I was happily surprised to see Dick Cavett, whom an alarming number of people seem to think is dead, on Seth Meyers. He must be in his 80s by now, and looks wonderful, with those movie star cheekbones and the canny, knowing eyes. Refreshingly, he does not seem to have messed with his face to look younger, which never works anyway. His deep flat resonant Nebraska voice, so full of irony and skepticism, is just the same. I always loved his show as a teenager, and some stick out in my mind: one with Crosby, Stills and Nash, along with Joni Mitchell, and Mitchell did a song called "For Free" (about a man on the corner with a clarinet, who was "playing real good for free"). I remember David Crosby looked like a dimpled angel, and somebody (Grace Slick? It couldn't be, that was another show) said, "You look like a Leo."
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And here it is, for the love of God, the episode I was just talking about - it WAS on YouTube after all, and it looks like I was right about everything, even Grace Slick. What an incredible guest lineup for one show. I watched it after school while I was still living in Chatham. I was fifteen.
I didn't see the show where the guy died, because NOBODY did - it was on tape and never aired. But I did see an alarming show he did on PBS in the early '80s, in which several people came on and talked about the pure pleasure and utter lack of danger of snorting cocaine. There was a user with pinwheel eyes who insisted her life was better in every way (and how would SHE know, after all?), and a doctor who swore it was all to the good and did no bodily or psychological harm whatsoever. Coke was king back then, but Cavett sat there barely hiding his consternation, trying not to tell them all they were full of crap, as he famously did sometimes in the old days. I also remember - there used to be a video of this, but I can't find it now - the cast of Husbands, Peter Falk, Ben Gazzara and John Cassavetes, all down on the floor wrestling with each other, while Cavett literally walked off his own show Or was it Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal? Anyway, these Late Night snippets seem to be recent, and I hope so, because I think it's good he's in the world. I love his moonwalk, too - he's still full of surprises and the unlikely. And how I love the unlikely! Such as actually finding the clip (below). The good part starts around 7:30.
And here are a couple of gifs I made, at great expense and time!
The Wallendas and the queer melancholy that trails behind the circus performer seem to be a recurring obsession. I hate circuses. As a child I hated them, and was thought odd. It was that smell, the smell of shit and failed animals. Living in a small town, the circuses I saw were moth-eaten and tawdry, which is perhaps what it's all about anyway. Elephants tied up. Lions waiting for a lunge that never happens. Mean alcoholic clowns. Oh, the clowns especially - they are a nightmare.
There is YouTube footage of Karl Wallenda falling to his death from a tightrope suspended between two high-rises in Rio de Janiero or somewhere, I mean the real thing - it couldn't be faked, he falls. It's the end for him. And his grandson or great-grandson Nik Wallenda keeps on trying for it. One wonders at the symbolism. Trying for a fall, or, like a compulsive gambler, going on and on until he loses everything. Craven cowards that we are, we still risk death each time we walk out the door. Or don't walk out the door. We don't test it, don't push the risk, unless you count too many sour-cream-and-onion chips or hours spent sitting in a chair.
"Fails" are great tests, tests of character I mean, and most of us fail them. It's just too painful, everybody watching. Everybody has their own particular bag of fails. Mine is my writing. After years and years of refining my craft, publishing hundreds of book reviews and thousands of newspaper columns, my dream "came true" and I published a novel - then two - then three - and then - they didn't sell. Nobody told me, you see, that the novels had to SELL, because part of the dream for every writer I know is automatic Fame and Fortune. Surely this just happens all by itself?
Fail.
It's sad, and infuriating sometimes, but it's not going to happen for me - the movie version, I mean, because luck just does not stick to me. Like Peter Pan's shadow, it keeps coming unstuck just as I start to get somewhere. Real trauma is something quite else, and I am able to put this aside and enjoy my life to a degree I never thought possible a few years ago. So is the fail entirely a fail?
