Wither, John Waters...

It's a Friday night. And I, apparently, don't go out on Friday nights anymore... probably because the clothes I wear to work are SOOOO CRAPPY (because I'm too poor to buy new clothes) that I'm ashamed to go out in them and I go straight home, and drink alone.

::crickets::

Moving on. I dusted out a VHS cassette today.

As I was drinking alone, I thought, "God, I'd love to see Pecker. (The movie, you ass.) But I haven't Netflixe... oh.. wait a minute... didn't someone once give me Pecker? Don't I have the tape? Was that Sara? I bet it was Sara... don't I have that? And I even still have a VCR! I hope I didn't lend it to Stephen. Oh my god I'll be so mad if he has it... move the light bulbs... put them there next to the wine, I won't crush them there... I hope it's not in the bottom box... Oh, Score! There it is! Top box! Don't trip on this, box, though, on your way into the kitchen and become paralyzed like Zach Braff's mom in Garden State..."

(That was a little foray into my mind. How was the trip?)

Pecker is the last great John Waters movie. It's the last movie of his (so far) I can watch, and grin at every scene, because it captures the city I was born in and grew up in. City busses, fat, greasy people. A cringe-inducing accent, and rickety, rusted buildings.

Bawlemore.

There's no reason anyone should ever watch Cecil B. Demented. It can go on the pile with "Crybaby." Those movies are shit. And a Dirty Shame was... just that.

But Polyester? Hairspray? Mondo Trasho? Pink Flamingos? Serial Mom (slightly on the too-polished side, but still, overall, awesome) Desperate living? Female Trouble?

These movies that show my hometown as a gritty, crime-infested shithole with a charming heart of gold... They capture it. Because even though Baltimore is gritty and crime-infested, it's a beautiful place. I'm serious. The Slums are made up of 1880s rowhouses with turretted bay windows, and marble steps. Sure, the buildings' windows are boarded up, but there are keystones above the windows and wrought-iron shoe-scrapers outside the doors -- dignified, dilapidated grande dames, waiting to be gentrified. Grimy, white-clapboard bungalows housing convenience and bait stores are next to green lots speckled with bright yellow dandelions... fenced in with chainlink.

I have to say, for all the Glitz of Miami, this is a charm-free city, whose architecture stirs as much emotion within me as the letter "r." Give me a pee-stained downtown baltimore Street any day... ESPECIALLY if it's the 400 block of East Baltimore Street.


With Pecker, it's the whole package - the Hampden location (I bought a piece of furniture that I'm STILL waiting to receive [Thanks, Paradiso Gallery on Main Street in Hampden]) and the music, and the strange storyline, and the people that really make this movie shine. They're all so...

well, not all of them, but Mi-maw-maw and the bums, and even Martha Plimpton... Oh, and Gus. They're all so Baltimore. They're all people I knew growing up - hell, Mi-maw-maw is pretty similar to the nanny I used to call Mom-Mom.

We're proud of our crooked, slanty city. Our strange accent and our pit beef. (Mmmmm.)

And Pecker was the last movie to really glorify the Zany Baltimoreness that launched John Wasters.

So click on over to Netflix and add Pecker to your queue. Click it to the top.

You may think it's a little weird (unless you're from MD, in which case you'll bask in rays of Geographic and Civic pride...) but you won't be bored.