Wait a minute. Am I being hoaxed?

I feel very uncomfortable doing this but a number of factors compel me to get on with it, so here goes. Without going into this too personally, due to events beyond my control, there are a fair number of threats, most indirect, but some quite direct, and many very specific (what exact kind of gun should be put to what exact part of my body) made against my life. Mostly just suggestions that I be killed, etc, (quite graphic etc, often) with motivation, sometimes a cost estimate.

While I try not to let this affect how I do things too much and I know that the internet (which I love and is mostly a net gain, in part because it is through the internet that I came to know many of you good people and how i have managed to do much of my work) I have for a few years now declined all invitations to do public events. Several people who have looked at these things have been advised me against doing all anyone-attends-posted-online affairs and if you see me say I am in a place, I am not there anymore.

It’s not a huge thing and I know most threats are empty but I believe the advice is correct, given the number and nature of these posts and messages.
Anyway, now I have this book coming out and a number of literary festivals have kindly invited me to attend and I can’t. This is a disappointment to my fine publisher and of course and I really enjoy meeting readers.

I will have an invitation-only book launch here in Toronto, late September, when the book comes out, and I very much hope many of you will come.
The point to this post is this, I did promise, contactually and otherwise, to promote my book, and attend a number of public events. I can’t, and a fair number of you are in media one way another, and so here’s my pitch, I will happily answer questions about my book, and work, write you a few lines about life in general, donate a recipe for your publication, pop in to your podcast, wander in to whatever it is you got going. You name it, I will do it.
So, please keep me in mind if you have a space of slot I might be able to fill and thanks very much for your time and interest if you read to the end of this.

  

This VERY strange statement appeared today, posted on a Facebook friend's page, so it got into my feed. A very big question mark immediately formed over my head. I didn't know much about this writer, whose name I will mask for now, and when I looked up her publisher, this is the description I saw about her (which, as an author myself, I know is traditionally written by the subject):

(Writer Under Threat) is smart, funny and very beautiful. She has the prettiest eyes. She describes her hair as iconic. That's how men think of her breasts. She is also a gifted writer. Elle Canada, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and Explore Magazine are four of the publications lucky enough to have her in their pages. She has a lovely laugh and has been nominated for ten National Magazine Awards. She is also an excellent cook, terrific in bed and weary of self-deprecating chick writers.

So I sort of got the fact that this was a humourist of sorts, but what about that statement about her life being in danger? And therein lies the dilemma of social media.

As a humorist, a satirist I assume, irony and exaggeration are her stock in trade. Fair enough; I expect that. But what do I make of this rather long and elaborate statement? Is there any truth in it at all, or is it just an irony-tinged way of saying, "Hey, guys, I don't feel like doing any book promotion this year"? If so, those who are in on the joke, her loyal readers/fans/"in-crowd", will probably immediately know what she is talking about, and perhaps are chuckling away to themselves right now - threats on her life! Right! That's a million laughs.

Certainly the way she expresses the threat ("what exact kind of gun should be put to what exact part of my body. . sometimes a cost estimate. . .") borders on the flip. Her statement a little later on that it's "not a huge thing" seems equally puzzling. Threats on her life are not a huge thing?

So I was left in a state of confusion that made me unaccountably angry. It's happening again, I thought. Happens every time I turn around. We don't know what to take seriously, and what to - not. The whole thing was confusing in the way only social media can be confusing, triggering a weird, irrational shame. It's because you don't know whether or not you're being hoodwinked, and you feel you should know. You should know what's going on, but everyone seems to be speaking in some sort of mysterious code.

My first reaction when I saw this was, good grief, why is my Facebook friend in so much trouble? Then I realized it wasn't my Facebook friend at all, but this author (unknown to me - I don't live in Toronto) whom my friend was quoting. So, who was she, and why (actually, really, I mean) was she not going to promote her book?

People just don't go around randomly shooting authors, or making threats against someone who is no threat to them. Not in Canada, anyway. But if it IS true, what the hell is going on? She is a lovely, laughing, iconic-breasted humour writer, is she not? I just can't see who'd want to gun her down in cold blood. It makes no sense.

