butterfly dream

...the grass is riz, wonder where my pictures is. Well, wonder no longer, picspam lovers, because the other day Shoemom and I discovered Edwards Gardens, a beautiful civic parkland nestled up in North York. One of those old estates turned public gardens, which just parenthetically I think is a terrific way to maintain your legacy. Not only do you get to be thought of as public-spirited, but also as having really good taste.

Anyway, thanks to dear old Rupert Ed., Torontonians have an absolutely amazing amount of stroll-ready nature, right there below the Ford dealership. Between all the Olde Englishe tidiness and the scampering fauna is created the (slightly unsettling) feeling you've stumbled onto open auditions for the latest Disney feature. Ducks on the pond, squirrels racing through the branches, chipmunks scurrying over rocks, robins and cardinals singing from the eaves and - would you believe - a plump little muskrat trotting busily down the path. I love muskrats; I've never seen anything that looks so much like a stuffed animal of itself.

So between this walk and a couple others, I was inspired to create a little Welcome Spring catalogue: 
( Pretty pictures under the cut... )

Just thought I'd note down an interesting article (yes, as distinct from the other seventeen thousand or so I've found. Sheesh) from a Cape Cod local, reprinted as a blog post. Does a really nice job of putting the duo's artistic legacy into perspective - I was particularly charmed by the notion of George Carlin obsessively buying up every recording he could find - besides elaborating a bit further on the new DVD.

It also contains a mini-interview with Bob himself, including a poignant admission that dealing with his partner's death was 'really difficult'. Apparently Ray was on dialysis for a decade or so prior, but 'never complained' and the act continued on without missing a beat for seven-eight of those years. Yikes. I don't know whether to applaud or be completely horrified.

I think I may need to apologise to tree_and_leaf , who had barely posted her version of this one when I swooped down and bore it off delightedly. I did read her post through first, I swear (and enjoyed it besides).

1) The worst reading experience that you have ever had?

A thriller called Birdman, which I gacked off the 'New' shelf at the bookstore whilst between mystery series. The first chapter in I was already dry-heaving, but I kept going out of some vague belief that ugliness must somehow = sophisticated. I must've been nuts. Just an utterly vile string of sexual vilenesses, beginning with the random subplot in which the hero lives across the way from the paedophile who he suspects - but cannot prove - raped and murdered the hero's younger brother years ago. No, really. They trade Dark Looks over the fence each evening before bed.

2) The best reading experience you have ever had?

No question. I was ten or so, and it was the end of a long day delivering flyers for the current family business. I'd been hoarding one of the Blish novelisations of Star Trek TOS all the while; which one I forget now, only that I'd recently discovered the series, and regarded them as treasure. Shoemom had bought us candy necklaces in payment - a commodity second only to FunDips on my preteen NASDAQ - and I remember riding home in the fading light of the backseat clutching them and finally, finally cracking open the coolest book ever. Thinking to myself: 'Years from now, when you're Very Very Old, you will look back on this as A Perfect Moment.' And I became very solemn, slurping on sugar beads and contemplating the rarity of perfection. It was wonderful.

3) Which book has affected or influenced you the most so far?

The Bible. From the secular POV, probably any one of the numberless humourists I devoured as a kid. PG Wodehouse and Dave Barry especially, for making me realise it was possible to really, seriously, make someone laugh out loud with words.

( In which I reveal myself as either a bibliophile or crazy or both... )

My fiction project posting - or any other kind, come to that - has been handily derailed by the Annual Laryngitis Convention that set up in my throat over the holiday weekend. Having a great old time down there, to all appearances (and why not? They get fed Creamsicles and ginger tea on a regular basis, the slobs).

And I have not yet reached the stage where worrying about my writing is more interesting than my throat being on fire. Possibly tomorrow. Until then...*waves feebly at the outside word*

...oh, lord, I don't know why I'm reacting to this in lolcat. But it's true: I heard back from my PopMatters editor this evening, and he's more than delighted to accept my Holiday piece. He was so delighted, in fact, that I'm blushing a little as I, er, carefully store the email away for rereading. On a regular basis.

