An additional plus about the show was the way it treated viewers to behind-the- scenes facts and rare interviews with some of horror’s most daring filmmakers without having to attend a fan convention. (It’s a joke! Lighten up!)

Robert Englund displayed the same macabre charm he would employ when hosting the Horror Movie Hall of Fame ceremonies later in the decade. He didn’t copy his patented Freddy routine, but rather approached the material with a morbid tongue-in- cheek humor that was reminiscent of some of the best B-Movie hosts of the past crossed with the dark cartoons of Charles Addams. His most notorious stunt while hosting and narrating Shadow Theater came when he was nonchalantly sowing shut the lips of a life-sized baby-doll while talking about the films to be examined in that particular episode. The outcry from the kind of people who spend their lives feeling offended by anything and everything provided a spate of free publicity for the show.

Memorable Shadow Theater episodes included a look at overt and implied lesbianism in Hammer vampire films, a tribute to Stuart Gordon (Reanimator, From Beyond, Dolls ) a detailed examination of Dario Argento’s body of work, a Lucio Fulci retrospective and comprehensive features on then-out- of-the- way horror film series like the Phantasm and Evil Dead movies. 

Here’s hoping my fellow fans of forgotten television can dig up a lot of clips from this show and give it a much larger presence on Youtube than it presently has. 

FOR MORE FORGOTTEN TELEVISION SHOWS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/category/forgotten-television/   

 The Ambassadors (How can you not love a name that cool?) are 19-8 overall and after finishing off

the final three games in the regular season will be playing in the National Christian College Athletic Association (NCCAA) regional tournament on February 24th and 25th.

Tip-off for tonight’s game is set for 8:30pm Eastern Time.

Balladeer’s Blog welcomes Leilah and Nevaeh, the daughters of Rae Dillard and the granddaughters of Janice and Lonnie Dillard. Nevaeh is no stranger here and has twice before given us her outspoken assessment of college sports in the divisions I cover. Her little sister Leilah is a new arrival to our world and is a true Diaper Dandy in every sense of the term.

The Dillard Sisters, whose names you’ll be seeing on a marquis someday, are here to launch this year’s February Frenzy at Balladeer’s Blog. The conference basketball tournaments in the college divisions I cover start today with the Ohio Collegiate Athletic Conference tipping things off. Now over to Nevaeh and Leilah.  

Nevaeh and Leilah: Does that Mr Wozniak ever shut up? And could he say “Balladeer’s Blog” a few more times in there? People know where they are. They’re here reading aren’t they? Anyway the two of us have put our heads together and come up with our breakdown on the OCAC tournament complete with our pick to win the conference title. The top 2 seeds get a bye in the first round so they won’t play til tomorrow. The Clermont Cougars are the 1 seed and the Ohio Christian University Trailblazers are the 2 seed. The two of us are annoyed that the OCAC team with the prettiest name, the OSU-Marion Scarlet Wave, didn’t make the tournament this year. 

Game 1 – 3pm Eastern Time – The 3rd-seeded Valor Christian College Warriors take on the 6th- seeded Clark State Eagles. Valor Christian got off to an 8-0 start this season but have not been playing their best basketball since then. Clark State’s head coach Karlton Clayborne has got his team fired up and embracing their underdog role. Look for the Eagles to provide the first upset of the tournament today by taking down the Warriors. 

Game 2 – 7pm Eastern Time – The 4th- seeded Ohio Midwestern College Rams will battle the Southern State Patriots, who are in the 5 spot. The Patriots come in after having lost their last 4 games of the regular season to end with a 12-12 record. The Rams are plucky and have come a long way in a short time with their basketball program, but post- season experience for the Patriots plus the fact that Southern State is the host school for this tournament made the two of us pick the Pats in a mild upset. 

Game 3 – 1pm Eastern Time on Friday – If we felt upsets ruled Day 1 of the tournament we definitely feel it will be all chalk on Day 2. The Ohio Christian University Trailblazers will play the winner of the 3/6 matchup. OCU is very hot and are ranked 4th in the nation in the National Christian College Athletic Association poll right now. The Trailblazers will definitely win, the only question is how many points over 100 will they go? 

