Monday, December 7, 2015

A gallery of creepy Santas




It wouldn't be Christmas without creepy Santas. These vintage photos explain once and for all why small children run screaming from Santa, even though their parents try to glue them to his fuzzy old cigarette-smelling lap for a photo op.




This is the Stephen King Santa, the little girl looking uneasy while waiting for her present. It had better be a good one. Modern-day Santas must keep their hands in sight at all times. This one doesn't.




Santa and the Easter Bunny must shop at the same costume store, or buy them at Halloween. Here it's Mother who looks a trifle uneasy, though her daughter hasn't quite caught on to who or what this is supposed to be.




I tried very hard not to repeat Santas from last year. If I did, it means once was just not enough. Santa's electroshock stare is a classic.




My favorites are the Santas who wear their beards funny. This is just wrong: the moustache sits atop the guy's nose, so that there is nothing but a black slit for his eyes. The little boy is just on the verge of screaming his head off.




I always feel a little sorry for these kids. I wonder how their parents reacted to this photo. Did they have to pay for it? This goes back to the days when Santa was some guy the department store just grabbed off the street. For a few bucks, he sat there ho-ho-ho-ing for a couple of weeks. The store felt they were being benevolent, giving him some honest employment over the holidays. Who knows what he thought.




Another screaming shot, with Santa looking a little soused.




OK, this is a repeat, but do you see why? It's the bleakness of the thing. I suppose the donkey has some religious significance, but why is Santa part of a nativity scene?




What are those things up there? Hands? Why?? Santa appears to have passed out, and those other two "things" are trying to revive him. What are they - cats, and why are they on roller skates?




This is just - indescribable.




What is he holding? A doll? Why hold it like that? At least both hands are in plain sight. Most of the children look glum.




Worst Face Santa (or is it?). He looks as if his face has been run over by a Mack truck. Or perhaps it's melting, like the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark. The kid on the right, while not crying, is not happy either. Small children have no idea what is going on, and nobody explains it to them. It's exploitation: sit up there and smile and look cute and have your photo taken, and shut up.




Ho, ho - aaaaaaaahhhh!




I thought all good Santas (like most doctors) smoked Camels. But I guess not. Nobody wants throat-scratch (an encoded term for throat cancer) in their ho-ho-ho.




I don't think you'd see a Santa in this position any more.




I think we have a winner here. From the demented expression, to the little girl trying desperately to get away, it all spells Christmas.

Or something.



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Sunday, December 6, 2015

Let's take a VERY close look at internet porn!




Let me preface this by saying:

a) I didn't write this article (on Christian solutions to internet porn addiction),  and

b) I think it's completely bizarre in its approach to defeating porn addiction and its attending horror, masturbation - a practice described in terms that remind me of an old Baden-Powell Scout manual from 1913.

That said, I actually do think we have a problem. I think we have a serious problem, because at least a few times, when I've tried to find something quite neutral on Google, I have found hundreds of very explicit images - to me, anyway, who grew up in the swingin' '60s, when everyone THOUGHT things were "liberated". At a click, even an accidental click under a very bland search term, I instantly see men and women, or men and men, having sex of all and every kind, inserting this into that, and most vigorously. Images of gigantic erect penises and spreadeagled, vulva-displaying women abound. The pictures are almost cartoonish in their exaggeration and have the posed, passionless quality that reveals just how much these participants are being paid to pretend they're having fun.

These are the milder, more bland public images Google has no problem with, so the humiliating, sado-masochistic stuff, mostly involving the shocking subjugation and abuse of women, must be much more extreme. And if people are addicted to THAT, they have to keep upping the ante to get the same thrill.

Any 9-year-old, or 6-year-old, could find themselves looking at the supposedly neutral Google images I stumbled on in half a second. Is this a good thing for kids, do you think? And what exactly does it contribute to the male psyche, let alone the greater good? I won't even answer that because I think it's fairly obvious.






Now everyone, especially the conservative Christian community, is trying to overcome porn-driven masturbation the way they did back in the Victorian era. Whole sites are devoted to it.  As the images become more and more intoxicatingly extreme, men are exhorted not to touch themselves at all, but to go cold turkey (and I know that sounds weird). But does that mean they can automatically go back to enjoying so-called "normal" sex with their partners? Sex itself suddenly takes on the significance of "the enemy", or - much worse - "sin".

