Going where no Christian festival has ever gone before, the 1999 Cornerstone Festival Imaginarium opened its Millenium-Ending Program with the classic and still-disturbing film Freaks for a packed house. (Including a father and son who got into the spirit of things by showing up dressed as circus sideshow performers, a giant and a midget!). Taking no prisoners, our film program followed up immediately with the 1939 Charles Laughton version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the next night with the world premiere of this unusual double-billing: Healing By Killing, a 1996 documentary about the Nazi "euthanasia" program, and David Lynch's The Elephant Man. (Thanks alot, Flannery. No, we mean it -- really.) For those who plugged in for the long haul, this set of films in this order made for an incredible (if emotionally exhausting) experience, and a cumulatively richer discussion following each of the screenings. We talked about the notion of "freaks" and the implied notion of "normal," of exploitation and voyeurism, of the implications of appealing to objective standards of "beauty," and the implications of the postmodern solution -- doing away with objective standards altogether. (Meanwhile, figuring we'd probably just screened the only Lynch film we ever would at the Imaginarium, we took advantage of the moment to take a look back at Twin Peaks.)

Note: This was written before another Lynch film we might conceivably show at the Imaginarium — The Straight Story — was released. —eds.

Our panel on "What Is Goth?" achieved mixed results: we began with a vague sense that it was impolite to be talking about art forms labeled "gothic" without somehow acknowledging the fact that a popular subculture has recently taken both that name and some terribly unfair knocks for reflecting a taste for things spooky. (See Dave's account of his adventures in the Goth underground.) But we also were hoping to communicate an appreciation for the fact that "goth" represents an impulse that both predates and will outlive contemporary subcultures as well as scary books and movies: it's about the feeling you get in those great cathedrals -- better yet, it's about the Something behind that feeling. In any case, "goth" is bigger than us all. (Read our excerpts from John Ruskin's 1851 essay on this subject, "The Nature of Gothic".) The topic was certainly bigger than the hour we slotted for it and everybody left thinking there was more to be said. (And the discussions afterward included one between a middle-class -type and a certain pudgy Imaginarium staffer who found himself defending -- for the first time, he assures us -- the wearing of black dresses and fishnet by male persons of certain subcultural persuasions. If that's any consolation.)

Meanwhile, Imaginarium favorite Rod Bennett was on hand to give us some perspective on this "grotesque" business from a couple of different angles. First, Rod gave us a redemptive look at oddities and "freaks," in his loving, dramatic tribute to curiosity collector, Robert Ripley (with a little help in the dramatic department from Imaginarium High School's drama team captain, Dave Canfield.) And we are so pleased to be able to report that an online version of Rod's talk is available for your enjoyment and edification at -- drum roll, please -- the new Wonder Magazine Web Site. We here at Imaginarium Central have felt so privilaged to help Rod keep his Wonder-full vision going at Cornerstone Festival over the years, and we join all the fans of Wonder magazine in celebrating that worthy publication's online resurrection. Congratulations, Rod, and Beast Witches! Rod brought our discussion of the grotesque at this year's Imaginarium to a perfect conclusion in his unadvertised special, "God's Haunted House" -- a two-part seminar in which he Rod argued for a direct line of descent from Medieval Cathedrals and "Miracle Plays" to the Spook Houses (and also those "Judgment Houses" sponsored by many churches at Halloween) of today.

The question we asked at the top of the program and on this year's displays was this: Does the Gargoyle Belong On the Cathedral? After several days and nights of wrestling with this question, we most of us were answering in the affirmative -- realizing that if the gargoyle doesn't belong, then the rest of us are in serious trouble. The answer, however, to that other highly pertinent question "Does the Eight-Foot Plywood Gargoyle Belong Screwed to the Movie Screen Twenty-Five Feet In the Air So That His Right Ear Cuts A Hole In the Rented Tent?" was answered with a definite "No!" For those of you who took our removal of our plywood gargoyle from our movie screen half-way through the fest as an omen against our "edgy" theme, consider these counter-omens: the first day Imaginarium Head Flunkie Mike H. walked onto the grounds this year he looked down and there in the gravel he found a plastic Happy Meal gargoyle. The first day after the fest during clean-up, Mike scavenged only one treasure worth keeping from among the fest refuse: a ceramic gargoyle. Simultaneously, Rod returned home from the fest to find waiting a package: a gift from his sister, who'd just been to Paris -- you guessed it: a gargoyle purchased at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in April -- before we'd even composed our thematic question.