Game 4 – 7pm Eastern Time on Friday - The Clermont Cougars were the runners- up in last year’s USCAA national tournament, formerly called Madness in the Mountains but this year changed to Mountain Madness. Oh, thank God! That change of name is probably the spark this country needs to get this horrible economy turned around! Anyway, the Cougars have too much talent to fall to either team that wins the 4/5 game and will win easily.

Championship Game – 2:30pm Eastern Time on Saturday – Ever since the pre-season the so-called experts have been anointing Clermont as the presumed champs of the OCAC regular season AND tournament. Well, to switch sports and quote Lee Corso, “Not so fast, my friend!” The two of us are setting the men straight by going with the swagga and the N-R-G of THE Ohio Christian University Trailblazers to defy the odds and upset the Cougars! Hear us now, believe us later!  

Enjoy the games, y’all! Below is the OCU logo, but it looks like the Golden State Warriors logo.

 Special thanks to Leilah and Nevaeh for their insightful analysis of the upcoming tournament action!

Good luck to all the teams participating in the OCAC tournament!

November 13th, 1900 – This date was the predicted end of the world according to the Brothers and Sisters of Red Death. This group was a very odd religious cult that had reportedly been surviving underground in Tsarist Russia for nearly 200 years.

However long it had really been around, the cult’s members forbade marriage and were required to recruit new members. When an initiate in the cult had recruited 12 new members, it was believed that they had earned themselves a place in Heaven. They were then permitted to have sex with various other cult members at the next secret meeting, followed by consensual suicide that was assisted by other cultists who would suffocate them with red cushions. (Insert my usual remarks about my feelings toward religious zealots)

With November 13th designated as the end of the entire world, the Red Death Cult called off all their usual activities and decided they would please God and gain swift ascent to Heaven if they all locked themselves in their homes on that date and set their homes on fire. I’m not kidding. When 862 of the cultists put this plan into action Tsarist troops from St Petersburg were sent out to deal with the flames and save the suicidal religious nuts.

More than 100 (exact figures vary because some of the wounded died over the next few days) of the Red Death Cult got their wish and perished in the conflagration. When November 14th arrived with the world still intact the surviving members, showing more sense than the ever-gullible Millerites  did, grew disillusioned and disbanded.

FOR MORE END OF THE WORLD MYTHS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/category/end-of-the-world-myths/

NAIA-1- 1. Shorter Hawks … 2. Oklahoma Baptist University Bison … 3. Robert Morris (IL) Eagles … 4. Southern Polytechnic Running Hornets 

NAIA-2- 1. Oregon Tech Hustlin’ Owls … 2. Northwood (FL) Seahawks … 3. Davenport Panthers … 4. Dordt College Defenders 

NCAA D3- 1. Hope Flying Dutchmen … 2. Amherst Lord Jeffs (up from 6) … 3. MIT Engineers … 4. Middlebury Panthers (down from 2) 

NCAA D2- 1. Bellarmine Knights (defending champs) … 2. West Liberty Hilltoppers … 3. Winona State Warriors … 4. Colorado Mines Orediggers (love that name) 

NJCAA-1 – 1. South Plains College Texans … 2. Northwest Florida Raiders … 3. Vincennes Trailblazers … 4. College of Southern Idaho Golden Eagles 

NJCAA-3 – 1. Sullivan College Generals … 2. Herkimer Generals (yes, 2 Generals teams in a row) … 3. Davidson Storm … 4. CLC- Brainerd Raiders

NCCAA-1 – 1. Cal Baptist Lancers … 2. Azusa Pacific Cougars … 3. Dallas Baptist University Patriots … 4. SAGU Lions 

NCCAA-2 – 1. Grace Bible College Tigers … 2. Valley Forge Christian College Patriots … 3. Kuyper  Cougars … 4. Ohio Christian University Trailblazers 

USCAA-1 – 1. Rochester Warriors … 2. Southern Virginia University Knights … 3. Belleville Lynx … 4. Ave Maria Gyrenes 

USCAA-2 – 1. Eastern Maine Eagles … 2. Beaver Lions … 3. Central Penn Silver Knights … 4. Andrews Cardinals 

The Body Shop is one of my all-time favorite bad movie gems. It includes all the little extras that separate mere bombs from the truly legendary turkeys and, like another neglected classic, The Wizard of Mars (see my Bad Movie page for the review), just keeps getting worse and worse and weirder and weirder all the way to the end.

