FX American Horror Story – Gimp and Cake Recipe

• Tweet
• Share
• Email
• CevherShare

I watched last week’s premier of American Horror Story on FX. I thought it was very scary and very delicious. The idea of a haunted or tainted place is not a new form of horror, but it is an effective riff applied well on this new offering from the makers of Glee Club and some other show I never watch.

The story opens with a creepy house and young mongoloid child named Addy standing, swaying softly and staring up at the house. Ginger twins approach the house with baseball bats, snapping some kind of annoying fireworks that our subdivision standards and moral values authority council banned last year when I was director. Gingers are always frightening. To see not one but two of the little defects trashing property and breaking jars of baby part preservatives had me hitting pause on the DVR and grabbing my inhaler. I was so upset I decided to make a Watergate cake with cover-up frosting for the ladies bridge club the next day. It always tastes a little better after sitting in the ice box overnight.

After mixing up the cake and setting the timer, I returned to the program. The main characters are a family of three with a little dog that decide to move across country because the wife cut her husband’s arm. The wife Vivian, played by Connie Britton, is a selfish person that has refused congenital relations with her husband for nearly a year. The husband Ben Harmon, played by Dylan McDermott, is man with a firm handful of naked butt cheek which appears naked as the day he was born several times on screen and has eyes the blue heaven color of the Aegean Ocean. I was so frightened by the rent in this marriage and Vivian’s unchecked disdain for sexual congress with Dylan McDermott I had to pause and rewind the DVR again to collect myself and see for myself if Dylan McDermott had any bodily flaws that would prompt this behavior. I found none.

The house in the show is a beautiful example of the distinctly American transitional architecture from Victorian gothic pomp to the more austere Craftsman influences. I have an enduring affection for turn of the century style and stained glass. We soon learn the previous owners were home sexuals with special full on rubber gimp attire in the attic. This was almost too much for me. To have one’s Christian home identified with such sick debasing fiddling is just too much. With all that wood, certainly some noodle juice spattering would be ingrained into the woodwork. The door knobs could be sanitized, but all that beautiful wood would require some skilled sanding to return the finish to a deep glow and banish the ghosts of sin. I had stopped watching the show while pondering this until the most normal character, Constance appeared on screen.

Jessica Lange is just breathtaking as Constance. Her sharp wit and leadership are well grounded. A good Christian woman and mother to the now adult child with Down’s syndrome from the opening scene, Constance is baptismal pro-life water on the wicked. She uses the long banished term ‘mongoloid’ like butter off the tongue, daring the listener to chastise her. Many don’t like the word because they fear its meaning will visit upon their progeny like some common cold. She tries her best to warn the family with her Old Dominion moneyed hospitality. Jessica Lange is simply classy in this role. I really liked her strong, good natured character, but the phone rang and I had to take the cake out the oven.

Reva Jean called about the bridge club meeting and let me know the other ladies in the club had some ‘surprises’ I might want to prepare for. Reva Jean is a bit of a gossip, but she always has a friend’s back when it comes to the liberal threat. It seems that everyone, with the exception of Reva Jean had voted to invite two l-e-s-b-i-a-n-s into the bridge club. I had a doctor’s appointment for some unexplained hand trembling I’ve been experiencing and couldn’t make the meeting or it would have been two votes against. Supposedly these women run some kind of internet site and do speaking engagements to stop bullying of the gays. They are from Connecticut and even flaunted ‘wedding’ pictures. I was just gob smacked with the audacity and hubris of these two women pushing a sexually charged agenda coming into my Christian home. I hadn’t even met them, but we don’t need to because we know ‘the type’. I took the cake out the oven and returned to the program to take my mind off the ‘let’s be friends’ horror of the next bridge club meeting and allow the cake to cool.

The ghosts of the past introduce themselves and begin interjecting into the family’s life. This bothersome aspect of interaction with those that are busy with living seems to be the most effective in a good ghost story. Some spirited fears, like ideologies and unreasoned hatred, won’t rest when their days are finished. The spirits of perceived sins past cling to life like a dull ache in the joints before a storm and trouble those that want to just move on and get to living.

