Harold on my mind (again!)

                                                                  Girls. . .

Girls-girls. . .

GIRLS - GIRLS - GIRLS!!

Harold always liked to up the ante. For him, more was always better. I think these shots are from one of his early talkies, The Milky Way, in which he plays a milkman who is accidentally catapulted to fame as a prizefighter. How he ends up with all these dames we'll never know, but he sure looks happy.

Harold loved women - he made no secret of it, and liked to photograph them - nude - in 3D.  If I had the guts I'd post some of his nude shots of pinup girls like Bettie Page. The family isn't trying to hide any of this, as they put out a coffee-table-type book of his 3D Nudes a decade or so ago. The poses are spectacularly hokey, early Playboy with a touch of surrealism. The book comes with hokey 3D spectacles that don't work very well. Actually, MY copy, which I bought used from Amazon, didn't have the spectacles and I had to use the ones that came with the DVD boxed set, The Harold Lloyd Comedy Collection.

I think I've posted this before, but I have a feeling no one reads this stuff every single day of their lives and thus MIGHT have missed it. I couldn't help but see a certain eerie similarity between these two photos.

Very early Woody Allen does bear a kind of resemblance to Lloyd, without the physical feats (though apparently Woody Allen was  a talented ball player who played down his athletic prowess because it didn't fit his nerdy image). He's hapless and misunderstood, but somehow or other by the end of the picture, he always gets the girl.

By the way, Woody Allen was for some reason not interested in getting involved in the biopic which will be adapted from The Glass Character. I'll just have to go to Marty or Clint (or Ronnie or Steve).

These are Lloyd candid shots. This is what he did between takes or while waiting for his girl friend. He was a sly devil and to me, always looked a bit seductive.

Making up for The Kid Brother, a tender, lyrical movie that is in my top six Lloyd favorites. The reissued movie has a score by Carl Davis that makes me cry.

Harold was a non-drinker who ran to ice cream floats. There was something of the earnest Midwestern boy in him that was endearing, though it did include a petulant temper. Last night I watched Kevin Brownlow's documentary The Third Genius (again!) and was charmed by the way his Nebraskan accent popped out in certain places. "Forehead" came out something like "foah-hayyd". In Movie Crazy, I remember him exclaiming, "The stock market crayyshed!"

OK, so I lied - I'm going to post some of the nude shots! These are almost decorous by today's standards, and the frontal shots never show much below the waist. The women look to me like skin sculptures, or maybe a 12-year-old boy's vision of what a nude woman might look like. He liked some meat on his women, which is commendable. Today's 6-foot-tall, stick-thin models probably wouldn't interest him.

Yes, yes, I told you they were weird! Maybe all those buckles did it for him, who knows.

Uhhhhh. . .

It must have taken him quite a lot of effort to get that spider on the wall.

(POST-POST: I just had the most evil thought about The Milky Way. It sounds like the title for Milky the Clown's  memoirs, or perhaps a religion where thousands of devotees in clown suits drink poisoned Twin Pines milk and die in a heap.)

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Five deadly words you never want to hear

“I love you."

"Thank you!”

I heard this deadly five-word conversation on The Big Bang Theory not long ago, as part of Leonard and Penny’s six-year-long dance around each other. They sleep together; they don’t sleep together. They date; they don’t date. They see other people for a while, sometimes quite a while, and then. . .

And then poor, vulnerable Leonard drops the l-bomb.

Penny, completely disconcerted, reacts with a stunned silence, almost as if she's been slapped. Then blurts out the response that makes Leonard's heart sink into the floor.

"Thank you."

To lay oneself open in what may be the most vulnerable statement that exists, only to have it politely dismissed, indicates that the person you had all those tender, passionate feelings for dwells on a separate planet, and probably always will.

People assume this disastrous emotional misfire only happens in "relationships", which has somehow come to mean "boy-girl with sex". But it used to apply more broadly. I know about the l-bomb because it happened to me a few years ago, and though it wasn't BGWS, the script was almost exactly the same. The other person, someone I knew as a close friend through a 12-step program, probably believed they were responding appropriately and even kindly. Fairly. Isn’t that the right thing to say when you receive a compliment?