Honestly, this is just the most fabulous feeling. I hope it never gets old. I mean, I hope I have a chance to find out one way or another, but just in case, I wouldn't mind experiencing that heart leap over and over again. Except next time I may try not to have it happen at Tim Horton's. I have no memory of what happened between checking my email and arriving home with [checks bag] a key lime donut.

Which is OK, I guess, I like key lime. But I like BEING PUBLISHED BETTER! WOOOOOOOOT!

...ah, yeah, needs work, I know. I suppose it's the old touchdown thing - act like you get into the endzone on a regular basis, not like it's a huge honking surprise. Thing is, though, it is. Especiallly in re: opinion pieces like this. If some small part of you isn't honestly amazed when somebody confirms your random thoughts are good enough to be broadcast to the public wholesale, I'm thinking you've got serious issues.

Also needing work is the title - my editor (and yes, I intend to refer to him in the possessive at every possible opportunity, so get used to it now) isn't familiar with the movie, so has asked me for suggestions. As can be gathered from the original header (which references an old REM lyric) me and snappy titles, they don't come automatic. I told him I'd ponder...and meanwhile, I'm throwing it open to the readership. Any and all suggestions welcome.

OK, I'm officially on an upswing this week. Found a pair of slinky jeans that fit perfectly and everything. Down two sizes from last year's purchase, too. Turning thirty-eight? Hah! I laugh at turning thirty-eight!

Well, alright, I don't really. But the jeans definitely helped. So did the cute sneakers - do they still call them sneakers? I just realised I may with one word have completely undone all the jeans' good work. Excuse it please. They're New Balance, and according to the endearingly typical salesdude @ Athletic World they're 'very ergonomic fit, good for the high-intensity urban environment'. Translation: I'm all kitted out for the summer's hiking. Which is nice.

So is the response I just got from my very nice former PopMatters editor re: my most recent feature submission: he definitely remembers me, and will be pleased to take a look at my essay ASAP. This, of course, being the flat print version of "OMIGOSH HE REMEMBERED ME! I TOTALLY DID NOT EXPECT THAT! DO THEY REALLY DO THAT?!"
...aaaaaand the sophistication level slips another notch. I don't care. Frankly at this point I am not even really worried about the article getting in or not - although it would be huge if it did, don't get me wrong - I am just so pleased to be remembered. Makes me feel all...professional, and stuff.

Meaanwhile, the plotting ideas for finishing the sci-fi novel keep on keepin' on, popping into my head apace. Apparently, my subconscious really wants to revisit this thing, so I guess the Grand Sweeping Epic of Everything will have to wait a bit. Sorry, anybody who was waiting breathless.

Last but definitely not least, it came time for my bimonthly flash of renewed interest in Kalan Porter, ex-Idol moppet and current...baby-faced blond dude with big china-blue eyes and some stubble. There's a ways to go yet, is all I am saying, deliberately ironic blogging or no. Still, they did pose him with a glass in his hand for the scanned article I read, and there doesn't seem to have been any angsting in the fandom about a possible drink problem as a result, which I think qualifies as serious progress.

(I, on the other hand, have regressed dreadfully. Because I now cannot get out of my head the impulse to pop in and start some angsting, just for giggles. I think my next rant post will have to deal with how fandom rots your brain.)

Anyway, in the article Kalan describes his new music as 'kind of synth-pop...fun...very uptempo'. Now, as has been chronicled elsewhere, I adore synth-pop. Have done for years. Always assuming Kalan is talking Thompson Twins and not Aqua - the emphasis on 'fun' is especially worrisome - but that's a risk I am prepared to take. Go ye forth into the world and tweak those keyboards, KP. I may yet realise my dream of hearing the Weird Scathing Angst factor performed deliberately, rather than frantically wishing it there myself in an effort to salvage coolness points.

Now, to bed...perchance to dream of the Niceness Wave spilling over Finance. "Why, yes, you can have this new vendor record # processed overnight! Urgent purchase orders approved without budget dollars available? No problem, our pleasure!"

So let's cheer things up a little around here! I know; why don't we discuss Grimm's Fairy Tales, the unabridged version of which I recently downloaded to my iTouch...and...uh...

OK, yes, problem.