The truth is, I have absolutely NO fucking clue what to make of this, and it makes me very very uneasy. Just doubting it is giving me doubts, although I find I'm doubting half of what I read these days.

What do we take seriously in this era of fake news? What/whom do we (mis)trust? I was all ready to accept this at face value, until that little voice (the one I generally trust) said, "Wait a minute."

Wait a minute. We have no proof at all that any of this is real. If it isn't, it's a great way to play on the paranoia that runs rampant these days, a way to tweak everyone's vulnerability and then suddenly say, "Hah! Had you going there, didn't I?"

HAS she got me going? For no reason, I mean? How big a fool am I, anyway? IS there anything to this? Yes, no, I don't know. I feel ridiculous for not knowing. If it's satire, after all (the way she makes her living), if she's not really going to be murdered in cold blood at a book signing, then perhaps the intended reaction really is a mixture of exasperation, bewilderment and baffling shame.

The Mad Men series finale: it's the real thing!

I don't know if I was the only one who was a bit queased-out by the final episode of Mad Men last night. My lack of excitement before I even saw it was telling, and all the way through it I was poised for "it-was-all-a-dream" syndrome, something hopelessly hokey to just kill the whole thing.

In a way, it happened. (This is full of spoilers, so if it's on your DVR and you haven't seen it yet, well, just keep on reading!) I noted an uncharacteristic compulsion to neatly-if-artificially tie up loose ends, and, especially, pair off those nice deserving kids with the right partners (while paring down other, less-workable connections). The show got heavily into the EST-y, Esalin-ish movements of the early '70s, with Don, the least likely candidate, being most deeply-involved. 

Though they didn't show Betty lying with waxen beauty in her coffin with a lily in her hand (and her husband, ol' Whatsisname, anxiously shaking hands up and down the aisle of the church wondering if his wife's corpse was pretty enough to win him the Governorship - sorry, I can't forgive him for that VERY BAD crying scene last week), they did show her smoking as she gently expired from lung cancer. How ironic: it's Betty who self-destructs, not Don.

I won't get into the rest of it because reciting the details lays bare just how soap-operatic the show had become.  How they ended Don - suicidal one minute, compassionate the next, followed by blissfully "ohmmm"-ing on a hilltop - made me literally groan out loud. The topper for all this was a repeat of the "iconic" Coke commercial of 1971, in which an angelic choir of wholesome and well-fed hippies proclaims Coke as "The Real Thing". Irony alert! Irony alert!

The show was all about artifice, wasn't it? Illusion, delusion, hawking products that were just products, things, not some fulfillment of the American Dream. (Remember the carousel? And how about "it's toasted", which essentially means nothing). I don't know if this was intended or not, but three minutes before the ending of the ending, I was saying out loud, "Okay, then. . . " As the old jazz musician once said after playing for 12 hours, "How we gonna end this thing?"

They ended it all right, because they had to. Old Wienerhead finally had his day. (Spelling variation intentional.) I don't know if it was because only one person acted as emperor and Ayatollah, but sometimes the seams showed. The seams represented how much air time a character was allowed in each episode/season. This was contractual, and seemingly non-negotiable. How do I know this? When AMC insisted on adding an extra commercial, a character had to be dropped. This horrified me, but it didn't seem to bother anyone else. And then there were the "hysteric returns": oh Jesus, there's Duck Phillips again! How'd he get in here? He rose from the dead more predictably and annoyingly than Jesus. How did this happen? Why, folks, it was in his contract! Duck Phillips must have had a particularly good agent and worked all this out from the beginning of the series. Sal Romano did not, and was out on his ass just as his character was starting to get interesting. 

It's over, it's over, it's over, as Roy Orbison once wailed, and I'm a bit relieved, and also kind of let down. Sort of like getting married, I think. I've never been divorced, so I can't comment on that. At its best, this show kicked ass. I was in love with Don and made little gifs of him (a sure sign of fascination. No Blingees, though. Can I make one now?). I could hardly believe how consistently good it was. When did it all begin to slip sideways? Everyone wants to blame Megan, poor thing, but wasn't it really all her fault? It had something to do with the way she embarrassed Don in front of all his friends with the Zoo-bee-doo-bee-doo thing.

That would kill any show's mojo, don't you think?

