybe a game of ‘Rummikub’ (English version of the popular Turkish game ‘Okay’) or Triominoes. We really know how to enjoy ourselves here, you know!

Winter or Summer, I pour myself the first glass of wine at around 6 p.m. – sometimes even a gin and tonic (living dangerously now you see!) – followed by a lovely meal together and just a couple of hours television or DVD. Hope the excitement of our lifestyle isn’t too much for you all!

What’s your favourite part of the TravelPod forum?

It’s the exciting and ever-surprising variety of topics, questions and information which invariably receives such friendly, helpful and often comprehensive responses (can’t say that for all forums, you know!). However difficult and sometime bizarre the question may first appear, there’s always someone out there with something to offer.

So, to get back to the question (off topic again!) my favourite part of the forum is appreciating the wealth of knowledge and travel experience of members, complemented by the added ingredient of regular humour. Although it seems rather clichéd to say so, TravelPod Forum does achieve the feeling (for me certainly) of being part of a huge international family.

Ask David about Turkey in the TravelPod forums

It started with my body in the exact same position as it really was. I was sleeping next to (Name Deleted) in her shitty cold and clammy studio up in a banlieue somewhere. My body was shaking with cold and need, but somehow I managed to fall asleep. In this dream, (Name Deleted) had a daughter, named Jolie. If I ever meet anyone who named their kid Jolie in real life, I will run the opposite way very fast. The child, about three, had beautiful blond curls, which was odd considering her heritage. It was the morning, and the child had slept in the same room as us, even though I hadn’t noticed her the night before. I asked to see her bed, and it turned out to be a bed of leeches. Then I understood that the little girl would actually turn into a bunch of leeches during the night. (Name Deleted) dressed the girl and told me she would be back later. By this point, she lived in a tree house in Montmartre. I was left babysitting the blond girl/leech bed thing. My mother was there and she made me try on a winter coat, which only turned out to be a dress, purple and long. The child kept hiding and I didn’t know what to do. I left the tree house, only to be driven back by my mother, she insisted we needed to stay there. Is it Christmas already, I asked.

She kind of looked like Marie Antoinette’s daughter, in that shitty ass movie by Sofia Coppola.

Sleepaway Camp

“But of course, when my husband left… Oh, well, that’s only water under the bridges, I always say. Water under the bridge! But it certainly will be a nice little surprise when Richard comes home to find a little girl in the house. Yes, I’ve always dreamed of a little girl just like you.”

No it fucking won’t be. You fucking lunatic.

This is the first of the low rent slasher movies that I’ll be doing, and I say now that if you have any interest whatsoever in seeing this film, then don’t read on. Seriously, I normally don’t give a monkey’s about spoiling films, but with I saw this one “clean” and I suggest that for the full deranged impact of the final reel you do the same. It isn’t that the twist ending reveals an unexpected killer (it doesn’t), but that it is so off the wall insane that if you know it is coming then you will either spend half the film waiting for it, or it will not shock and therefore diminish the film as a whole. It’s an awesome little film, but mostly because of that final reel.

I’m not joking about this, if you read on after this point then be warned.

Sleepaway Camp is one of the countless Friday 13th knock off’s that were made in the 70’s and early 80’s. Therefore, we all know the formula with this, or should do by now as it’s become cliché, but just in case someone hasn’t been paying attention at the back this is how they work (and they’re all the same):

Person dies/ is horribly maimed at camp as a result of either an accident or bullying. Camp closes. Years later camp re-opens and new set of soon-to-be corpses arrive. Camp is split into nerdy kids and cool kids. Councilors engage in illicit alcohol and underage sex. Body count starts to rise. One virtuous councilor/ camper makes it to the end to reveal horribly mutilated/ zombie/ lunatic killer and defeats him/ her. Everyone lives happily ever after, but room is left open for a sequel.

This holds true for every single one of these films, be it The Burning (excellent little film with Holly Hunter that I’ll be coming to later), Sleepaway Camp or Friday 13th itself. However, the better examples of the subgenre manage the slaughter with no little flair, and manage to throw in a few subtleties to distinguish themselves.

Sleepaway Camp follows the formula to the letter. It opens with a tragic boat accident leaving one survivor. 8 Years later Ricky (Jonathan Tiersten) and Angela (Felissa Rose) go to camp, people die messily, everyone thinks it’s Ricky responsible until the final act reveals killer. It’s easy when you know how, eh?