The film stars and was directed by J.G. Paterson, Jr, but for this film he chose to star under his stage name ”Don Brandon, America’s Number One Magician” in the opening credits. Pretty brassy, considering virtually nobody had ever heard of him, and magicians like Doug Henning and Blackstone weren’t exactly casting wary glances over their shoulders in fear of Brandon’s not-so- rising star.

Brandon’s mad scientist character in the film also goes by the name Dr Don Brandon, so The Body Shop may be the first film in history that was made partly to bolster an aging stage magician’s career. Anyway, that’s the opinion of “Balladeer, America’s Number One Blogger”.

The film opens with a very strange song about women and the old cliche about “sugar and spice and everything nice”. When the singer begins praising various parts of the female anatomy in a tune uncannily like My Favorite Things we know we’re not in Kansas anymore. Our story begins at the funeral of Dr Brandon’s wife, who died in a car accident, as we learn when an uncredited extra tunes in to one of those incredibly plot-specific news bulletins that movies are filled with. Hey, maybe none of us can remember them ever breaking in to regular programming to announce the death of a General Practioner’s spouse in a car wreck, but I guess it’s possible that we just don’t live near one of those “all exposition, all the time” radio stations. 

Our mad doctor returns to his castle which, by the way, is in rural North Carolina (more on this later) but also has the requisite hunchback lab assistant/ lackey on staff. This hunchback, who boasts the less-than- sinister name “Greg” (“Greg the hunchback!” Brrrr!) also stands out in the annals of hunchbackdom by frequently smoking a cigar, which, combined with his stooped-over posture, lends him a certain Groucho Marx quality that’s hilariously at odds with the bloody mayhem to come. But what really puts Greg up there alongside Zork the hunchback from Deafula is the fact that his pants are so baggy we occassionally see his butt-crack as he shambles around the lab doing his master’s bidding.

Dr Brandon, alternately addressing Greg and a rose he plucked from a wreath on his wife’s coffin, explains his plan to be reunited with his late bride by resurrecting her. To that end he and his faithful hunchback companion rob his wife’s grave on an appropriately stormy night in a scene marred by the most  poorly- rendered day-for- night shooting this side of Orgy of the Dead. Transporting her corpse back to the mad doctor’s castle (Ah, those tobacco blue-bloods of yore!) they wrap her from head to toe in what looks like aluminum foil. After a few minutes of your regulation “mad scientist and lab assistant puttering around” nonsense some of Doctor Brandon’s equipment catches fire and we’re told they failed to bring his beloved back from the dead. 

Our hero then swears to Greg and the rose that he’ll STILL be reunited with his late wife by patching together the perfect woman from body parts he’ll take from other women. Now, to you and me and anyone with any sense that means he’ll have a whole different wife, not the one who just died. Don’t tell that to our screenwriter, however, because we’ll be subjected to countless instances of Dr Brandon telling Greg and the rose (whom he addresses as “my dear”) that they’ll soon be together again. 

Not only that, but he now pointlessly threatens Greg that he’d better keep helping him or he won’t give him a normal body to replace his hunchbacked one. The stogie-smoking, butt-crack- showing hunchback has given no indication that he has ever thought of disobeying the good doctor, so this implied threat seems really forced and awkward. 

Anyway, Doctor Brandon and Greg begin carving up various women that are brought to their lab by way of our mad doctor’s sudden powers of telepathic hypnosis (just go with me on this). They keep the most perfect part or parts of each victim, then destroy the leftovers in an acid vat. Some of the women wake up during the “surgery” just to add screaming to the laughably fake-looking blood and gore effects the viewer gets treated to each time. Our filmmaker was an assistant on some of H.G. Lewis’ blood-soaked horror films, so you can easily picture the Caro-syrup blood that gets shed very generously. 