I used to go to 12-step meetings for alcoholism, and I would hear about Sex Anonymous, as if the goal was to give up sex altogether, or at least stop enjoying it and treat it as a fairly mechanical or strictly reproductive process not related to things like female (or male) nudity and/or passion/desire, or (much worse) pleasure.  I had no idea how a person would moderate these things. I knew a lot of people in Overeaters Anonymous, and "success" meant adhering to a rigid and very UNenjoyable, lifelong bland diet. Any deviation from it caused intense shame and a sense of failure in the food addict. All the sensory enchantment and social pleasure we associate with food had been taken from them as a penalty for their compulsion.

It doesn't work. This kind of renunciation sets people up to fail.

I found the following article(s - I kept finding more and more) mind-boggling for a lot of reasons. If you're to believe the statistics, things are not so rosy in the bedrooms of fundamentalist couples - though other things are coming up roses late at night, sitting in the dark, alone at the computer. What's behind all this? Do their wives not put out, or what? Or do they, like a lot of people, have to resort to more and more extreme measures to feel anything at all? Is this, in fact, rewiring the male brain so that nothing but the smuttiest smut will do?

This article is a real artifact and shows how impractical and even ludicrous the "solutions" can be.  It has a faint flavour of The Onion about it, but I honestly don't think it's a parody. I was going to highlight the particularly ludicrous and useless strategies in blue, then realized that practically the whole article would be in blue. So my comments appear in lavender italics. And don't forget, boys - if you want to stop being sexually enslaved, just give up dessert!

5 Practical Ways to Defeat Porn Addiction

JUNE 23, 2014 BY KEVIN KUKLA 2 COMMENTS




Over one billion times has pornography been searched for online… since the beginning of 2014. That’s one out of every eight internet searches.

Internet pornography generates three billion (with a ‘b’) dollars of revenue.

One half of all Christian men and one-in-five Christian women admit they are addicted to pornography.

ONE HALF? What's the general rate - about five per cent? Maybe going to church DOES  change people's morals.

If you’re in that camp of porn addicts, you’re not alone. There is a way out.

If you do not struggle with this temptation yourself, likely someone you care about does.

There is no set magic bullet to get out, for most people. Multiple tactics will be necessary.

So, whether you can take advantage of doing these steps for yourself, or can recommend them to someone who confides in you their compulsion, here are five practical ways to overcome porn addiction.




1. YOU NEED TO BE ACCOUNTABLE—YOU CAN’T GO IT ALONE

“The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” Jesus says (Matthew 26:41).

You very well may hate what you are doing. If so, this is a wonderful and necessary response. But it is not enough. You need help.

What if you love what you're doing? Shut up, Margaret.

By making yourself accountable to someone else, who does not struggle with this sin, you will gain traction in your climb out. Yes, you will need to be vulnerable, exposing your sin to someone else, but this is necessary.

You can set up a weekly, or even a daily meeting with a trusted friend, an uncle, or counselor. You can discuss what temptations you faced and where you need help.

Or six times daily.

“Let us then cast off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light… and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires,” reads Romans 13:12,14.

A very wise step to take for those serious about wanting to break free from the chains of pornography is to install accountability software of every device that has internet access.

One of the best in the industry in providing this accountability is Covenant Eyes. They have affordable software that sends a report to an accountability partner.

His name, by the way, is Big Brother.

Installing this software would be a prudent for any parent. This way you be assured that such toxic material blocked from your child’s sight.

If you don’t think your child would be seeking this out, guess again. The average age for first porn exposure is 12 years old. Plus, more than 7 out of 10 teens hide their online behavior from their parents.

Get the software, Dad. Time to protect your kids, Mom.

(OK, I MUST say something here. "Go it alone"?)





2. PRACTICE PENANCE—DON’T LET YOUR FLESH DO THE BIDDING

Christ said some demons could not be driven out but by prayer and fasting (Matthew 17:21).

“Well, I do not run aimlessly, I do not box as one beating the air; but I pommel my body and subdue it, lest after preaching to others I myself should be disqualified,” says Saint Paul (1 Corinthians 9:26-27).

"Pommel my body". This is just too good - I don't even need to say anything.

Due to our fallen human nature, being weak morally comes easy to us. A sexual addiction or a porn addiction obviously are a sin of the flesh. Thus, the flesh needs to be chastised, in order to be defeated.

If you want to defeat a vice, then you need to practice its opposite virtue.

A porn addict gets accustomed to feeding the body its desires. Thus, it’s time to allow reason to triumph over the flesh. It’s time to show your body who is boss.

Down, body! Down!

