The Three Weird Sisters

I wanted to like The Chapin Sisters, but I can't help feel like they are a humorless, tuba-less version of The Kranksy Sisters. Quite heavy on the dour, girls. And you have to feel bad for the one non-Chapin Chapin Sister, Jessica Craven, both for being the the third of the trio that doesn't match and for looking so much like her dad, director Wes Craven, that it's spooky. Which is kind of appropriate, if you think about it.

Judge for yourself:

On the other hand, I have to hand it to them: For three women all caught up in the Southern gothic schtick, they couldn’t have picked a better name for their album than Lake Bottom.


Also, I search YouTube and found some footage of The Kransky Sisters that wasn't up the last time I checked. You have to admit: The two bands have a similar take on the the three-woman harmony. Watch the below video, but fast-forward past the jokes to 2:30 if you just want to hear the vocal similarities.

Also, I can't help but notice that, like The Chapin Sisters, The Kransky Sisters have one member with a different father than the other two. The Kranskys, at least, make a point of mentioning this as often as possible.

Suddenly Sister

While looking up the Wikipedia page for Talking Heads’ “Psycho Killer,” I saw a link to a page for The Kransky Sisters, an Australian comedy-cover band trio. KrisDina and I saw the Kranskys’ show at the Sydney Opera House, and were much better off in life for having done so.

A signed CD of the girls' first show. (we saw the second show, heard it on the wireless, but i much prefer the title of the first show, we don't have husbands.)

However, when I arrived back in California and tried to research them, I found they lacked any mention on the Wikipedia. Things change, and the Wikipedia grows, Blob-like, absorbing more and more pop culture until the point at which it explodes in a gooey confetti shower of useless facts (and opinions). But how startled was I to find that the youngest and arguably best Kransky — the portly, mute, tuba-playing Arva Krasnky — had since dropped out of the group. (Although I think the girls liked Arva best, I actually preferred the loopy Eve, who, as I mentioned in an earlier post, looks remarkably like Stephnie “No, That’s Not a Typo” Weir and who deigned to speak to me after the show and was insistent on enunciating her last name, which, as I also wrote in the earlier post, I found strange since I had clearly just bought tickets to and attended her show, in which her last name is billed. Memories.) From the Kranskysite:

Due to the mysterious disappearance of tuba playing, Arva Kransky, who was last seen exchanging sheet music with a member of the Hornbell Military Marching Band, the Kransky Sisters have enlisted the assistance of their rarely visited, reclusive sister, Dawn Kransky, who has taken leave of her job as trolley librarian at the Esk Hospital to be with her Sisters.

Me being the strange obsessive I am, I can’t help but note the strangeness of the fact that Eve and big sister Mourne replaced their now-missing sister with a fourth, never-before-mentioned sister, Dawn Kransky. To me and the rest of the planet’s population who find themselves in the awkward position of having to explain to people why Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a good show, the fact that the blinked-into-existence sister is named “Dawn” is especially notable since the show’s fifth season introduced Buffy’s little sister, Dawn, who previously didn’t exist. (It was eventually explained. The short answer: magic.) And this Dawn was played by Michelle Trachtenberg, which meant that Harriet the Spy got to meet Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Anyway, I thought it was relevant. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again, dammit.

Heard It on the Wireless

In Sydney. No one has uttered "g'day" yet. No koalas have been spotted. No one has instigated a game of Knifey Spoony yet.

We're staying directly between Kings Cross, which the natives abbreviate as "KingsX," and Darlinghurst, the hipster-gay-dressy bessy district. There's lots to do, and most of it is within walking distance of our little hotel cubicle.

By bedtime yesterday, we had seen a prison colony museum, trekked all the way to the Opera House -- and no, it doesn't resemble anything in particular up close, either -- and even caught a show there -- the Kranksy Sisters, this trio of musically inclined spinsters from the fictional Aussie town of Isk. They reinterpret pop songs they've heard on their radio. It's like if Allen and Grier and the Kulp-Mohan-Kulps were reconstituted as backwoods comediennes. I met one of them afterwards. She looked like Stephnie "No That's Not a Typo" Weir. She signed the CD I bought and was oddly deliberate about explaining that her last name was Kransky, which was odd since I had already had bought the tickets for a show that had her last name in the title. I liked her, though, and I'd like to think that she liked me.

The most remarkable thing happened in the lobby after the show, however. Weeks ago, KrisDina and I had this marathon dinner at the harbor and these loud-voiced, confused-seeming, senior Brooklynites approached us to ask us how we liked our dinner. The woman, louder of the two, seemed keen on telling us how her lamb "just fell off the bone." (She did not, tragically, say it was like "buttah.") These were the kind of tourists I usually dread, though they were kind of cute in their old, befuddled Americanness. So who do I see wandering around the lobby of the Opera House theater after the Kransky Sisters show but this same old lady. She was muttering "Where's my husband?" over and over again and she seemed to be mentally ill in a minor way. I can't believe she would have gone to see the same show as us, much less understood it. Still, it's nice to see a familiar face.

Nightlife here is good, in that it exists. (In New Zealand, it didn't, for the most part.) Dina tells me that these computers buzz out any words one might deem inappropriate, so let me tell you that the various party districts are rife with two types of people, alternately, depending on where you are. One of these people types sounds like "destitute." The other sounds like "undressed-ite." The words they sound like also kind of describe them. Needless to say, we got drunk.

[ lisa, watch your camera ]