Nothing can take away from me the bizarre and ongoing discovery, the process, the burrowing in. Now that I have YouTube and Wikipedia and cool things like that, it's unending. It's labyrinthine, and more odd than the human condition itself, which I both love and loathe. I am drawn to those on the fringes, because I have bloody well given up on being acceptable to anyone but myself (so there), even while seeing that other people's oddness, like mine, might be offputting. As Steinbeck used to say, it's shrimp ice cream.
I saw someone's blog the other day - God, it was beautiful and elegant, like the rooftop penthouse of some gleamingly expensive apartment building in Manhattan, all sort of skyline-y, and the entries were all so gracefully ordered. It just had Professional written all over it. The screaming harridan in me, the rotten mother I carry around in my head, began yammering, "WHY CAN'T YOU BE MORE LIKE YOUR SISTER?", or words to that effect. In other words - your blog sucks, Margaret, stop pretending, start writing like a grownup and maybe THEN you will sell a few copies.
Oh really?
29 rather than 24?
I might as well do whatever the hell I want. Yes, and while still admiring someone else's truly stunning masterpiece of a blog, full of beautifully polished entries on topics of major interest, instead of quirky things on circus accidents and other stuff that usually involves making a lot of gifs.
You shouldn't go on YouTube late at night and watch circus accidents. It's not fun for all ages. It's not fun for anyone. You'll find falls and wipeouts and awful cat maulings (serves them goddamn right, I'm for the cats). You'll find some where you're not sure the person even survived. After one particularly awful motorcycle crash, the emcee pleads in a nakedly urgent voice that if there is a doctor in the house, PLEASE, come forward NOW. "This is not part of the show." Then he dismisses the crowd, who are almost completely silent.
Is it something Roman about us, a colosseum leftover, something untamed, do we like a thrill, do we like to watch a thrill, THEIR thrill, or do we secretly hope in the most shameful part of ourselves that something in fact will go terribly wrong? For in a circus, it's hard for things to go just a little bit wrong.
Then there is the sideshow. These still exist in the small backwoods circuses that probably operate on the fringes of the law, though they supposedly emphasize feats of strength or daring rather than freakish characteristics. If we see someone walking on his hands now, our response is likely to be, "Wow, that's pretty amazing," marvelling at the fact that his disability really isn't very disabling after all. But back then. . . back then, when "abnormal" children were generally not allowed to draw their first breath, when people afflicted with "madness" were "put away" so we wouldn't have to see them, the freak show must have been a visceral nightmare.
This is two or three seconds of Todd Browning's 1932 masterpiece, Freaks. For years I avoided it because I was put off by the title (which makes better sense once you've seen it - it's more of a quote, something screamed at the performers by the prima donna aerialist) and was a little frightened of the whole concept because it starred REAL circus performers, "human oddities" - but then one day curiosity got the better of me.
When you see Freaks, you enter a strange world. Fully half an hour was edited out, or censored out, so as rich and strange as it already is, it might once have been much more rich and strange. You have to see it more than once to really appreciate the fact that it's about a community, a very tight-knit one where there is solidarity and protectiveness and intense loyalty to one another. All the things we're lousy at in today's fragmentary society. There's oddball humor, scenes which are not so much meant to shock as to inspire a headshaking wonder, and - as with most great movies, up to and including Gone with the Wind - a love triangle.
I could do a whole post on Freaks, in fact I might at some point, and I was not even aware until just now that my recent viewing of it on TCM probably triggered this whole awful doomed circus search. Unlikely as this seems, the movie isn't "dark" or "disturbing" or "macabre" - none of those terms apply, as most of the troupe are good-humoured and seem to enjoy their work and each other. I will say though that it is plenty weird and a little crazy, demonstrating an over-the-top exuberance unfettered by any bounds of propriety. Only the ending turns dark, terribly dark, and only because somebody dared to mess with one of their own.
Dick Cavett on his career in show business, and more.