And if you're still not yet a believer in B.I.O.N., now listen to this. The day after the fest, one of our Imaginarium staffers happened to notice in the most recent issue of People magazine (now you know why we're protecting his/her identity) a multi-page photo spread on -- who else? -- Robert Ripley. It turns out that, without knowing it, we'd scheduled our Imaginarium celebration of Ripley on the 50th anniversary of his death. Believe It Or Not!.

You certainly would have needed to see -- in order to even begin to believe -- the Imaginarium's "Gopher Guts Sing-A-Long." This special event represented our way of bringing closure to all those cans of worms we opened this year -- by eating them (the worms, that is). To keep you from hurting yourself by straining your credulity, we're looking into posting a short video clip from the Sing-A-Long later this summer. (For those of you who lack the technology to view such clips, you may be thanking your lucky stars.) Suffice it to say that words cannot do justice to an evening that featured the following highlights:

• Rock legend Wendy Kaiser leading the crowd in a stirring renditions of "Comet Will Make You Vomit", including a Scottish accented version.
• That old family favorite, "I'm Looking Over My Dead Dog Rover", along with a new favorite for cat lovers involving weed eaters.
• An incredibly literal rendition of "Nobody Loves Me, Guess I'll Eat Some Worms," in which the staff passed out boxes of "Larvets," a disgusting taste treat that came in Mexican, Chedder, and Bar-B-Que flavors.
• Other taste treats, including ground-up cookie "dirt" crawling with Gummi worms, ant candies, a Happy "Birthday Brain" Jello for the youngsters, and Cricket Lickets, the sucker with a real insect in the middle.
• Another highlight -- the folk-y (almost Peter, Paul and Mary-like) rendition of "Fish Heads," the most memorable moment being when we discovered how well the words to this classic fit to Pachebel's Canon.
• And, of course, the climatic moments when the singing-along part finished with a rousing rendition of "Great Big Gobs of Greasy, Grimey, Gopher Guts" -- after a painstaking effort to hammer out a representative version from among the many regional variations represented in the tent. We also came up with our own a chorus for the song, and sang that version simultaneously with another song which -- another pleasant surprise -- happens to have the same tune, "I'm In the Lord's Army".
• Notice we haven't even mentioned Dave's sweet love song, "Monster Love in the Nineties," the Hokey Pokey, the Kazoos (who among us will ever forget turning the tent into a disco inferno on "Stayin' Alive"?), and our rousing Sousa March and awe-inspiring "Also Sprach Kazoostra".

"This was the best year yet," said one veteran Imaginarium attendee as we began to close up shop on the last night of the fest. (And it was over all too quickly.) Sharon, another longtime Imaginarium friend, made a comment that seemed especially significant given a week of so much talk about "freaks": "Thanks to the Imaginarium there's five days a year we don't feel like oddballs." Well, Gooble Gobble to you, too, Sharon -- and to everybody else in our Imaginarium community. It may have seemed strange to outsiders who saw that we wrapped up our film series on "freaks" and "grotesqueries" with Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You. But for those who are a part of our own Vanderhoff-like family, Capra's delightful picture of diversity-in-unity summed up what it means to be both an unreconstructed oddball and to belong. Incidentally, some funster swiped our poster for You Can't Take It With You from the bulleton board and replaced it with a marker-scratched, "Yes, I Can!". Very funny, but not far from the sentiment of the poor dope in C. S. Lewis's Great Divorce who would rather have the painting than the Object of the painting. God save us from making that mistake. Pictures of heaven (including one called "the Imaginarium") are marvelous; but let's keep our focus on the Object -- that odd, Three-Personed Unity-in-Diversity which matches so perfectly all our parodoxical longings.

And should the Lord tarry, and the Y2K not bring the Apocalypse after all, we look forward to greeting old friends and new ones at the Imaginarium at Cornerstone Festival 2000, A.D. (The dates for next year's fest are July 5th thru July 9th.) Stay tuned to Imaginarium Online as we keep the fire burning throughout the year, and check out the the official Cornerstone Festival site for more reports from Cornerstone 1999 and info on Cornerstone 2000.

Until next time, once again -- Gooble, Gobble to you all!