A week ago today, I got a call from Darryl Wiggers, whom I met by
chance while picking up some lunch at the Liberty Market, a
deli/grocery near work. Daryl is the programming director for Scream,
the all-horror movie cable channel. He had a couple of tickets to a
party being thrown by Rue Morgue
magazine (Gothica, horror and general Rob Zombie-ism) in conjunction
with last weekend’s science fiction and horror convention. I’d planned
on having a rare quiet Friday night at home, but since the event was
taking place at the Pussycat Club, a mere couple of blocks from my
place, the Law of the Rare compelled me to go.
(The Law of the Rare is a personal philosophy: if I’m having trouble
deciding between two things, always choose the more rare one.)
I met Darryl at the Second Cup at Queen and John Streets and we walked
around the corner to the Pussycat Club. It hasn’t been the Pussycat
Club for very long — last summer, it was a jazz-funk bar owned by a
guy who looked like a very well-dressed Heavy D.
While walking there, Darryl mentioned that Tom Savini would be there.
“Don’t recognize the name,” I replied.
“He was the biker guy in the original Dawn of the Dead.”
“Been a while since I’ve seen Romero’s version,” I said.
“Well, he was also in From Dusk Till Dawn. He was ‘Sex Machine’.”
“OH MY GOD!” I yelled out. “Sex Machine is my hero!”
How can I not be fan of a guy with a machine gun codpiece and a ridiculous name?
“Dog must hunt! Dog must hunt!”
Actual quote from Hellraiser II: “You’re so ripe, Joey. And it’s harvest time.”
Machine-gun codpieces rule!
The traditional definition of “cenobite” is “someone who belongs to a
religious order. Priests, monks, nuns, rabbis and druids are cenobites.
However, in the case of the Hellraiser
movies, the captial-C Cenobites are Clive Barker’s creations: evil
beings from another dimension delivering pleasure that soon turns into
gory pain. Doug Bradley played the most famous Cenobite: Pinhead, the
Cenobite leader. In Kingston in the summer of 1992, I spent a couple of
creeped-out evenings in Rik “DJ Stinky Poo-Poo” Young’s liviing room
watching the entire Hellraiser series.
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you know, they asked mysterion to be the entertainment for that party, and then never called him. What did they have as entertainment?
My, oh my. An entire new vocabulary yawns open before me, like the very jaws of hell. I had no idea that "cenobite" referred to anything other than someone living a thoroughly communal monastic life (as distinguished from idiorrhythmic monasticism).
I wonder what ever happened to Sex Machine's codpiece. Is it in some hermetically sealed collector case somewhere, or maybe made it into an utterley bad-ass hood ornament?
Trivia tidbit: Sex Machine's bad-ass codpiece also shows up in Desperado, the second in the El Mariachi series by Robert Rodriguez, who also directed From Dusk Till Dawn. It sits among other weaponry in Antonio Banderas' famous guitar case/weapon stockpile, and even gives him the chance for a one-liner with Salma Hayek.
Dammit, Joey, if I can't meet him, at least I can prove my cult classic worthiness. ^_^
P.S. Rodriguez and Tarantino are codirecting Sin City with Frank Miller. Stars Benicio Del Toro and Bruce Willis. Hell yeah.
Strictly speaking, a cenobite is distinguished from an anchorite by the communal nature of the order he or she is a member of. Anchorites, on the other hand, are hermits.
Yup on the anchorite/cenobite distinction. But both idiorrhytmic and cenobite monks are "communal," here is something on the difference between them, at least as practised on Mount Athos:
"The word cenobite is derived from the Greek koinos (common) and bios (life); idiorrhythmic comes from idios (one's own) and rhythmos (fashion or mode).
"The cenobitic rule insists on perfect obedience to the abbot, elected for life by monks who have been in religion at least six years. He is spiritual master of the community, but has the assistance of others in external administration. Monks receive property, clothing and food from the abbot; they eat their meals in common.
"Idiorrhythmic monasteries first appeared in the fifteenth century and are directed by two annually changed trustees, elected from the ten or fifteen senior monks, whose decisions they enforce. A spiritual father (pneumatikos ) has charge of the interior life of the monks. Individual members retain their property, eat meals in their own cells, which may be two or three rooms, and are left to their own judgment on matters of austerity. The cenobites consider the idiorrhythmic rule lax; but they are answered that personal initiative in the spiritual life is not stifled under the broader discipline. Actually the cenobitic are more austere and cater to a more hardy type of ascetic."
From: http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/religion/re0681.html
Thanks, Anonymous and Gideon! At least none of these are gyrovagues. . . .
More in detail please!