Flying? Increasingly for the birds
“I’ll be passing the back of my hand over your buttocks and then come up the insides of your legs up toward the private parts. Is that O.K.?” “Sounds peachy to me,” I knew not to say. You’re not supposed to joke with airport security, as people have learned the hard way.
This makes sense, but as with so much about airport security — or as someone has called it, “Security Theater” — it seems a bit silly. Are terrorists known for their tendency to joke? (Is there a paperback called “Jokes for Jihadists”?) When you refuse, as I do, to be ordered into the big scanner with its “safe” amount of X-ray, you are made to feel like a wimp and told to “Stand over there!” And over there — with maybe one or two others who have also noted that whatever X-rays you are urged to get in life are invariably “safe” — you stand, a little ashamed, waiting until the patter gets back from the toilet. On a recent patting (and the patters, I should say, are a nice lot, picked perhaps for their demeanor) the description “toward the private parts” had a grain of inaccuracy. The rising hands didn’t stop short, causing a slight “ow” on my part. “Sorry” was delivered feelingly (no pun intended). Another time, after having been felt up in public, I fell into a pleasant chat with the man with the business-like hands. He’d recognized me, and there were no other pattees waiting. I asked, “What sort of jokes are you tiredest of by the one patted?” “Oh, you can probably guess,” my guy said cheerfully. “Something like, ‘Hey, cute stuff, whatcha doin’ after the show?’ ” I guessed. “You got it.” “Any of the would-be humorists ask what sort of man would seek a job patting other men?” “You got it again.” “How are you supposed to behave in the face of such wit?” “Smile and keep patting.” I’m sure no professional patter lives in fear that an accumulation of such micro-erotic experiences will endanger his orientation. Or the passenger’s.
Good anagrams almost make sense, and are more than just Scrabble-esque word jumbles. To the purist, they're scramblings of famous people's names which appropriately describe that personage, without any letters left over.
Try it. Quick. Tom Jones!
Uh. . .
Moon Jest! Hm. Does that work? Howbout. . . No jetsom (except it's spelled wrong). Or. . . What's New, Pussycat?
I can't do these very well, so I'm going to cheat and lift some from a web site, never mind which one. I steal all the time.
George Bush: He bugs Gore. Osama bin Laden: A bad man (no lies). The terrorist Osama bin Laden: Arab monster is no idle threat. Elvis Aaron Presley: Seen alive? Sorry, pal! Clint Eastwood: Old West action. Madame Curie: Me, radium ace.
The best anagram I ever heard of, apparently thought up on the spot by Dick Cavett when looking at a theatre marquis (sp.? Who knows how to spell such a lame word, anyway?) is for Alec Guiness: Genuine Class.
Well, mine are almost like that. I mean. I have good intentions.
For the past couple of years I've been totally obsessed with Harold Lloyd, the silent screen comedian. You know, the one in the straw boater and hornrims who dangled off the hands of the huge clock above the. . . yeah, him, and by the way, he wasn't gay. (This is the first thing people ask me when I tell them about my book. I have no idea why, maybe all that white makeup, but did people call Chaplin a poof?)
I wrote a novel about Harold called The Glass Character, fell violently in love with him in the process (and I truly believe it's the best thing I've ever done), and now no one in the publishing industry wants to give me the time of day. Jesus, guys! Somebody, read this and cut me a deal before someone else gets it and you'll have to live with the regret for the rest of your life.
So I worked on Harold Lloyd anagrams. With all those backwards-looking Welsh double-ls, it was a problem.
So I came up with:
Rah, old dolly! Hardy ol' doll Ah, lord dolly!
Enough dollies. What got me started on this shit? I'm reading a book about the violent decades-long passion between Liz Taylor and Richard Burton, Furious Love (Sam Kashner & NancySchoenberger),which I first heard about on Dick Cavett's NY Times blog. I wondered if I could squeeze out some anagrams here.(Why? Ran out of those little Keurig coffee thingamies and needed something else addictive.)
Richard Burton came out: Brain chord rut. Well, he did waste his genius, didn't he?