The bad aspects of this film are hard to put my finger on. It isn’t perfect by any means, there’s a strange sense of dislocation that is disorienting on first watch. Something just doesn’t feel right with it. The acting, score, cinematography, editing and the rest all contribute to an almost dreamy feeling that does detract from a proper horror atmosphere. For example, when the children are sent off to camp, they deliberately break the fourth wall, which is disconcerting, but the performance from Desiree Gould as Aunt Martha appears to be stunningly bad. It isn’t, it’s actually pitch perfect and fucking good, but if unspoilt appears cheesy and almost phoned in. The lighting and score of this scene is the same- it’s soft focus and, well damn it, weird.

This is typical of the film, there is a sense of wrongness and whimsy until the final sequence when everything comes jarringly into focus, and the sensation of detachment and the somnolent quality hardens and clarifies.

Secondly, the script is fucking dismal. Some of the shit that Paul, the walking erection who is trying to fuck Angela, spouts is embarrassing (“flat as a board and easy to screw!”) and not helped by a diabolically awful performance. The dialogue between the councilors is terrible bollocks, and the leaps of faith that we’re asked to make- would the most attractive councilor really be trying to fuck the owner (who has a face like a melted wellington boot), pursuing him to the point of a restraining order?

I don’t understand Americans. I really don’t. What’s the attraction with Summer Camp? The media has been telling me for almost my entire life that parental units dispatch horrible spawn to less than perfect care every summer. As someone that has never experienced this, I am therefore not particularly qualified to discuss the Camp itself, but in this version, it lacks verisimilitude. If they are actually like this, then I apologise, but it strikes me as complete shit that a camp in 1983 would resemble the perfect summer destination for Richie Cunningham.

Finally, it doesn’t take a fucking genius to work out who the killer is. It’s Angela.

So given that on the surface this appears to be an unremarkable camp slasher, why on earth would I recommend it?

Firstly, the kills themselves are gruesome and entertaining. A paedophile cook receives a scalding, other people die through bees, knifings and most memorably a curling iron (ouch). All of them are well handled, and gruesome enough to induce a squirm without crossing the line into torture porn.

Secondly, the sexual nature of the camp is brilliantly handled, if a little bit, well, icky. The film is stuffed with dialogue like “Where I come from, we call ‘em baldies” or “Artie, they’re too young to even understand what’s on your mind.” The sense of pubescent sexuality permeates every scene at the camp. It’s convincingly drawn and as everyone was at school in their teens, completely recognisable.

This is the final warning regarding spoilers- if you have the slightest inclination to watch this film, and have not seen it before, then stop reading now.

Seriously, almost everything discussed from this point on will spoil this film irreparably.

The performances themselves (with the exception of aforementioned walking hormone) are brilliant. Felissa Rose delivers an exceptional performance as the traumatised Angela, her performance is all subtle looks and gestures, soft mannerisms and palpable sense of victimhood. She evokes sympathy, pity and when she is unmasked as the killer it’s shocking because it’s plausible. The bitches (every camp’s gotta have them) are hilariously nasty, and the Tiersten is good as the Ricky who appears to be the killer (least subtle red herring ever). He’s spunky, pugnacious and just enough of a tool to be believable.

FINAL WARNING. GIANT PIG SIZED SPOILER AHEAD.

However, the prize performance is given by Desiree Gould. Did you ever wonder what Mrs. Bates was like? I did, and having seen this, I will take a bet that she was something like this. What first appears disjointed and even mildly irritating, as discussed above, is transformed by the context of the finale into a lunatic Stepford wife performance and I find it amazingly easy to believe that a woman so far from the grip of sanity as this one could produce a twisted serial killer. Nurture overcoming nature, and all that.

Then there’s the ending itself. I don’t know what sort of shit you’d have to be ingesting to think this up, but please remind me to avoid it. Everyone likes to root for the underdog, and Angela really is the underdog’s underdog. The final sequence opens with her finally becoming sexually active and dragging the hapless boner, Paul, off into the woods. He thinks he’s getting his dick wet, silly boy. In the meantime, Ricky is pinned down and blamed for the killings. Anyhoo, one thing leads to another and the cops and councillors follow the trail to find Angela standing butt naked and blood splattered in the woods. They all stand agog staring at her. There’s a flashback with Auntie, and the film ends with a final shot of the hissing Angela (not screaming- hissing) over the sound of Auntie singing a lullaby. Doesn’t sound like much does it? What elevates it above the herd is that butt naked Angela is actually male, and the flashback revealing the psychosis is a monologue from Aunt Martha that scarred me just listening to it. The final shot of his face with the lullaby soundtrack is genuinely nightmare inducing.