Other things to love in this hilarious mess include: a) the country and western song A Heart Dies Every Minute, by Bill Hicks and the Rainbows. We get to hear it not just once, but TWICE during the film, and both times it’s as hysterically out of place as you would expect a country song to sound in a graphically violent horror film …   b) the second time we hear the song is in a live performance (be still my heart)  when Doctor Brandon is dining with a soon-to- be victim at The Drawbridge Restaurant. Said restaurant,  which is done up like a medieval castle, was clearly the location used for the castle our hero calls home and which I call “Castle Tarheel”  because of its North Carolina location …  

c) the uproariously awkward dialogue throughout the film, like when the doctor helps Greg on with his lab coat while observing “You have your little problems, don’t you?”  and later – “It’s a woman’s  hands that bring out the truth in a man” (?) …   d) the way Dr Brandon pointlessly pulls the pantyhose off a woman on his operating table before cutting off her hands …   e) the way one woman, who is delivered to Castle Tarheel already dead keeps struggling to keep her eyes widened in a death stare … 

f) a scene where knocks on a door are clearly heard, followed by the Doctor telling Greg “Get that, it might be the door.”  What the hell sounds do this guy’s toilets make is what I wanna know! …     g) a scene where a cop comes snooping and the entire conversation with him is framed entirely in the castle’s doorway but is shot like he’s Doc and Greg’s “Mystery Date”. (Remember that old game?) 

h) the way Doctor Brandon and Greg exchange even more meaningful glances than Friday and Gannon ever did on Dragnet …    i) choppy editing that makes the actors in any given scene appear to be teleporting all over the room from one moment to the next …   j) the fact that ALL of the film’s incidental music sounds like the music played at roller rinks …   k) the unintelligible noises Greg uses to communicate. They sound like the noises Dopey the dinousaur made on the tv show Land of the Lost …   

l) the way Greg stashes some of his whiskey bottles in with the body parts that he and the Doc are keeping frozen. Sort of lends new meaning to the expression “Grabbing a cold one” doesn’t it?   and m) the unmistakable way it appears our auteur got some very cheap thrills feeling up his doctor character’s victims in makeout scenes preceding their hypnotism and/or murder. 

At any rate, after plenty of laughable dialogue, lots of fake bloodshed and severed body parts with a little dose of a cop wondering if the good doctor is using Castle Tarheel to make moonshine, our hero’s “perfect woman” is completely assembled. Some parts not included. (rimshot) He gives her the rose he’s been talking to and keeping alive with some of his secret chemical concoctions, then proceeds to teach the poor mindless creature (How was this reuniting you with your late wife again, buddy? ) only what he wants her to know. And he only wants her to know how to please and pamper him to the exclusion of all else. 

After ”teaching scenes” rendered hilarious by the way the actions on-screen never come close to matching the voiceover narration describing them, her education is complete. Doctor Brandon has grown so possessive of his mindless, undead love-toy, however, that he doesn’t even trust her around Greg the hunchback and makes him sleep in the lab every night now. Oddly, his paranoia proves justified when he catches the woman “Anitra” putting the moves on Greg. (Chicks dig hunchbacks. It’s a known fact.)  Needless to say he reacts by chopping up the Gregster with an axe and tossing his body parts in the acid bath. 

The next day Doctor Brandon goes off to a meeting and Anitra gets a visit from the furnace man. Knowing nothing but “how to please a man” she happily leaves with the guy but deserts him after a brief fling. 

Next, we cut to Doctor Brandon behind  bars. We’re never told how he got found out and put there, but hey, that’s part of what makes this movie so hilariously bad. He’s gone even more crazy now, and can’t even hypnotize people anymore, as we learn when he fails to mesmerize the cleaning  woman outside his cell. He spouts gibberish, has flashbacks to the gory and titillating scenes from earlier, and the film closes with a shot of a hitch-hiking Anitra climbing into a truck with another hick (maybe I should have said she was “hitch-hicking” or “hick-hiking” instead) and riding off. 

The end. Really. But the final scene with our mad doctor in his cell boasted one of my all-time favorite bad movie gaffes. We actually see THE CLAPBOARD LABELING THE SCENE being held between the bars of the doctor’s cell before it is yanked out of the shot by one of the film crew. Hilarious. The writing on the clapboard reveals that during production the film was originally titled Anitra instead of The Body Shop, but most dvd copies feature it under the title Doctor Gore. Any questions?

FOR MORE BAD MOVIE REVIEWS CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/bad-movies/

© Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog, 2012. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Edward Wozniak and Balladeer’s Blog with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.

