12: The Penultimate Peril

Gotcha! There isn't just one peril left in this blog of woe, but many, many, many more perils! Two and a half more weeks' worth, in fact! And if you can't tell from today's heartbreakingly morose title, the kickoff to this week's theme weekend isn't just going to focus on the spooky incarnations of musician Stephin Merritt, but also one of his partners in crime -- Lemony Snicket!


Stephin Merritt and Lemony Snicket

Outside the world of the Baudelaire orphans, whose lives are chronicled in Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events books, Lemony Snicket is known as novelist and musician Daniel Handler. Before becoming known as Lemony Snicket, however, Handler played accordion on the now-classic three-volume concept album 69 Love Songs by Merritt's primary band, The Magnetic Fields. Since then, one of Merritt's side-projects, The Gothic Archies, has contributed songs to each audiobook in Snicket's series, culminating with a collection of all the songs called The Tragic Treasury in 2006.

Featured today is a song from that collection, "The World is a Very Scary Place," which corresponds to book three in the Snicket series, The Wide Window.  If you're not familiar with Snicket's books, take a peek at the "12 books in 120 seconds" clip below!  It'll get you right up to speed and is narrated by everyone's favorite sweet transvestite, the pleasantly-voiced Tim Curry.  And if you like what you see, or are already a Lemony Snicket fan, then get excited because the first entry in his new book series, All the Wrong Questions, is being released on October 23rd!