The film doesn’t drop any hints that Angela is male- it goes out of it’s way to portray her as sex object. It doesn’t drop any hints that Auntie is a nut job- instead it looks like a bad performance and you don’t see her again until the flashback. Angela’s transformation into sexual predator and murderer is shocking, unexpected (to a degree), and wholly convincing. It’s especially good, because she appears on the surface to be the classic survivor girl (if you don’t know what that is, then go and watch Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon, but it should be pretty fucking obvious), and it blows away the fuzzy atmosphere that the film had been wallowing in.

Overall, would I recommend this? Unquestionably yes. Interestingly, almost all the people that hate it on IMDB (I always read these to find people to savage when I’m reviewing films- it’s astounding how many people seem to miss the point by referring to Aunt Martha as “the mother”) seem to hate it because it’s “gay” or “homosexual”. I suppose that the Eighties’ style shorts that the boys wear contributes to this sense of homosexuality, which makes me think that they’re submorons. Nevertheless, to describe Sleepaway Camp as “the gayest horror film ever made” is clearly bollocks, and I wonder how secure those people are in their own sexuality. I’m certain that this only occurs to them in the context of the ending, which I think reinforces the fact that it is brilliantly subversive.

Apart from one cretin who disliked the film because of the “gross unnecessary ending”. There really is no hope for some people.

However, during my research (in an attempt to sum up my feeling of the wrongness of this film) I read a huge amount of crap comparing it to Psycho. This is obvious bullshit. Anyone that makes such a comparison is a fucking donut and needs a good kicking. Psycho is the prototype slasher movie with an endlessly parodied twist ending, this isn’t anywhere near that level. I assume that they make the link because of the transvestite nature of the killer, which is a superficial reading that does Psycho a particular disservice. Technically, Psycho is about a schizophrenic with a severe Oedipus complex. Angela is not schizophrenic, nor does she have mother issues. She’s psychotic, but there is no pretense at a psycho-sexual disorder. The flashback emphasises that she has to keep her secret hidden but she’s basically Aunt Martha’s human doll. Sleepaway Camp owes no debt to Psycho, but rather it is a superior, and probably the best, Friday 13th clone out there.

Highly recommended, but consider yourselves warned.

Sleepaway Camp 2

“Ooooh, I’m a happy camper, I love the clear blue sky, and with the grace of God, I’ll camp until I die”

The first sequel to the bizarre original obviously had to plough a new furrow. We know full well that Angela is the killer and we know full well that she is a he. Therefore, to bring her/ him back they had to find a plausible explanation. If you haven’t seen the first movie, you can pretty much jump straight into this, and you won’t be missing anything.

The film opens with a group of horny kids sitting around a campfire telling ghost stories, which, in the best tradition of fireside tales, suck. Until one lad decides to regale his audience with the true story of the original Sleepaway Camp. This is excellent, it turns out that Angela has had a sex-change properly and is now actually a woman. With consummate timing, a camp councillor turns up to break up the party and escort one of her girls back to camp. Well, they set out in the right direction, but the trip is curtailed by homicide. This strikes me as a bit harsh for a minor offence, but there can be no doubt that she won’t do it again.

Cut to next morning and it turns out that Angela, the camp councillor, has a hut full of, for want of a better expression, slags. This is clearly great news for your average schlock viewer as excessive nudity in this kind of film is never a bad thing. The film trundles along quite nicely, with Angela knocking off her campers one by one until the virginal heroine and her boyfriend are left.

It’s a standard slasher movie, really. It does not even attempt to deviate from the beaten path that all these films tread. To be 100% honest, if you have seen any camp set slasher movie, then you really know the plot of all of them.

Given the above, why would I watch this. I know what’s coming, I know how it will work and it appears to be pretty unoriginal. What could possibly distinguish it?

Slashers as a rule live or die based on atmosphere and inventiveness. If the atmosphere is wrong then they automatically suck. You need either a good dose of tension or a good dose of comedy to make them work. This film, unlike it’s far superior predecessor, relies on comedy.