After a week of this becoming steadily clearer, I have just one question: Why? Can somebody find me a book or something that explains what was going on back there? Not within the stories themselves; this has become one of those ironic factoids that the entire Internet is fond of telling each other, that these classic 'children's stories' are in fact stuffed to a giant's ceilings with imagery that'd keep Jeffrey Dahmer awake nights:

It was my mother who murdered me
It was my father who ate of me
It was my sister Marjorie
Who all my bones in pieces found
Them in her handkerchief she bound
and laid them under the juniper tree
Kywhitt, kywhitt, kywhitt I cry;
Oh, what a beautiful bird am I!

--The Juniper Tree

Just another adorable bedtime story making the rounds in the Rhineland, apparently. So what I really want to know is, was everyone in mediaeval Germany frankly psychotic? Or just the Brothers Grimm?

...OK, yes, I do understand about the stories being really for adults, and life being tough, cheap and short back then. Thing is, they're so very fatalistic about it that the modern reader starts to wonder how the race made it out intact. There's a kind of nihilistic weirdness running through the whole that just screams 'Therapy!' above and beyond the context.
Blood runs like a river, deus ex machinas rule the day, people are just as likely to be rewarded for selfish acts as selfless ones, and the main difference between good and evil is that Good is a whole lot cleverer. (In one story, Our Hero makes off with a fast horse and an invisibility cloak by convincing their owners to, I kid you not, let him try them on to see if they work. And they do. This kind of thing is repeated over and over again).

Net result: numerous stories wherein people end up apprenticing themselves out to the Devil - but not, in a touch I really like, before asking  "OK, but you promise this isn't going to mess up my shot at salvation?" On the other hand, this is a belief system in which God routinely hands over enchanted packs of cards to gambling addicts, and sorceresses cease to be a problem the instant they're touched with enchanted flowers revealed in dreams, so I just don't know. Would love to hear the scholarly sociological explanations behind that last one, though. Or possibly the pharmaceutical one.

( Down the rabbit hole... )

Haven't been to the Metro Reference Library in ages, so decided to swing by tonight. As an aside, I really can't see why I don't do same more often. 'Food for thought' is a concept that I take seriously, and the Metro Ref is the equivalent of a black-tie banquet; all that lovely knowledge spread forth to be sampled, savoured or flat-out snarfed up, just as the mood strikes.

However, this post isn't about my contented daze - it covers the line that snapped me out of it. In re: Michael Landon and Little House on the Prairie, a TVGuide tome claimed that, roughly, 'He showed millions of viewers what a happy loving family could be..."

Ah...huh. I do not wish to pile it on the man any higher than the six feet already manifest, but come ON, now. As I think even the most sentimental of us can admit, this is feting a guy whose concept of loving family happiness mostly involved exploring the ways it deepens wounds and heightens suffering. On this show, if you love someone, welcome to a nigh-endless parade of drug addiction, blindness, alcoholism, abuse, rape, miscarriage, abandonment, menopause, the death of a child/wife/parent/dog, crop failures, devastating fires, loathsome plagues...you get the idea. It was family togetherness as primal scream therapy, is what it was. And it usually wasn't even that subtle ("Say it! My brother is going to die! Say it! MY-BROTHER-IS-GOING-TO-DIE!")

This started me thinking about TV families generally, and why, the more they insisted on this kind of realism ('gripping drama' was the phrase usually used) the less I, scion of a highly *ahem* realistic family, could actually relate.

It could be that the Shoe clan just wasn't that interesting even in dysfunction, a distinct possibility. Then again...it could be that, overall, real families in crisis generally aren't particularly exciting - speaking from the objective dramatic POV, at any rate. It's been my experience that people in RL tend to paper over their broken bits as much as possible - and by natural extension, their families' - simply because when you're in this kind of a situation your ultimate goal, your consuming desire, is to just be normal. Or anyway as close to it as you can possibly get, in public if nothing else.
Mind, there's always the chance that you'll grow up to develop a fascination with 50's radio comedians partly because they seem so blissfully average. But on the whole, not so much with the Huge Honking Traumatic Deal it all seemed to be on your Little Houses and Family-s and even The Waltons there for awhile. I mean, of course it often is a huge deal, it's just...well, you know. You deal with it, and part of that is you look for a nice escape on the TV, and instead there's John-Boy angsting over some ruddy traditional rite of Walton manhood or another. Just shoot the damn deer already, Freakish Mole Boy.

