'Some Like It Hot' Shall Be The Whole Of The Law

[robotnik2004]

In other news, yesterday I read George Pendle's Strange Angel, a fun biography of Jack Parsons. I'm assuming the Parsons fans on my Flist know about this book already (head58, I'm looking at you), but if not, high thee to a library. Parsons is a great character: rocket scientist, wife swapper, black magic cultist extraordinaire. When L. Ron Hubbard is calling you loopy and Aleister Superfreak Crowley writes you from England saying, "Uh, maybe you ought to lay off the black magic for a while for a while, Jack--you're weirding me out" it's time to at least consider a sabbatical. But no, Jack summoned the Scarlet Woman of Babylon, then blew himself up.

One random tidbit I'd never heard about Crowley, from a life made up of random tidbits: in 1913, the Great Beast led an all-female string septet called the "Ragged Ragtime Girls" on a disastrous tour of Russia. What do you suppose that was all about? Game ideas featuring Crowley in an insane Some Like It Hot / Road To Tunguska mashup involving some combination of Tony Curtis, Tsar Nicholas, Jack Lemmon, Lenin, Rasputin, and Marilyn Monroe are left as an exercise for the reader.

Comments

[head58.livejournal.com]

Aleister Crowley's Ladies of ACTION!

(And I'll be sure to look for the Pendle book. The other biography I read of parsons was pretty dull)

gods bless you, robotnik

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is good stuff. So Aleister's got a girl ("Laylah"), and he has the classic relationship problem of not getting each other's hobbies: she likes to dance and "frolic," he likes to call down ancient slumbering gods. Poor kids. So, since "I could invoke the gods into her; I could not teach her to invoke them herself," he decides to bankroll her hobby, and in his words:

I acquiesced. I turned my thoughts to making a popular success for her. We collected six assistant fiddlers, strung together a jumble of jingles and set them to a riot of motion; dressed the septette in coloured rags, called them "The Ragged Ragtime Girls" and took London by storm. It was a sickening business.

This is also classic... can anyone say "Madonna/whore complex"???

They were badly in need of protection. Leila Waddell was the only one with a head on her shoulders. Of the other six, three were dipsomanics, four nymphomaniacs, two hysterically prudish, and all ineradicably convinced that outside England everyone was a robber, ravisher and assassin. They all carried revolvers, which they did not know how to use; though prepared to do so on the first person who spoke to them.

A Hermetic screwball comedy? It vibes like the lost episode of Laverne & Shirley where Lenny and Squiggy call down Yog-Sothoth.

Life imitates RPG

[head58.livejournal.com]

three were dipsomanics, four nymphomaniacs, two hysterically prudish,

So, three disomancers, 4 Naked Goddess types, a couple of Sacred virgin followers, right.

They all carried revolvers, which they did not know how to use; though prepared to do so on the first person who spoke to them.

This also screams "low-level PCs" to me.

Re: Life imitates RPG

[mgrasso.livejournal.com]

This also screams "low-level PCs" to me.

My thoughts EXACTLY. My mind is reeling with robotnik's putative return to Giving Us All Game Ideas...

[jeregenest.livejournal.com]

Pendleton's book is good, though I liked Sex and Rockets better.