Here are some practical ideas of ways to overcome your flesh—to defeat your body’s will, so to speak.

A. Practice delayed gratification.

When you get a letter in the mail you want to read, wait ten minutes before opening the envelope. Be the last one in line to get food. Wait to read that internet news article until your next break, skipping this one. Basically, learn to tell your body “not yet.”

Since nobody ever gets letters in the mail any more, the wait may be several years.




B. Practice abstinence in food and drink.

Practice not eating meat on Fridays. If already doing that, add another day of the week. Skip dessert. When out to eat, identify what you want most, and order something else. Eat more of what you don’t like and less of what you do.

This is also known in medical/psychiatric circles as an "eating disorder". It can be pretty hard to explain to your friends: oh, I love burgers and fries, but I'm ordering liver and onions because I have a porn addiction.

Here, you’re literally denying satisfaction to your bodily appetites. Doing this is bound to have a positive effect when the temptation to look at porn comes. You are training yourself to resist. This is absolutely vital.

3. PRACTICE CUSTODY OF THE EYES—DO NOT LUST

“So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate” (Genesis 3:6).

Note. It's all Eve's fault for being such a seductress. Without her and her scandalous fruit-eating habit, we wouldn't even be in this mess.

One of the many problems with viewing porn is that is causes the addict to devalue the dignity of other people. Most commonly, men are viewing porn—although not exclusively. By doing so, he is training himself to regard and to treat women as sexual objects for his viewing pleasure.

Thus, porn addicts almost always succumb to committing lust throughout the day, not just when in front of the computer. He starts scoring every woman he sees, at the mall, at work, at church, on a scale of sexual desirability. This tosses out the woman’s dignity and worth, replacing her value with his selfish desires. It is degrading.

It's also what guys do.

In place of this, the addict must train himself to start looking women in the eye, not at her chest. I recommend making a concerted effort to determine the eye color of every woman he meets. If he is busy determining if her eyes are hazel or green, then he is not thinking about the size of her bra.

Oh hahahahahahahahaha

The porn addict can also practice looking away at other pleasures to better train himself. Not looking into the store window. Or skipping watching the sunset.

Look, God’s creation is beautiful, especially the female body. But proper respect must be paid. By looking away from other delights to the eyes, the addict to porn will help break his impulse to lust toward women.

WTF? Or should I say: WT-"I never beat off"?



4. GO TO CONFESSION WEEKLY—DON’T GIVE UP

“He who conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy,” Scripture assures us (Proverbs 28:13).

The Sacrament of Confession has many healing effects. For starters, you receive forgiveness for transgressions. You get to hear this from the priest and can take it to heart.

As well, God supplies you grace to avoid the very sins you just confessed. Confession is medicine for the soul.

If you are addicted to porn, then the Catholic Church would say you are guilty of a grave sin. As such, you ought not receive Communion until first going to Confession.

We're not WORRRR-thy!

How often should you go to the Sacrament of Confession? If you are addicted, then you need to go often, probably weekly. In fact, you can go daily, if needed.The idea is to break yourself of the bondage that sinful activity has over you. Go, receive the remedy, the grace, as often as you possibly can!

I think you should go sixteen or seventeen times a day, once for every manual transgression. That priest will soon be pretty tired of seeing your guilty puss and grant you a rubber-stamp absolution in a matter of seconds.

By humbling yourself before God, admitting you need Him to remove this scourge for you, He will honor that and oblige. The fact that He allowed you to have this Cross was a means to draw you to Him. He will happily remove the obstacle for you, in His time.

5. ATTEND EUCHARISTIC ADORATION WEEKLY—DO NOT TIRE IN SEEKING CHRIST’S HELP

Christ shares the parable of a widow who persisted in her petition to a certain judge. He became so annoyed with her, he finally granted her request, just to make her go away (Luke 18:1-8). He uses this as a model for us to follow in our prayer life.

We need to be persistent, consistent, and constant in prayer.

Where better to spend time in prayer than in front of Christ Himself, present sacramentally in the Eucharist? By committing to Eucharistic Adoration, for at least one hour a week, your prayer life will grow exponentially.

God will see you coming to Him personally, physically. He will hear your pleas to remove this Cross. And He will answer your prayer. In accord with His timing.

Cross?




YOUR TURN

Have I forgot an obvious sixth method to overcoming porn addiction?
Has anyone deployed any or all of these methods in the past to overcome an addiction of any kind? Care to share your story?

Please ‘Share’ this post and let’s pray for those in bondage to sin.

