2024 Comics Fun Advent Calendar, Day 21: A Pink Flamingos Christmas!

"It's going to be a lot different with a baby around."

As I've said in the past, I read about Ed Wood's movies long before I ever actually saw any of them. The same is true for John Waters' movies. Thanks to books like Cult Movies (1981) and Midnight Movies (1983), I'd read detailed descriptions of John's work, but the films themselves were difficult to access in suburban mid-Michigan in the 1990s. This was pre-streaming and pre-DVD. The internet was primitive in those days, too, but I eventually found someone in a newsgroup selling crude VHS bootlegs of the Waters movies. They were of abysmal quality, but they were better than nothing.

Today's nativity-themed comic adapts some memorable dialogue from Waters' most famous film, Pink Flamingos (1972). In the film, two lesbians, Merle (Jackie Sidel) and Etta (Pat LeFaiver), buy a baby on the black market from the villainous Marbles (Mink Stole and David Lochary) and name him Noodles. TRIVIA: The purloined baby is portrayed by Max Mueller, the real-life son of Pink Flamingos cast member Cookie Mueller. The baby's name is a punning reference to Mueller's Pasta, famous for its egg noodles.

Hit Parade Of Hell: The Liner Notes Of John Waters

Your Music Appreciation 101 professor, John Waters.

A stack of John Waters soundtracks on CD.

This will seem impossibly quaint to you youngsters, but music used to be bought and sold as a tangible, physical commodity. In other words, it was a thing you had to go get. In actual, brick and mortar stores, no less! First came the wax cylinder, then the vinyl record, followed by the 8-track, the cassette, and finally, the compact disc. Nowadays, music is all just ones and zeroes to be uploaded and downloaded in the twinkling of an eye over the internet.

For the most part, this change has been a good thing. More music is available to more people more quickly than ever before. But we have lost a few things along the way as we've abandoned physical media. Liner notes, for instance. Remember those? Yes, albums used to come complete with little explanatory essays that told you something about the music contained within. To me, the king of liner notes was cult movie director John Waters. He took obvious delight in penning the notes that accompanied the soundtrack albums for his movies, explaining exactly what these songs meant to him and even giving his listeners instructions on how to listen to the albums for maximum effect.

Much of Waters' writing has been collected and anthologized in book form elsewhere. But, to my knowledge, his soundtrack album liner notes have never reappeared anywhere. So before they vanish from memory completely, I thought I'd showcase them here. I had to scour through my musty, dusty underground storage locker to retrieve these little items, which I present in roughly chronological order. Notice that Waters' texts become more elaborate over time, from a humble paragraph for Hairspray in 1988 to a 450-word essay for A Dirty Shame in 2004.

This collection is not complete. I have yet to transcribe the notes for two compilation albums curated by Waters: A John Waters Christmas (2004) and A Date With John Waters (2007). Perhaps if the reaction to this article is positive, I will dig those up, too. (Update: I have.) In the interest of historical accuracy, I have tried to present these notes exactly as they originally appeared, with all spelling, punctuation, and grammar intact.

Enjoy.

The best news I've heard in a while: John Waters' 'Kiddie Flamingos'

Child thespians imitate Mink Stole and David Lochary in John Waters' Kiddie Flamingos.

John Waters has not directed a movie in ten years. This is the biggest-ever gap in his filmography, eclipsing even the seven-year drought between Polyester and Hairspray in the 1980s. It hasn't been for lack of trying, however. Waters just hasn't been able to convince anyone to give him the money, especially since his last two efforts (Cecil B. Demented and A Dirty Shame) were not exactly box office bonanzas. In 2008, he seemed on the verge of finally making Fruitcake, his long-promised Christmas film about a boy who "runs away from home during the holidays after he and his parents are caught shoplifting meat, then meets up with a runaway girl raised by two gay men and searching for her birth mother." The cast was to have included Parker Posey and Dirty Shame veteran Johnny Knoxville. Once again, though, the financing fell through. Waters, however, has always had backup careers. He's spent much of the last decade as a busy public speaker, author (Role Models, Carsick), and multimedia artist with dozens of solo exhibitions. Strangely enough, John's still-vital art career has temporarily revived his moribund movie directing career. His current show, cheekily titled Beverly Hills John, is running at New York's Marianne Boesky Gallery until February 14 of this year. Along with his visual art, it includes a new film called Kiddie Flamingos: A John Waters Table Read, in which children read a more family-friendly version of the script for John's 1972 cult classic, Pink Flamingos. A wonderful teaser trailer can be seen here. The kids, dressed in pint-sized versions of the costumes and wigs from the original film, really get into the spirit of the old Dreamland Studios productions, yelling and snarling at each other in the grand Waters tradition. I could not be happier about this project.