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

The sugar daddy ambush

Do you know what I shit-hate these days?

Stupid people. Or maybe I always have.

We had a nice time at the Canada Day celebrations yesterday at Coquitlam Town Centre Park. Yes, a very nice time looking at displays, sampling food, listening to multicultural music, watching kids on climbing walls, and all those Canada-day-type things.

Then as we were walking along, just walking along in complete innocence, a woman, low to the ground and of indeterminate age, literally ran at us and pressed a booklet into my hands.

“This is a book that’s very helpful for seniors with issues,” she chirped.

I stopped in my tracks.

“Give it to him,” I said, pointing to my very grey, very-much-older husband.

“Oh, that’s what they all say,” she twittered. “I won’t admit to my age either, sweetie.”

My mouth opened and Bill tugged me onwards, sensing a coming storm. “Thanks a LOT,” I yelled back at her as we walked away. “Oh, don’t mention it,” the woman tweeted, obviously delighted she had snagged another victim.

I mean, Jesus!

She RUNS up to people whom she has decided are “old”. Old enough to qualify as “seniors”. This includes women. Last time I checked, most women are not thrilled and delighted to state their age if they’re, say, over 50. Not that it’s a bad thing, but let’s not jump the gun.

We all sort of hope we look at least a few years younger than our chronological age. I thought this was nearly universal. Isn’t it? If not, when did it change? (If you think this is the first time seniors' propaganda has been pressed on me, guess again.)

And to have someone RUN at you because you look like a suitable pigeon for a book on “seniors' issues” is atrocious. “Oh, look, some fossils walking along! I’d better catch them before they fall over.”

My husband thought I was overreacting and said (as I dumped the goddamned ripped-up booklet into the garbage: I glanced at it and it said, among other things, “Where to meet seniors”, so it was probably publicity for a disguised escort service), “It was because of me.”

Well, maybe it WAS because of him. He’s greyer than me, mostly because I color my hair. But please, no running after prey, especially not older prey! They might not be too thrilled to be recruited for the ranks of the over-65, particularly if they are a good many years younger.

And don’t tell me, as I am always condescendingly told, “Oh, don't feel bad. 'Senior' begins at 40”. That’s a load of bullshit and you know it. Would a 40-year-old woman, still deluding herself that she can have another baby like all those Hollywood stars, welcome a booklet on how to pick up a doddering old sugar daddy?

Oh, and. This is even worse. It’s those people who miss irony, and think YOU’RE dumb.

I had a recent attack of this on Facebook. Somebody named a scientific principle, one often quoted on The Big Bang Theory (which is my religion), and I riffed on it in an ironic manner.  The person posted a “now, now, now, that’s not what it means at all” sort of reply, telling me exactly what the principle was and why I had gone so wrong in misinterpreting it.

Why are people so thick? Why do they always turn it around so that ***I*** am the stupid and/or ignorant one, and that I need to be immediately set straight? Whoever these people are, and most of them wear penises to work every day, they do not “get” irony, have perhaps never heard of it, and take absolutely everything literally.

In other words. . . they are men.

It’s not too nice when a joke falls flat, but when the other person has no idea it IS a joke and corrects you for your misinformation, it’s worse than annoying and leaves you with an insulted, put-down, even pitied feeling. Meantime you know you are skating rings around this dullard in wordplay skills and subtlety, not to mention basic intelligence.

But who wins in the ignoramus sweepstakes? Who comes out looking far more clever and erudite?  Could it be me? Are you out of your freaking MIND? Never mind that I’m invariably right, because being right has nothing to do with it. It's all about power and putting so-called "ignorant" people (usually women, assumed to be about as smart as Kha Kha Kardashian - oops, her name is Khloe - I'm so sorry - I got it wrong!) in their place.

Do I think I am smarter than other people (a sin worse than murder)? I don’t just think it, I KNOW it, and Facebook proves it to me every blessed, persecuted day of my life. (Oh, and. This deserves a post of its own, but I will mention it here. Someone will refer to something atrocious, destructive, and categorically WRONG. Then someone else will say, "Oh, it's always been like that." Some people, fancying themselves to be historians because they watch the History Channel, will say, "People have done that since the Etruscans in the year 14 billion B. C." The fact that "we've been doing this for a long time" is supposed to end the discussion. Suddenly, now the most heinous behaviour is OK and acceptable because we've been doing it forever! Make sense? 