Oh God, save me. Save me from reading more of this. I had not heard the term Custody of the Eyes since reading a biography of the celibate Jesuit priest/poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, who used to force himself NOT to look at the beauty of nature (upon which all his greatest poems were based) in order to punish himself for lustful thoughts about other men. Oh boy. But here is a whole 'nother article about it, making me wonder how we can be so backward in a time when everything seems to be moving too quickly.

Just when I thought I had seen it all. . . 

You are here: Home / Chastity/Dating / 10 Reasons Men Should Practice Custody of the Eyes

10 Reasons Men Should Practice Custody of the Eyes

JULY 30, 2014  BY MARCEL        LEAVE A COMMENT

10 – It helps teach discipline.
Men should discipline themselves to be in control of their passions and not allow passions to control them.

9 – It avoids the near occasion of sin.
To avert your eyes when you feel tempted to use a woman lustfully is a good thing.
“But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.” -Matt 5:19.

8 – Custody of the eyes builds up chastity.
Chastity means properly ordering our sexuality to our current state in life (single, married, religious, priest). If we do not have custody of the eyes, it means our sexuality is dis-ordered toward objectification – not love – and needs to be healed.

Chastity? When married? There's another term for that: divorce.

7 – It is what every gentleman should do.
No woman who respects herself wants to be lusted after or looked up and down. No real gentleman would dishonor a woman by doing so.


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6 – It helps a man to see the whole woman, not just parts of her body.
When most men see an immodestly-dressed woman, their brains automatically start to objectify her. Thus, men need to be able to see the truth about who a woman is – not just to break her down into objects he can use for his selfish pleasure.

5 – It avoids scandal.
Think of King David. If he would have practiced custody of the eyes he might have been able to avoid much worse sins – adultery and murder. Now think of what happens when a man is caught in a lustful look toward a woman.

THESE GUYS ARE REWRITING THE BIBLE! This divests it of every bit of wisdom through trial and struggle/redemption of sin in its pages. If these guys had their way, Onan never would've done all that dirty business, there would be no more "begin the begats", and Adam and Eve would've kept their fig leaves on and nobody would be here at all.

4 – It helps fight off temptation.
Men suffer from sexual temptation frequently. To have custody of the eyes helps a man to fight off an even stronger temptation of lusting after a woman after he looks at her.

3 – It helps our sisters not feel objectified.
If for no other reason, we should witness to the dignity of a woman by controlling our passions. While our sisters in Christ should also help by dressing modestly, even an immodestly dressed woman is made to be loved.

What - what- what???

2 – It is a virtue we should chase after.
It is related to chastity, modesty, and temperance. Without self-control, we are unable to give ourselves away in love. We can’t give what we don’t control.

Chase after. Odd choice of words, that. Freud would love all this.

1 – It focuses us back on more important things.
“Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given you besides.” – Matt 6:33
Christ should be our first priority. Honoring the height of his creation (our sisters) should be the second. We should be third.

"Sisters" doesn't exactly fan the flames of romance, does it now? It throws the cold water of incest over the whole thing.





And this one, I swear it's real, or at least has been quoted in dozens of other articles (all furiously denouncing the very idea of a "Christian porn production"). In these productions, which I assume are videos and not live sex shows, the players must pray together as well as play together, and instead of  crying "Jesus fucking CHRIST" in orgasm, they must shout "Hallelujah!" Other than that, it sounds to me like normal, old-fashioned, skeevy porn. The kind you beat off to.

Toward a Framework for Christian Porn

It must depict only married couples engaging in sexual acts. This means that any sexual partners in a Christian porn production must be husband and wife, both on and off screen. All actors must be married in real life and portray married couples onscreen. And they must only be depicted having sex with their wedded spouses.

It must portray sex within the context of a Christian marriage. It must be apparent through the actions, behaviors, and speech of the characters portrayed that they are Christian, lead a Christian lifestyle, and have a marriage in which their faith is central. This could be depicted in a variety of ways, with scenes showing a couple praying together, studying the Bible, attending church or church functions, and generally relating to one another as loving Christian spouses outside of the bedroom.

It must be instructional. Part of the mission of Christian pornography is to graphically educate married believers in how to achieve more sexual pleasure, intimacy, and closeness in their relationships. It can do this by dramatizing various sexual techniques and positions so that couples can learn how to incorporate them into their lovemaking routines. In their onscreen roles, the actors should model both correct sexual techniques and appropriate sexual attitudes, by being respectful and treating one another’s bodies as the sacred gift from God that they are.