My fellow blogger Harry at Dribbling Pensioner has posted a great article addressing Islam and gay- bashing. Here is the link: http://dribblingpensioner.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/gay-hate-crime/

NUMBER TWO TAKES A FALL – In NCAA D3 action, the 2nd- ranked MIDDLEBURY PANTHERS were upset on the road by the number 6 AMHERST LORD JEFFS. The final score in this overtime Battle Royal was 77-75.

TOP 25 UPSETS – NAIA-1 – The 5th- ranked OUR LADY OF THE LAKE SAINTS fell to the SOUTHWEST ASSEMBLIES OF GOD LIONS in a 106-80 shocker … The number 8 GEORGETOWN (KY) TIGERS were toppled on the road by the SHAWNEE STATE BEARS in a 63-59 game that thrilled the Shawnee State Homecoming crowd … The 9th- ranked WESTMONT WARRIORS fell to the unranked HOPE INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY ROYALS by a score of 77-70 … The MONTANA TECH OREDIGGERS (love that name) upset the number 13 MSUN LIGHTS 63-55 … At 22, the defending champs, the PIKEVILLE BEARS lost on the road to the ST CATHARINE PATRIOTS in a 90-85 Instant Classic … The unranked VANGUARD LIONS brought down the 25th- ranked MASTER’S MUSTANGS 69-68 … The XAVIER (LA) GOLD RUSH were tied for 25th and they also lost on the road – in their case in an 84-64 smackdown by the TALLADEGA TORNADOES. 

TOP 25 UPSETS – NAIA-2 – The 2nd division of NAIA basketball wasn’t as busy upset-wise. Believe it or not only one ranked team got taken down in yesterday’s action. The 16th- ranked BRIAR CLIFF CHARGERS fell on the road to the MORNINGSIDE MUSTANGS in overtime 97-89   

TOP 25 UPSETS – NCAA Division 3 – In addition to Middlebury falling, the 4th-ranked WHITEWATER WARHAWKS were upset by the SUPERIOR LAKERS in a 60-58 epic … At unlucky 13 the WOOSTER SCOTS lost on the road to the 22nd- ranked WITTENBERG TIGERS by a score of 68-62 in overtime and the unranked WESTERN CONNECTICUT COLONIALS broke the century mark in a 108-105 overtime victory over the number 21 KEENE STATE OWLS.    

OTHER TOP 25 RESULTS – NAIA-1

The Top-Ranked ROBERT MORRIS (IL) EAGLES bounced back from their upset loss the other night to the CALUMET COLLEGE CRIMSON WAVE by logging a road win over the SOUTH BEND TITANS 84-70 … (4) SOUTHERN POLYTECHNIC RUNNING HORNETS over the SOUTHERN WESLEYAN WARRIORS 76-60 … (6) ROGERS STATE HILLCATS defeated the OKLAHOMA CHRISTIAN EAGLES in a 77-74 Instant Classic … (7) MARTIN METHODIST RED HAWKS over the LYON SCOTS 83-70 … (12) LINDSEY WILSON COLLEGE BLUE RAIDERS crushed the RIO GRANDE (OH) RED STORM 86-52 … (20) MNU PIONEERS over the BENEDICTINE RAVENS 68-63 … (23) SOUTHERN NAZARENE CRIMSON STORM won an Instant Classic over the ST GREGORY CAVALIERS 69-67 and (24) MONTANA- WESTERN BULLDOGS defeated the GREAT FALLS ARGONAUTS by a score of 66-63.  

OTHER TOP 25 RESULTS – NAIA-2 – (2) OREGON TECH HUSTLIN’ OWLS over the (10) NORTHWEST (WA) EAGLES 95-69 … (3) DAVENPORT PANTHERS defeated the UNIVERSITY OF NW OHIO RACERS 79-60 … (4) DORDT COLLEGE DEFENDERS over the CONCORDIA (NE) BULLDOGS 85-68 … (6) MCPHERSON BULLDOGS defeated the KANSAS WESLEYAN COYOTES 90-72 … (7) CARDINAL STRITCH WOLVES won comfortably over the HOLY CROSS (IN) SAINTS 87-56 … (13) ST THOMAS (FL) BOBCATS defeated the WEBBER INTERNATIONAL WARRIORS 61-58 … (14) NORTHWESTERN (IA) RED RAIDERS over the DOANE TIGERS  92-69 … (15) INDIANA WESLEYAN WILDCATS defeated the BETHEL (IN) PILOTS 94-87 … (19) INDIANA UNIVERSITY- SOUTHEAST GRENADIERS (love that name) dismembered the ALICE LLOYD EAGLES 110-76 at Homecoming … (22) ST MARY SPIRES ruined Senior Night for the BETHANY SWEDES with an 89-70 victory and the (24) MARIAN KNIGHTS took down the MT VERNON NAZARENE COUGARS by a score of 73-56.