Teenagers, like the family’s troubled teen aged daughter, befriend malevolent spirits of the past in order to visit them upon malevolent high school girls of the present. Want and need is a dinner bell for these hungry horrors. The logic here is repeated with the appearance of Moira the matronly housemaid played by the stoic character actress Frances Conroy who is hired by the mother to lend a hand in housekeeping. Being no ordinary charwoman, Moira morphs into a gingery Vargas styled pinup replete with thigh high silk stockings to lend a hand and plucking the sexual tension wires of Dylan McDermott by getting caught masturbating herself during a work break. I don’t know how she accomplishes this, but I am just blown away by the acting of Frances Conroy.

I considered the multitude of fears addressed in American Horror Story as I mixed up the cover up frosting for the Watergate cake. I gave thanks that I was far from burdened with such bothersome uncertainties and qualms regarding sexuality due to my forgiving and non-judgmental nature. I added a couple of drops of coconut extract to the frosting, my own special good juju, before finishing the cake and placing it lovingly in the ice box.

The bridge club meeting went well. The l-e-s-b-i-a-n-s brought deviled eggs which looked fit to eat, although Reva Jean and I avoided these due to the possible viral hazard of developing an unhealthy affection for wife beater tee-shirts and flannel. Everyone seemed to be of good cheer and enjoying the Watergate cake as I served up the remaining two pieces for Reva Jean and myself. It was then I noticed the bottle of eye drops left carelessly on the counter. While pondering the irrational fears of others, I could have mistakenly added eye drops rather than coconut extract to the frosting. Quickly understanding the side effects of ingesting eye drops as abdominal cramps and explosive diarrhea; my hands trembled as I dropped the last two pieces of cake onto the floor saving me from a possible faux pas.

Why is a Gimp suit Really, Really Scary?

Preoccupied, restless uncertainty is and always has been a component in American horror fiction. To each his own, but the fears of unemployment, an inopportune future, old age, black people, cancer, trembling illnesses, socialism, the accidental house fire, the well being of our children, maddening crowds, anal rape by an anonymous gimp suited stranger, acceptance, clowns at midnight, the health and well being of a marriage, loss, the pompitous of love and lack of forgiveness are reoccurring theses that are synthesized with golden threads of dread in some of the best American horror fiction. Americans reject the ideas of scarcity and imbalance in any aspect of our lives due to our own fears of it. We will reign down a vengeance worthy of the most horrific story with casual insignificance while dutifully dressed in an anonymous rubber gimp suit intent on anally impregnating others with the same fears.

A gimp suit is scary because it looks like a black man. Here is video proof. In the video, Michael, the victim experiences the leg tremors associated with testicles retracting into the arm pit cavity. “That’s not cool” – indeed.

Reviews for the show have been understandably mixed. We love and hate horror as well as the gimp suit simultaneously, even when we understand its satirical mirrored view of our own American irrational moral hypocrisy and vengeful natures when applied to social ills. If only people would learn to be good Christians could we live without fear.

For the most part, American Horror Story is a play date with a multitude of fears set in a house where the dust bunnies have serrated incisors. I plan on giving up the bridge club after all members, with the exception of Reva Jean and me, broke out in some kind of oozing boil pox obviously from the deviled eggs. I might start a scripture based morality group to study this program and Dylan McDermott. I think cucumber sandwiches and maybe a nice pie would be welcoming for our first meeting. Maybe we can take up a collection for a Jesusween gimp suit to scare the morality into some people as our first community faith project.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/showtracker/2011/10/american-horror-story-and-its-scary-ratings-.html

About The Author
"Blanche Beecham lends a soft, learned hand to the fourth estate with incite-full investigations on diverse topics such as Politics, Love, and Lifestyle. Her many years experience as a wife, mother, ladies book club president and financial auditor make her well suited to ferreting out the truth and giving it a sound shake." - Rev. Jackson Lee Whitebelley, Publisher and Editor of "The Incubator" - Follow me on Twitter! @BLANCHEBEECHAM