Husband and wife must both receive their due benevolence. This is in keeping with the scriptural mandate of I Corinthians 7:3, which says “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.” This means that both sex partners must be shown getting equal pleasure and sexual attention from one another.

No extramarital sex, unless it is to illustrate the downfalls of adultery. The spouses in a Christian porn production must never have adulterous relations, unless they (and their partner in extramarital crime) suffer and are punished fittingly for their sins. (In deference to modern conventions, the punishment does not have to be one mandated by scripture, i.e., being stoned to death.)

It must be uplifting and inspirational, focusing on strengthening Christian marriage and Christian faith. Christian porn must have an overall positive message. Of course, its primary message would be to demonstrate the sacred use of sexuality and sensuality to reinforce the bonds of Christian marriage. But in all other respects, it should affirm Christian values of community, family, faith, honesty, charity, and so forth. It should show that having a joyous and fulfilling married sex life is one of the fruits of following the path of righteousness.

No profanity. Although exclamations of pleasure are acceptable, as are the natural sounds and vocalizations of lovemaking, Christian porn should contain no profanity or swearing. The participants should address each other lovingly and respectfully at all times. Of course, it goes without saying that the actors will not take the Lord’s name in vain, nor that of his Son.

And here is the most amazing strategy of all for beating porn addiction, and you can buy a bag of 200 at the Dollar Store for a buck twenty-five.




Before I tell you what it is, I am going to tell you what material you need to build the tool. This is all you need.

I know what you must be thinking. “I read two blogs, tracked my Triggers, Thoughts and Actions for a week and this is what I’ve been waiting for. “An Elastic Band??? Seriously??”

Yes, this simple elastic band can change the way you think, bring a deeper awareness to your compulsions, and drive behavior change. Period. If you don’t believe me try if for a week. All you have to do is:

Find elastic
Put elastic on wrist
Snap elastic immediately after you experience an unhealthy sexual or self defeating thought.
Use slight pain to snap back to reality
Take positive action instead of watching porn
Repeat as necessary

Yup, that’s it. That’s the secret. I have successful clients, leaders in their respective industries and communities, clients all over the world using this technique. Why? Because it works.




POST-BLOG BADDA-BOOM: That bit about Christian porn CAN'T be real. I even found (blush) some sites with dirty pictures of very, shall we say, ordinary-looking men and women (almost all women) doing various things with various orifices and bodily parts, all in the name of Jesus. Bad skin, stretch marks, unattractive teeth, the works. Kind of depressing. I guess Christians can look at porn so long as the people in it are ugly.

Now maybe these links are on the level. Who knows. Try it for yourself. Seek, explore, poke around in it a little bit. You may emerge dripping with sanctity and full of the fist-pumping ecstasy of spiritual fulfillment.


More Articles:


SPECIAL BONUS QUOTES!





Martin Luther:

“[T]he exceedingly foul deed of Onan, the basest of wretches . . . is a most disgraceful sin. It is far more atrocious than incest and adultery. We call it unchastity, yes, a sodomitic sin. For Onan goes in to her; that is, he lies with her and copulates, and when it comes to the point of insemination, spills the semen, lest the woman conceive. Surely at such a time the order of nature established by God in procreation should be followed. Accordingly, it was a most disgraceful crime.”

John Calvin:

“The voluntary spilling of semen outside of intercourse between man and woman is a monstrous thing. Deliberately to withdraw from coitus in order that semen may fall on the ground is doubly monstrous. For this is to extinguish the hope of the race and to kill before he is born the hoped-for offspring.”





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Saturday, December 5, 2015

Every day is Christmas: Harold Lloyd's Christmas tree




All right, I guess I've put this off about as long as I can. It's time to deal with the little issue of Harold Lloyd and his Christmas tree.

Harold was a Christmas fanatic. He was a fanatic about a lot of things, including painting, handball, microscopy, the Shriners, and beautiful women with no tops on. But let's stick to the Christmas tree for now.

When he was a boy, growing up dirt-poor in Nebraska, they probably had something - you'd have to be pretty impoverished not to be able to cut something down in the woods, drag it home and decorate it with some paper garlands and strings of popcorn.

But once he was in the chips, Christmas took on a whole new meaning.




I sometimes get a mental image of Harold rolling around in dollar bills and throwing them up in the air, not because he was greedy (though he was apparently a lousy tipper), but because it was fun to have money at last.