And now, links to updating scoreboards in the divisions of college basketball covered by Balladeer’s Blog:

NAIA Division 1 –http://www.victorysportsnetwork.com/sport/0/4.php

NAIA Division 2 – http://www.victorysportsnetwork.com/sport/0/15.php

NCAA Division 3 – http://www.d3hoops.com/seasons/men/2011-12/schedule 

NCAA Division 2 – http://www.ncaa.com/content/dii-mens-basketball-scoreboard

NJCAA – http://njcaa.org/sports_schedules.cfm?category=Schedules%2FScores&sid=4&divid=1&slid=2

USCAA – http://www.theuscaa.com/stats/2011-12_Master_Scores_-_Men-s_D1.pdf

Cratinus as we all like to remember him

 Welcome to Balladeer’s Blog’s seventh post on ancient Greek comedies. If Pytine was an episode of Friends it would be titled The One Where Cratinus Fires Back At Aristophanes. This play is also known under English language titles like Wine Flask, Flagon, The Bottle, and others along those lines.

Cratinus, seen at left posing for the Attic Old Disco soundtrack album for Saturday Night Fever (Travolta stole all his moves from Cratinus, by the way) and galvanized by the tongue-in- cheek caricature that Aristophanes presented of a drunken, washed- up Cratinus in his previous year’s comedy The Knights, turned that caricature into the premise of his final comedy.

THE PLAY

From the fragments of Pytine that remain it seems Cratinus had an actor portraying himself (Cratinus) as the booze-soaked Grand Old Man of Attic comedy at the time. I always picture the character as a cross between Dudley Moore in Arthur and Tom Conti in Reuben, Reuben. Anyway, in the play Cratinus is married either to Thalia, the Muse of Comedy or to simply a female personification of Comedy.  

Comedy complains to Cratinus’ friends, who make up the chorus, that she wants to take her husband to court for abandonment. She states that he is neglecting their marital bed because he has been spending too much time sleeping around with Methe, in this comedy a personification of  Drunkenness. Academic opinion varies on whether or not Methe is supposed to be a hot young woman or a hot young man, and since this is an ancient Greek comedy it definitely could go either way. Not enough of the comedy survives to make it clear so Methe’s gender will remain a controversy.

Cratinus’ friends plot to save their buddy’s marriage by stopping him from drinking. They enact their “intervention” by smashing every last one of his containers of wine, and some of the comedy came from how many different types of vessels Cratinus had been hiding his booze in.

Cratinus counters the destruction of all his drinking vessels by purchasing a pytine, a very durable wine flask reinforced with wicker. The pytine is so strong it will withstand all the friends’ attempts to destroy it, thus foiling their plan to save Cratinus’ marriage to Comedy or the muse Thalia. Cratinus defends his drinking by saying wine is the source of all his poetic inspiration (the comedies were all in verse). This line of reasoning sets up the most famous line from Pytine when Cratinus says “You’ll never write great poetry if all you drink is water.”  

The ending of this comedy has not survived, and academic arguments rage on over whether or not Cratinus stopped drinking or if he convinced his wife and friends to indulge his drunken behavior in the cause of great comic poetry.

COMMENTS

Pytine is always cited as probably THE most “meta” of all the Attic Old Comedies. Not only is the premise itself a direct response to some comical potshots Aristophanes took at Cratinus the year before in The Knights, but the surviving fragments reveal multiple “in” jokes about the process of writing and staging ancient comedies as well as potshots at other comic poets of the time. The crowning touch of breaking the fourth wall lies in the fact that the play had an actor portraying the author of the play with the audience in on the joke that he knows he’s just an actor playing that author in a comedy.   