Add to this one another ludicrous fallacy. I call it "men do this too!". Anything men do automatically justifies whatever negative, weak or shameful thing women are doing. It renders their sins more acceptable, though only a small percentage of this filters through to women. But at least they aren't seen as the snivelling bitches they were before. . . because after all, "men cry at the movies too".)

(I have to confess something really awful. I think that picture is really Khim Kardashian - or is that Kim - oh, will someone please set me straight here? And my much smarter boy friend just told me that the Etruscans didn't really live in 14 billion B. C. because the theme song of The Big Bang Theory says that that was when the universe was created. Why do I bother keeping a blog at all? I'm just a silly little girl.)

  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Letting off steam

Heigh-ho! It took me 24 hours, but I just saw an example of. . . irony. Here in my very own blog.

The theme of it is supposed to be boldness, genius and power and all that etc., when the truth is, I'm about as chickenhearted as they come.

Telling everyone not to make mistakes!

And rather bitterly.

But with a certain sincerity, at least in the moment.

I don't plan on quitting, just proceeding with a hard-hat on.

I DESERVE SUCCESS. I deserve it. Ha, la!

Keep on chanting it, and, Oprah-like, it will magically appear before my eyes.

Well, maybe. I have ironing to do.

Hey, if you're not cool enough to know what Mad Men is, why are you reading this?

Let us now praise famous men. Famous men like Jon Hamm. I don't care if he has a silly name. Where has he been all my life?

Jon Hamm is one of those actors who was sleeping in a pupa for 10 years before finding the role that not only defines him, but a whole era. The show's executive producer Matt Weiner has been quoted as saying, "Mad Men IS Jon Hamm."

Watching the show is like the Time Tunnel or something. I step across the thresshold into the wonderful land of Ahhhhhhhs. Period details don't just leap out at me, they jab me: the "Kennedy, Kennedy, Kennedy" TV campaign jingle I hadn't heard since I was five; the "High Flight" TV signoff while Pete Campbell was screwing an anonymous sweet patootie (with her elderly mother on the other side of a folding door); Don Draper's little kids running around with dry cleaning bags over their heads.

I could go into all the machinations and intrigues of the advertising agency Sterling Cooper, but let's not, shall we? Recently they canned art director Sal Romano, my next-to-Don favorite, maybe for being gay or too nice or something. Meantime, Don trudges on. At the end of the third season, his company has disintegrated, his wife has run off with some ugly-looking Senator whom she doesn't love, and he has run out of Lucky Strikes for the third time today.

There is a weirdness about Mad Men (i. e. Robert Morse as the eccentric company Zen master, Bertram Cooper: where have we seen him before? He starred in How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying in the early '60s, perfect period timing, not to mention Mad Men irony), a sense that, in spite of all the deja vu, we've never quite covered this territory before. A man can get his foot run over by a John Deere tractor during a drunken office party (causing the cynical Roger Sterling to quip, "It's like Iwo Jima out there"). A thick-headed husband can get brained with a vase. But most of all. . . most of all, we can spend some quality time with Don.

Don has many faces, the hardened masked face of the office, the creased-brow expression during the numerous boyhood flashbacks (the only part of the show I really detest), the softer face when he is with his kids (and in spite of being emotionally crippled, he really does love his kids), the roughed-up, carnivorous, rrrrrrrrArrrrrrw! face when he's in bed with some woman (a different woman every week). Yes, in bed he's a whole 'nother guy. Every once in a while, he even screws his wife. God, what a body, and he has that good man-smell that somehow mysteriously comes across on the screen. (Men either smell good - George Clooney, Harrison Ford - or they don't - Matthew McConnaghey, Brad Pitt). Just enough hair, and a build that is devastating but somehow doesn't call attention to itself.