Never again would the family have to skip out in the night to avoid paying rent that they didn't have.

As you can see here, some of these ornaments were absolutely huge. Most were handmade European things that remind me of Faberge eggs. Over the years he amassed an incredible 10,000 ornaments (hard to believe, but this is Harold Lloyd, folks, and he never did things by halves), most of which were kept in a vault somewhere in his huge estate, Greenacres.





It took weeks for him to decorate this thing, which was constructed from three gigantic fir trees lashed together. Then one year when he was about to dis-assemble it, he decided, ah, hell, isn't it really Christmas all year long? So the tree stayed up.

This pose with a red-jacketed Harold is obviously an earlier incarnation because you can still see parts of the tree. It doesn't have that bulged-out/pregnant/I-think-I'm-going-to-explode look it took on in later years.

In fact, this tree looks really nice to me. Has a nice shape, a nice sparkle, and TONS of ornaments already. But Harold never knew when to stop.




The little girl in the red pajamas is Harold's granddaughter, Suzanne, now keeper of the Lloyd legend. Due to family circumstances, Harold was like a father to her, and it must've been fun to have a grandfather like that, even if he was hard to keep up with. This surely must have been taken in the middle of the decorating frenzy, given the appearance of the tree in the first photo.




It always strikes me that the great geniuses of the world are little boys who never grow up. They retain that mental flexibility and ability to dream and actualize those dreams without adult restraints. They also retain temperament and a degree of childishness, which Harold did. He had a hairtrigger temper by all accounts - hey, folks, I learned that from Kevin Brownlow's superb documentary Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius, a major source of information for my research, and it was Harold's brother-in-law who said it. I'm not just making up stories. He really did have flaws. I say this because I sometimes wonder if I somehow inadvertently pissed off someone in the Lloyd family by portraying him as less than perfect in my book. At any rate, the silence from them has been deafening. But as I've said before, Kevin Brownlow has been wonderful to me, so maybe I'd better be happy with that.








It's still possible to buy some of those 10,000 ornaments today. In fact, they're listed on eBay right now, eight ornaments for $2500.00 USD.  That's uh, three hundred and. . . that's lotsa money per ornament. Eight would be about enough for my tree.

POST-POST POST: As you well know, Wikipedia is my Bible, especially when I don't feel like plodding through a dozen web sites for information which may or may not be right. It's a sad and poignant story, what happened to Harold's estate after he died in 1971. The upkeep on the gargantuan place was basically unworkable. The huge lot had to be subdivided and sold off in parcels in the '70s, but the house still sits on top of the hill in Benedict Canyon, somewhat updated from its falling-down days. It's nice to know it's still there and being looked after.

Several movies were shot at Greenacres in the '70s, including a Lylah Clare-ish, Sunset Boulevard-esque, cheesy TV movie called Death at Love House with Robert Wagner in it (Harold's close friend), but the video clips I could find were so Godawful I could not include them here. I couldn't even make a decent 3-second gif.


History after Lloyd's death

Plans for preservation and a museum





Christmas tree in 1974

Lloyd left his Benedict Canyon estate to the "benefit of the public at large" with instructions that it be used "as an educational facility and museum for research into the history of the motion picture in the United States." For a few years the home was open to public tours, but financial and legal obstacles prevented the estate from creating the motion picture museum that Lloyd had intended. Among other things, neighboring homeowners in the wealthy community were opposed to the creation of a museum hosting parties and attracting busloads of tourists.





In October 1972, the Los Angeles Times visited the property and noted that it had "the feel of Sunset Boulevard," bringing to mind the line spoken by the young writer when he first visits Norma Desmond's home: "It was the kind of place that crazy movie people built in the crazy 20s."The house appeared to visitors in the 1970s to be frozen in time at 1929. One writer noted that nothing had been moved or replaced, changed, or modernized, from the books in the library to the appliances in the kitchen and the fixtures in the bathrooms. 






Noted columnist Jack Smith visited the estate in 1973 and wrote that "time stood still", as Lloyd's clothes still hung in his closet, and the master bedroom and living room "looked like a set for a movie of the 1930s." A Renaissance tapestry presented to Lloyd as a housewarming gift by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks was still hanging in the hallway.

The house also had Lloyd's permanent Christmas tree loaded with ornaments at the end of a long sitting room. Jack Smith described the tree as follows:

"At the end of the room, dominating it like some great Athena in a Greek temple, stood the most fantastic Christmas tree I had ever seen. It reached the ceiling, a great, bulbous mass of colored glass baubles, some of them as big as pumpkins, clustered together like gaudy jewels in some monstrous piece of costume jewelry."