In this comedy Cratinus presented the world with a comic archetype that has lasted up until this very day: the loveable drunk whose charm and talent spring at least partly from their booze-soaked persona. I already mentioned Arthur and Reuben, Reuben above, but we can certainly add Peter O’Toole’s Allan Swann from My Favorite Year, Jack Lemmon’s drunken priest in Mass Appeal, Patsy and Edina in Absolutely Fabulous, and countless others.  

“YOU’LL NEVER WRITE GREAT POETRY IF ALL YOU DRINK IS WATER”

It’s fascinating to me how far back Pytine lets us trace the romantic stereotype of the creative genius with a substance abuse problem. Part of my fondness for Pytine lies in this other way it has continued relevance: in the link, real or imagined, between alcohol and writing. There’s even a terrific non-fiction book from recent years titled The Thirsty Muse about alcohol and American writers. In the time of Cratinus, the belief that intoxication was the state of mind from which creativity flowed was very strongly held. 

Remember, the reason the tragedies, comedies and other forms of poetry were performed at festivals dedicated to Dionysus was specifically because of his role as the god of wine, from which it was believed creative talent sprang. That belief went beyond the writers of the plays and applied also to the belief that wine was the source of the talents of the thespians, the singers and dancers of the chorus and the musicians as well.  

All over the world and in every time period cultures have noted a supposed link between various intoxicating substances and the creative arts. The Hindu drink Soma, the Aztec pulque, from various parts of Africa palm wine, the list is endless. When other forms of drugs are added in it becomes nearly impossible to count. And always there was the belief that the altered states of consciousness brought on by those substances opened doorways to the beyond, from where artists of all disciplines could snatch their inspiration. Since this belief persists we can once again feel a sense of our shared humanity with the Athenian audiences of 2,400 years ago.

The idea is so pervasive that it seems in the career of nearly every creative figure you could name there is the inevitable period in which they succumb to problems handling whatever substance they abuse. Every celebrity to pass through the doors of the Betty Ford Clinic is a faint but more serious echo of the self- portrait Cratinus presented in Pytine. As for other aspects of the comedy …   

By presenting himself as Comedy’s husband, Cratinus was tongue-in-cheekly depicting himself to be the greatest comic poet of his day. Since Comedy was his wife, she clearly preferred him to all his rival comedians.

In this comedy, Cratinus was presented defending his behavior to his friends by telling them that at least he only slept around with one partner, Drunkenness (Methe), while his wife Comedy (or the muse Thalia) had dalliances with all his competing comic poets. The catalogue of Comedy’s lovers provided an excuse for jokes insulting each of the comedians mentioned. (Think Dean Martin or Comedy Central Celebrity Roast type of jokes)   

Little could Cratinus have dreamt that the joking insult he threw at Aristophanes in this section of the play would become so firmly attached to his rival comedian that it lives on in academic language to this very day. Riffing on Aristophanes’ propensity for including scenes parodying the tragedies of Euripides in his comedies, he implied that the younger comic might be featuring so much Euripidean material to make up for a lack of originality and to pad his plays out to the proper length. The term he used to sum up this approach he accused Aristophanes of using was “Euripidaristophanizing.”

The word Euripidaristophanizing is still used as a shorthand description for all the scenes from the Aristophanic corpus that feature parodies of Euripidean tragedy. There are academic articles and at least one book that uses Euripidaristophanizing as their title. 2,435 years later, Cratinus’ insult lives on.    

It had been at least two years since one of Cratinus’ comedies had won first prize, which contributed to the ribbing Aristophanes and others gave him about being past his prime and having drunk his talent away.

Not only was Pytine Cratinus’ last comedy, but it took First Prize at the Dionysia of 423 BCE. In second place was Ameipsias with his comedy Connus, about the Sophist philosophers and in third place was Aristophanes with The Clouds, which was likewise about the Sophists, with Socrates as the main character.

Disgruntled over his comedy’s third place finish Aristophanes would later revise The Clouds and it is only the second version that has come down to us.  

FOR MORE OF MY EXAMINATIONS OF ANCIENT GREEK COMEDIES CLICK HERE: http://glitternight.com/ancient-greek-comedies/

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