This in turn has got me realising a bit wistfully that I'll never really know normal, at least not in terms of family... at least. Is it kind of weird that, seriously, one of my chief interests re: Bob & Ray is playing around with the idea of them as average husbands and fathers? You know, contented patriarchs of their own little clans, wherein dads love their wives, and are kind and wise and understanding to their kids rather than forcing it to be the other way round, and everybody has supper together in the evenings, and it's all very (I'm assuming) sweater-intensive?

Yes, before you rush to the comments box, I know deep down that it was never really like that, for anyone. B&R had eleven kids between them at the height of the Baby Boom, I know damn well it couldn't have been even close to like that for them. Anyway, not after 1964.
Also, I should mention that I feel pretty silly, whining like this over comparatively minor issues. Shoedad wasn't a bad guy; he was just far too damaged himself to ever provide real emotional support to anyone else. As for the things that broke him...well, they're the stuff mainly of understood silence save the occasional loud accusation at the end of a drunken evening. I didn't say that there weren't times when a huge cathartic screaming fit wouldn't be welcome...only that it's unlikely.

Instead, I revel in the fact that I'm a ferociously independent woman who's learned strength in ways many people never will. And...I daydream, sometimes.

Topless Robot recently did a '10 Most Ridiculous Things About the Original GI Joe Movie' list, and lo, I was gleeful. Because I loved the original GI Joe series with all my little mindless-pop-culture-consuming heart, and that damn Cobra-La trifled with that heart like Aztecs looking for fun on Saturday night.

And then I read the opening paragraph, about the live-action movie remake. I had not known there was to be a live-action remake, possibly because my brain shut down and started going 'nuh-uh! nuh-uh-uh!' whenever I tried to take it in. I mean, we can all agree there are inherent issues in recreating the Joeverse in living colour, yes? For one thing, just try casting Cobra Commander. "Er...yes, you do wear a totally face-concealing mask for the entire picture. But it's shiny!"

Apparently, though, there are depths to which my inner child's heart can still sink:

"In just a few weeks, the majority of us will be exiting theaters on the opening night of the live-action G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra, either laughing till we puke or pummeling each other out of sheer, unadulterated rage. Between Schumacher-esque Joe body armor, Storm Shadow's sneakers and Duke's childhood buddy Cobra Commander, we all know we're in for something painful--but whether it's Troll 2 painful (hilariously bad!) or Love Guru painful (assisted suicide) remains to be seen."

Sneakers? SNEAKERS?

...'scuse me, I'll be over in this corner weeping for a little bit...

I haven't done one of these in awhile, mostly because I don't have any new material. I think it may be time to start bugging Shoemom re: that movie.

However, Robert Brackett Elliott - called Bob - turns 86 this month (his partner would've been turning 87, a few days earlier), and realising that is making me feel tribute-y. In what direction, though, I'm not sure. It must be a rather odd feeling to be hailed as a pioneer in any field, but especially within the arts; being constantly feted with stuff you did fifty years ago, surrounded by recordings of yourself at 30-ish. As the Barenaked Ladies once put it, 'And every time I try to do something new/All they want is 1973.' Imagine it being 1953.

Ray Goulding's widow mentioned in a recent interview that he didn't like to have the early episodes of the duo's 1951-53 TV show brought up in later years, because "it was infancy for television" and he was "appalled at how really naive they were about what to wear and how to appear." Bob agrees, mostly: "We were kids. They're embarrassing."
Given the evidence on display, as in my icon (the full-length version of this photo shows Ray in his boxers - he had pretty good legs, actually!) I'm inclined to sympathise. At the same time, it's kind of sad to imagine them disowning all their early stuff. For instance, a 1949 Boston show in which they talk up the great time they had celebrating Chinese New Year the night before, apparently at a local restaurant. Among many other exotica, they were treated to bird's-nest soup:

Bob: But you can't just make it from any old nests, we should mention.
Ray: Oh, yeah.
Bob: I mean, don't go collecting nests out of the trees in your backyard. That won't help anything...
Ray: Yeah, the bird'll be upset, and it won't work anyway. You need the special imported kind of nests. Very delicate flavour.

...Being one of the good ones, that doesn't ever change. So here's to two genuine mensches who somehow turned that very quality into a comedy revolution.