POST-POST: I just thought of something else. As usual! Somewhere, I know not where, I read in my research that there was a TV special called Citizen Lloyd which aired shortly after Harold's death. There was scant information about this, but I can't help but see the title as an allusion to Citizen Kane and Xanadu, the great echoing mausoleum inhabited by Charles Foster Kane. Parallels have also been drawn to Sunset Boulevard with its algae-choked swimming pool and demented German manservant with the duelling scar. 

Though Harold never employed Eric von Stroheim to look after the place, there is an eerieness to all this. Perhaps it's Stroheim's ghost that haunts Greenacres. I know Annette Lloyd got to tour the place at some point, and I never will. I'll die before that happens. In spite of all my efforts to flog it, the book I toiled over for seven years has fallen off the face of the earth. Except for wonderful Kevin Brownlow, no one connected with the film industry has shown the slightest interest in it, or in helping me actualize my dream.





A few years from now, I have a feeling "someone" will make a movie about Harold Lloyd, and it will have all my ideas in it. There are enough copies circulating, all of which seemed to fall into the Grand Canyon without an echo. And because I am so utterly powerless, there will not be a damn thing I can do about it.

But I wonder what happened to that TV special, if someone still has a tape of it moldering in their basement and will some day decide to put it on YouTube.

Stranger things have happened. But not much.











  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

A tribute to Robert Loggia

     



Friday, December 4, 2015

Santa Dave








Hey listen. My dearest friend, David, has been in the hospital for a LONG LONG time with every ailment you can imagine, greatly affecting his mobility. And yet, with few exceptions, he has been remarkably cheerful through it all. I think this should be celebrated, and what better way than with a Blingee. The top one is a pose in his fairly-Brother-Dave-ish hospital gown. The second one, made last year, is too good NOT to repeat.




Special Bonus Bling!


"Sometimes these things just happen"





NEWS IN BRIEF  December 3, 2015

VOL 51 ISSUE 48 News · Guns · Violence

SAN BERNARDINO, CA—In the hours following a violent rampage in southern California in which two attackers killed 14 individuals and seriously injured 17 others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Wednesday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Michigan resident Emily Harrington, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past six and a half years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”






BLOGGER's LAMENT. I haven't said a lot about the almost-daily bloodbaths in the United States of late. Nor can I comment about the frantic spewing-out of statistics insisting that gun violence is now at an all-time low. The message seems to be that we're just overreacting and should settle down and feel grateful that we're so much safer than we used to be.

I have no idea what to say. When this horror happens AGAIN, I do the same weeping and fuming and turning away that a lot of people do (I won't say "most" or "everyone", because those are idiotic assumptions). 

Nearly every time this happens, the blame goes to "the Muslims", which makes me quake with terror (not to mention outrage). Soon it will be open season on people who are as anguished as everyone else about the situation.

I get flipped into a mix of powerless anxiety/rage by the strangest things. There was an item on the news yesterday about poisonous rat traps set around city parks in Vancouver, and about how people were finding dead rats lying around who had eaten the poison. Someone actually had the idea their dog might get sick from eating one of these, and that it wasn't a good idea to leave poisoned rats out where small children might find them and pick them up.

The inevitable authority figure/parks board guy came on and blandly said, "We have never had a complaint about these traps hurting pets or children." And that was the end of the story.

What does this have to do with bloodbaths in schools and at Christmas parties, and with people saying, don't worry about it because gun violence is actually down?

Nothing, directly.





It's that idiotic "we haven't had any complaints," a statement which makes people say, "Oh," and walk away, because this is an Authority Figure and they've just had the last word.

Because we've swallowed the bait.

"We haven't had any complaints" means "you shouldn't be complaining now because nobody else has. What's wrong with you?"

"We haven't had any complaints" means "it's OK, folks, there's no danger. And if you think there is, you're a screwball."

And of course, it means there can never BE a complaint in the future. It's against the laws of physics.

It's the same kind of reassurance which is meant to make you shut up, walk away, and not do anything more to try to change the situation.

Nobody complains. There's not much point, because we don't really have a problem here. Do we?

(I confess the article appeared in The Onion. But these days, it's hard to tell the difference.)


Wednesday, December 2, 2015

The Wizard of oz- The jitterbug ( DELETED SCENE)






The Jitterbug! I used to tell my friends at school that this was a song from The Wizard of Oz (which we all watched slavishly once a year in glorious black and white, taking a little chunk out of the technicolour surprise of "I guess we're not in Kansas any more"), and they would look at me like I was crazy.