However, having said that, it is actually quite funny. Angela’s irony-laden rendition of Happy Campers at the beginning is priceless, and the girls are suitably slutty. It’s highly entertaining stuff watching them, and Angela’s demented slaughter is never less than amusing. For example, when she kills the Ally, chief slut for (I suppose) being a slut she drowns her in the cess pit under an abandoned toilet. This is funny by definition. The obvious homage to horror classics, cheekily including Friday 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, are well handled and worth a chuckle, as is Angela’s frankly deranged sense of morality.

Following the golden rule of horror sequels closely (make it bigger, brasher and messier), the gore itself is good, with a decapitation really standing out, and Angela’s “cabin of horrors” is a cracking piece of design. All her victims are displayed, even if you can see some of them still breathing (great job, idiots), in a grisly line up for the express purpose of grossing out the virginal survivor girl. The leech covered Ally is especially grotesque.

Also following that golden rule, the atmosphere at the camp is even more sexually charged than in the original, which had a kind of innocence. They clearly all wanted to get laid, but were damned if it was even on the cards. In Sleepaway Camp 2, the girls are far more aggressive and sex is not only a possibility it’s almost a certainty- they fuck in the toilets, in the woods wherever, with Ally in particular keen to get laid at any cost. This is surprisingly jarring, because it is invariably juxtaposed with much more innocent activities such as panty raids. The more “modern” sexual appetite and scene is really disconcerting following on, as it does, from the 1950’s stylised activity. But hey, I’m never going to complain about gratuitous nudity. That would be foolish.

This is, unsurprisingly, not a perfect film. The acting is pretty dismal all things considered, with a special doofus award going to Brian Patrick Clarke for a performance of such staggering ineptitude that it beggars belief. Amazingly, much like Nicholas Cage, he’s out acted by his own hair, sporting as he does the most ludicrous mullet that I’ve seen in a long time. Pamela Stephenson is passable as Angela, and Renee Estevez ditto as Molly. In all honesty, though, the acting is pretty much as you would expect in a film like this.

The big complaint I have about this film, though, is that every character other than Angela is a complete fucking imbecile. Despite knowing the story of the original Sleepaway Camp, and despite Angela saying things such as “My aunt always said” the characters fail to see the obvious serial killer in their midst. As if that is not stupid enough, Molly’s idiotic boyfriend keeps saying “my father is a cop, and he arrested her” and still the dipshit doesn’t recognise the murderer amongst them. It’s maddening. When you factor in that nobody even bats an eyelid at the students disappearing, taking Angela’s “I sent her home” as gospel, you have to think that she’s only helping out evolution preventing these submorons from polluting the gene pool. This stupidity is relentlessly annoying and really gets on my nerves after a while.

Nevertheless, despite it’s limitations, there are worse ways to pass the time than watching this. It’s an entertaining little movie, with more than a few chuckles to be had. It bounces along quite happily never once letting things like realism or continuity interfere. There’s nakedness aplenty, for those that like that kind of thing, with the girls more than happy to get their tits out at the slightest provocation. The killings are all reasonably amusing, and the ending is, fittingly, hilarious. It doesn’t pretend to be anything more than it is- an entertaining slasher film.

Overall, would I recommend it? I have to say yes. It can be a bit annoying, but at the end of the day it is a good, fun little film. It reminds me of a happier time in Horror films when unmitigated misery and torture weren’t paramount. This is film full of shocks and giggles. It isn’t trying to make the audience wince, and it has no designs above its station. Sleepaway Camp 2: Unhappy Campers is not a classic, but it is a film to  have a laugh with, and there’s far worse things than that.

I returned to the pharmacy collection last weekend with the express intent to photograph some particular medical devices: scarificators–used in the “art” of bloodletting, and other purposes prior to the advent of the hypodermic needle.  These images represent only a sampling of the variety of the scarificators in the collection.  I think what intrigues me most is the “mechanical-ness” of these devices, and craftsmanship with which they were made.

Of course, what bloodletting collection would be complete without the leech carriers?

Though I had set out to photograph a variety of scarificators, I also found this magneto-electric therapy device to be particularly interesting: the “Improved and Compound Magneto-Electric Machine for Medical Purposes, Ashael Davis.” Per the collection’s proprietor, this particular device is unusual in that it includes an apparatus for applying current to the eye  via the glass tube / eyecup in front of the box in the photograph below.  The “patient” was instructed to hold the metal conductors while the “practitioner” would turn the crank.  Depending on the rate of crank turnage, the patient would receive a therapeutic current: ranging from a gentle tingle to a significant shock.  Guaranteed to cure just about everything….

Thanks for looking!