OK, then. I've told you all about Lloyd synchronicity, and in case you don't remember what it is, it's examples of the name Lloyd coming up over and over and over again through the course of a single day.
It happens and happens, and has been happening for months and maybe even years. I've had as many as five a day, and once I had four in a single movie (a little British comedy called The Wrong Box), but the ones that really make my scalp prickle aren't just things like seeing the name Lloyd on the side of a train or on a street sign or a realtor's sign or TV credits or a dog's ID tag. . . they're examples of actually SEEING Harold Lloyd, usually when I least expect it.
It happens fairly frequently on Turner Classic Movies, and this isn't so very unusual because they have championed the re-release of many of his magnificent silent comedies. But tonight. Oh God. I was minding my own business watching William Shatner's Weird or What? (one of my favorite educational programs) when an ad break came on, and. . .
And there was this woman dangling from the hands of a huge clock.
A Safety Last! clock. An ICONIC clock. WTF? Have I fallen into the freaking Fourth Dimension or something?
Not only was the ad in black and white, it had little lines running down it to make it look like an old movie. She wasn't dressed like Harold Lloyd, but still, the derivation was obvious.
A Harold Lloydian, Safety-Lastian, clock-dangling, cliff-hanging, danger-defying, "high and dizzy" thrill-picture scene in a goddamn Cover Girl cosmetics ad!
Listen, ever since I started researching my novel The Glass Character, and all through the writing of it, and even now, long post-Lloyd, this has been happening. It seems to come in waves, and now I'm in some sort of a bizarre tidal wave.
When I fell in with Harold Lloyd and his legend, I fell into enchantment. A state not so easy to enter, or, for that matter, to escape. I wish somebody would tell me what it all means.
This is the boy that talks and talks (and talks).
At first you think you're dealing with a high school kid, like in that movie, what was it called, Catch Me If You Can. He's sort of cute and unshaven, yet not unkempt, so he appeals to a wide spectrum of people. He comes across well.
It could be argued that he's only acting to expose a glaring social wrong that should have been addressed back in George Orwell's glory days. Like the frog in warm water that is gradually boiled, we have been anaesthetized by the religion or drug of galloping consumerism and the near-total dominance of technology. It's not that we don't care - we don't even notice any more that everything we say, think, eat, sleep or do is being monitored and manipulated ALL THE TIME.
It's just possible that somebody has to make us care.
But heroes have flaws. This guy, I swear to you - and this is purely intuitive - there's something wrong here, something "off", or at very least something so highly orchestrated that it bothers me. It takes a lot of work to appear so sincere, so articulate, so relatively casual. Not a trace of ranting or raving. But I think the truth is that he craves and even requires this sort of global attention to survive.
There is no way in the world Snowden could have done this phenomenal whistle-blowing all by himself: he would need a global network of assistants, accomplices, whatever. So why is he speaking as if he alone knew how to access a buried trove of forbidden information, taking a life-threatening risk in bringing it all to light?
Isn't he playing into the American ideal of the solitary hero, the lone cowboy who doesn't need anybody's help because needing help is WEAK?
Is he on "our side" or not? What exactly IS "our side", and why are so many right-wing pundits pounding their pulpits and denouncing him as some sort of devil-worshipping-pro-gun-control nut case?
What is it about him, besides the odd-sounding British name and the feeling he has dive-bombed down from out of nowhere? It's the eyes. They shift and shift. Is he just nervous? Why does the calm correct voice not match the face?
This is why I posted the gif, to illustrate the discrepancy. What can it mean?
My sense is that it will all come out over the next few weeks or months, and the truth will be layered and convoluted. Lots of people think he will be killed, but the truth is he wants us to think that. And when it comes to the movie deal, he can write his own cheque. Mission accomplished?
Oh, and. . . don't they say you can judge a man by the company he keeps?