I'd get that look a lot in my childhood. I might as well have gotten used to it.

I had a record with the songs from The Wizard of Oz on it. I am not sure now if it was by the original cast. But I think not. I wore out the grooves on this thing, and most especially I noted a song about The Jitterbug, which I assumed was a dance of some kind.

I don't know how many eons later I found out that it HAD been a song in The Wizard of Oz, one that was deleted for various reasons. The video/gifs here depict the rehearsals, and I have highlighted the choreography between the Tin Man and the Lion.





These guys were expected to stumble around on a soundstage covered with fake leaves, under broiling hot lights, sweating buckets in their confining, 50-pound costumes for take after take. . . and they weren't even dancers. Or they sure don't look like it here.

Jack Haley was, maybe, but I can only picture him doing the Old Soft Shoe with a top hat and a cane. Lahr was a vaudevillian by trade and by nature, a sort of aggressive carnival barker type - and yes, when he played the lion, he barked! "With a rrrrroof. And a rooooroof. And a rrrRROOOOOOF!" He was most people's favorite character in the movie, with his big fur coat and his waving tail and that incredible song he sang, "If I Were King of the Forest". Here he does a dead-on impersonation of every hammy, pretentious singer that you've ever heard. Kids just think he's funny, but adults recognize a "type", giving his broad humor a sly edge of parody.





Anyway. The poor Tin Man really stumbles through some of these takes (and you can tell they're different takes by what the trees are doing in the background. The one on the right is the most active, waving and clapping its "hands". In the video, we see that they're really giant puppets with guys in behind them, moving the branches and the mouths. And throwing the apples.) Jack Haley nearly falls down in some of them, leaning forward to avoid a backward-falling, immobilizing disaster. The lion just sort of clomps around, trying to find the rhythm.

But in any case, the number was pulled. It wasn't the fact that the jitterbug was just a dance craze and thus likely to "date" the movie (and who cared? No one even knew that television would exist, and that it would give what was essentially a flop a brilliant second life.) It wasn't even that Lahr and Haley danced so badly. It's the fact that it was just so totally out of character for them. The best part about this movie is the sureness with which all the actors inhabit their characters, so to make them do this - . There was an extended dance scene with the Scarecrow that was cut, and it's a shame, but I saw it once and I see why. He ricochets off the rails of a fence in one shot, then appears to ricochet backwards when they reverse the film - and the rails of the fence vibrate BEFORE he hits them. It just didn't work. Too bad, because he was the only real dancer in the lot.





OK: so we know all that. But the real issue here is, who is my favorite character? It's not quite the witch, though I think Margaret Hamilton deserved an Oscar for the razor-witted sadist who still freaks kids out to this day (and who can forget that nasty, macabre music?). No. . . my favorite is one that absolutely nobody else picks.

Toto.

Why Toto? 

Without Toto, there would be no Wizard of Oz.

If Toto hadn't bitten Miss Gulch, she wouldn't have taken him away in her basket. And if she hadn't taken him away in her basket, he wouldn't have jumped out and run back to Dorothy. And Dorothy wouldn't have gotten all paranoid about losing her dog and decided to run away from home.

And and and. Shall I tell you more? Had she stayed home and fed the chickens and slopped the hogs like she was supposed to (and a more unlikely farm hand than Bert Lahr you will never find), she would've been hunkered down safely in the storm cellar with the rest of the family.

And the whole thing never would have happened.





But wait: there's more.

It's Toto who bravely confronts the Lion and barks at him when everyone else is cringing in terror. It's Toto who fearlessly leads the Tin Man, Lion and Scarecrow back to the Witch's castle where Dorothy is imprisoned (and I confess I ALWAYS cry when Auntie Em appears in the crystal ball). And it is Toto, my friends, who ends the story as dramatically as it began: by pulling back the curtain and exposing the Wizard of Oz as a fraud.

So do you get it now? Do you? I'll get you, my pretty. And your little dog, too.



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

Santa Claus, Punch & Judy (1948) Violent Puppet Show





Almost as mind-blowing as the Star Wars Holiday Special. It gets points for extra violence. NEVER let a child watch this! This guy was one of the frontrunners in my Santa Smackdown, but lost by a whisker (heh-heh) to the demented, frightening Santa in the stop-motion classic, Hardrock, Coco and Joe.