So what would it be like to have sex with Don Draper? Has he read the Kinsey Report? (I don't mean that loser guy in the office.) Does he know what a clitoris is? Does he, "you know"? Do "everything", as Elaine used to say on Seinfeld? They can't show too much, of course. But it's implied. "I might scream," one of his conquests, a naive young school teacher, gasps. "Don't," Don replies. Another time, well, he ties someone up, but she deserves it because she's such a slut.

And what is Jon Hamm reallyreally like? The photos I see show a goofier person, his smile a little too broad. A person who can't quite believe his good fortune at being famous, at having a really juicy and challenging part at last (and according to legend, he spent a whole decade as a waiter). I think he's probably pretty hyper. But seems to have one steady girlfriend, un-Draperlike. He gave a long interview for the Advocate, and for a moment I was heartbroken, afraid it was maybe Sal he loved all along. But then they mentioned the girl friend, and everything was all right again.

Maybe. (But who is she?? I'll scratch her eyes out!)

The thing about Jon Hamm is that he is a somewhat more rugged version of Anthony Perkins in his youth. Perkins had a sort of supernatural beauty before age and AIDS withered him up into an old walnut. Hamm naturally has a sort of GQ look, that "I was born to wear a tux" aura that is so rare in men. Cary Grant had it, but I've never felt any sort of attraction to him (in spite of the fact that he was probably also a good-smelling man, if gay).

So how does JH smell? A hint of warm sandalwood; some aftershave remeniscent of Old Spice; a neutral deodorant we can't name; a soupcon of bourbon, but maybe from yesterday; Lucky Strikes, not the smoke but the unburned shreds of tobacco with its golden, molasses-y scent; fine quality wool; leather jacket worn earlier today; clean shirt, with the man-smell just barely sifting through.

Sheer torture.

Ducking for apples, or, the queen of the quotes

Yeah, I know, posting quotes from famous writers is pretty cheesy, and maybe I could think up a better idea if I weren't so preoccupied with finding an agent to represent my (third) novel. It has me dancing on a bed of needles, my nerves jumping at every turn.

So let's think about something else, shall we? Meaning, one Dorothy Parker, a writer known for her sardonic poetry and even more sardonic quips ("One more drink and I'll be under the host", "You can lead a whore to culture, but you can't make her think.")

Parker was brilliant, but she was also lightning-quick, fast on the verbal draw. She and her buds sat around a big round table at the Algonquin Hotel and drank their lunch every day. Quips flew like ping-pong balls, which is kind of surprising because these guys (all guys, except Dottie Parker) were so inebriated they could barely stand up. But then, this was the Jazz Age, and drinking was forbidden, a little naughty, and necessary fuel for the writing life.

Some of her best quotes seem to come out of the air, meaning they were likely part of a larger conversation. Such as the one about ducking for apples: "There but for a typographical error is the story of my life." And how did that sweet little debutante injure her leg? "Sliding down a barrister."

You don't get paid for these things ("a girl's best friend is her mutter"), so Dottie really had to scrape hard to make a living. She wrote grand short stories, as well as the kind of whimsical verse made popular by Ogden Nash - except that it went like this: "Three be the things I shall have till I die,/Laughter and hope and a sock in the eye." Book reviewing kept her afloat, and books were piled everywhere in her messy apartment, along with empty bottles, leftover cheese sandwiches, eviction notices, and assorted poodles.

Parker had a soul-friend named Robert Benchley, a humorist who was kind of like Bennett Cerf (God, why do I know about Bennett Cerf??). They never had sex, or at least I don't think they did, but they loved each other in a special way. I once considered writing a memoir of my crushes on men, titled Searching for Robert Benchley. (Don't anybody steal that, I might still use it.)

Poor Dottie. Though she lived to be over 70, she became increasingly bizarre and snappish with the years, so that her league of loyal friends thinned out. She could still get off a good one now and then ("This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."), but as the years passed, her life was loneliness, booze, TV game shows and messy old dogs.

What's the point of all this? Dorothy Parker is incredibly famous, but what exactly did she contribute? A few slight plays, even slighter verse, short stories that were memorable but not great. She was a personality, a package deal, and when you think about it, all writers need to be that way: a walking advertisement for their work, if not for themselves.

Writers are the delivery device for what they write. They must get out there and live it. Work it! And try not to get too drunk in the meantime.

Does it have to be that way? Does it?