The Rocky Horror Cult

They’ve written close cover before striking across my head. The old cerebral meninx is inflamed: hot bulbs roach-race around it, a 1930 art-deco movie marquee. I’m bricked out. The clocking on one sock is 15 minutes fast. Some Bulgarian has potshot my thigh with a poison umbrella pellet: fever, man: it’s hyperpyrexia time in Synapse City. I’m about to whelp out large sociocultural generalizations: upstream like a lady sockeye salmon, halfdrowned in loose scales and her own ungrateful, turgid spawn.

See, I’d been shut out three weekends straight at The Itch, a movie dosshouse in Long Island City, Queens. In Long Island City: people don’t even live in Long Island City. In LIC entertainment is two Con Ed men and a backhoe. But The Rocky Horror Show would be SRO wherever it ran (Fri., Sat., at midnight only). In Pittsburgh, in Cleveland, suburbs of Queens, like that. And in downtown Manhattan: everywhere. The film can’t be blamed for it’s success. Rocky Horror is infantile paralysis grown up: transvestitism, Oldenburg weird sets, satire on Warhol’s Frankenstein, some soft rock clamoring. Sort of film that’s accessory to the secret medicine chest. Seen best with a happy-honk swab up your nose.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.

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They’ve written close cover before striking across my head. The old cerebral meninx is inflamed: hot bulbs roach-race around it, a 1930 art-deco movie marquee. I’m bricked out. The clocking on one sock is 15 minutes fast. Some Bulgarian has potshot my thigh with a poison umbrella pellet: fever, man: it’s hyperpyrexia time in Synapse City. I’m about to whelp out large sociocultural generalizations: upstream like a lady sockeye salmon, halfdrowned in loose scales and her own ungrateful, turgid spawn.

See, I’d been shut out three weekends straight at The Itch, a movie dosshouse in Long Island City, Queens. In Long Island City: people don’t even live in Long Island City. In LIC entertainment is two Con Ed men and a backhoe. But The Rocky Horror Show would be SRO wherever it ran (Fri., Sat., at midnight only). In Pittsburgh, in Cleveland, suburbs of Queens, like that. And in downtown Manhattan: everywhere. The film can’t be blamed for it’s success. Rocky Horror is infantile paralysis grown up: transvestitism, Oldenburg weird sets, satire on Warhol’s Frankenstein, some soft rock clamoring. Sort of film that’s accessory to the secret medicine chest. Seen best with a happy-honk swab up your nose.

DK

About the Author

D. Keith Mano

D. Keith Mano was a TV screenwriter and author of ten books, including Take 5, recipient of the 1987 Literary Lion award, and columnist at National Review magazine for 17 years.