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H.P. Lovecraft would have loved one Marlborough restaurant
By adamg on Fri, 06/26/2020 - 10:27pm
Silk Road Bistro is a Chinese restaurant in Marlborough, whose homepage lists a series of warnings and instructions for picking up takeout these days, including stuff you'd expect - when you get there, ring the bell and announce your name, step back 10 feet, then wait for your food to be placed on a table at the door and wait for the worker who brought it out to step back. "DO NOT attempt to grab the food out of our hands." And then:
DO, however, dwell with a gnawing, eldritch dread on the immeasurable frailty of your tenuous mortal existence.
H/t Chris Devers.
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Comments
Like we need a reminder. I was a
voracious reader of SF, high fantasy and weird horror fiction as a kid, but Lovecraft always disappointed me. When it came time to describe or at least evoke the terrors at the center of his stories, he was always like, "Just imagine something so horrible it is unimaginable!" Dude: give me a soul-piercing detail or two, something my mind can springboard from. "Faintly-sketched ancient squid-faced cranky-from-oversleeping monster-god has malevolent but vague plans for humanity" didn't give me the boogity-boogity.
His horror prose was certainly atmospheric, plenty of florid, Poe-worthy eerie poetry, but ultimately frustrating: a literary dry hump, a lot of frictional teasing with no consummation. Some of King's and Barker's and Gaiman's work haunted me, but Lovecraft's was forgettable, never kept me awake at 4am or gave me nightmares. (Maybe unfair to compare a Jazz Age fantasist to the moderns.)
I think indie filmmakers have done a better job of delivering on his promise: I particularly like Stuart Gordon's no-budget "Re-Animator", though I believe that says more about the director's and star Jeffrey Combs's hilarious, gonzo sensibilities than Lovecraft's talents.
Can anyone recommend the new Nic Cage-starring Lovecraft adaptation "Color Out of Space"? I'm leery of investing time in Cage's movies these days -- really sad how wealth mismanagement has forced that gifted actor into treadmill hackery -- though "Mandy" is still on my watchlist.
I expect big things
from "Space" as it's Richard Stanley's return to film after 24 years. He made "Hardware". If you haven't seen "Mandy", it's fantastic. Cage is out of control and over the top.
I've tried to avoid spoilers about "Mandy", but I did
peek at its notorious "Cheddar Goblin" TV ad parody on YouTube, which strikes me as a promising sign of raving outre weirdness. I value Cage both when he's Seriously Acting and when he chews the scenery like a starving honey badger: I thought "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans" was a camp masterpiece.
Again, he's brilliant, but his late career is mostly tragic: as if Gordon Hamersley had to work the line at Applebee's seven days a week to pay off back taxes, knowing he'd never get to do that world-beating roast chicken ever again. What might have been.
Yes
Yes, unconditional recommendation for Color out of Space, as well as Mandy, in the pantheon of roles Cage was Born to Play. Tommy Chong's a show-stealer in the former, btw. Anyway you want a double feature of psychedelic revenge, violence, mayhem, horror, and Nicholas Cage Freakouts, look no further.
New HBO series
called Lovecraft Country, by Misha Green & Jordan Peele: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJV9acMsDwM&feature=emb_logo
Actually...
The first instructions are a little reminiscent of the Soup Nazi. I'm picturing George ringing the bell and very meticulously stepping 10 feet back, etc.
"You do not feel dread existential despair at the core of
being? In these times?! No soup for you!"
Shhhhhhh!!!
please don't bring up Lovecraft right now; you're gonna get him canceled. I don't think they've toppled his statue yet.
Dead of poverty at 46
Seems like God/society cancelled him in real time.
Side note- I hope we don't let the right wingers return us back to where people routinely die of poverty again.
Cause of death
I heard that he was crushed to death when a filing cabinet containing his entire supply of adjectives fell on him.
Actually, according to Wikipedia he died of intestinal cancer. Is intestinal cancer caused by poverty? I am a little doubtful. Certainly he died in poverty, but that doesn't mean he died of poverty. Poverty makes everything harder, but intestinal cancer is pretty hard to begin with.
Already done
The physical trophy for the World Fantasy Award used to include a bust of Lovecraft. This was replaced a few years ago specifically because of Lovecraft's racism (which was far worse than average even for his own time).
Relax
No one erected statues of an obscure weird fiction author to put minorities in their place.
clear concise instructions
I think it's great to have such clear concise instructions to make it safe for both sides of this transaction. A recent takeout
order from a local restaurant I made was a shit show! Won't be returning there until they get their act together!
Something tells me ol' HP
Something tells me ol' HP wouldn't have been too fond of any Chinese restaurant.