Of course. "Thank you" is a perfectly good response. 

Is "love" always seen as "romantic love" now and nothing else? I am beginning to wonder. Or do those three little words just cause certain people to turn tail and run?

In my case, it seems to me I’ve lived my life on the dark side of the moon, meaning I give much more than I receive. Oddly enough, I am often seen as selfish because what I give isn’t understood, or else isn’t the “right” thing and does not exactly fit the slot of what is required. What I have to give is suspect or too different, even if it represents an avalanche of love.

In fact, I think that’s the whole problem.

When love is doled out with an eyedropper, it does not exactly match an avalanche of love. When do things match in life? Never. But being on another planet, a very lonely one, is a whole different thing.

When, after years and years of dissatisfaction and pain, you finally break and begin to explain to the other person what you think is really going on, they are completely confused. Not only do they expect you to stick to the script (i. e. accept them exactly the way they are, even if they have had multiple drug slips and are going down for the third time), they are shocked and baffled and even offended when you deviate from it and don’t seem to care if you are finally expressing what you really feel.

But that’s not the purpose of the relationship. Not any more. It has become a chess game: your move; my move. If anyone deviates, it’s wrong and spoils the rhythm, requiring an immediate correction.

This has happened to me too many times, and not just in the perilous waters of 12-step groups where, in spite of a lot of smoke-blowing, emotional dishonesty and manipulation is practically the norm. I don’t know why I am always at the bottom end of the seesaw. I suppose the self-help gurus would say that I engineer it that way, that I make it happen myself (neatly letting all those abusive jerks off the hook: how they must love this theory!) in order to shortchange myself. And when you have grown up with alcoholism and sexual abuse as daily fare (completely denied by the family as nasty lies), perhaps it’s not hard to see why.

Any love I have seems to hang  by a spider’s thread. I’m an emotional sharecropper: “yes, massuh!” What’s the matter with me? I should be more grateful. Or so it seems. When your best intentions to help are met with an offended silence, when you risk being gutted by opening your soul ONE MORE TIME, when you make the ultimate statement and receive a handshake in return, it devastates in a way I cannot really describe.

I love you. Thanks! I’m dying inside. That's too bad!  I’m going to commit suicide now. Here, I’ll show you to the bridge!

It’s not quite like that, but when the other person is completely puzzled and thinks you’re being unreasonable and even mean when you somehow hope for more, you get that ice floe feeling. A nice pan of ice; a good hard shove.

I love you. Nice knowing you.

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You say it's your birthday

Lauren, in her Jailhouse Rock dance costume, blows out her half of the candles at the girls' joint Birthday Extravaganza last month. Lauren had six candles, Erica had eight, and both ended up with at least two boy friends.

This looked perfect, until I realized I had no tits

Me 'n the Bobster are this tight.

GOD, I wish I had written this!!

An erotic illusion

This is a painting I stumbled on, End of the Ball by Rogelio de Egusquiza, as usual when I was looking for something else. I thought it was supremely gorgeous, quite erotic, and seemed to embody that old term "swept off her feet". She looks like she is swooning in his arms, resting her full weight on him. If he let go of her, she would fall. He holds her delicately, almost gingerly, as she collapses into him in an attitude of erotic surrender. 

But then, hey hey, what is this?

It's some sort of odd old photograph, obviously meant as a model of sorts for the gorgeous erotic painting. But it is hardly erotic. She leans awkwardly towards his shoulder while he holds her stiffly (the two don't know each other, after all), and their hands are literally held up by a pole, reminding me of the braces used in Victorian post-mortem photography where the corpse was propped up in a "lifelike" pose. Most ludicrous of all is the wooden stool holding up the train of her exquisite gown, presumably so the artist can get the racy, shocking exposed foot just right. (I can't see the foot in the photo. Perhaps it was just too unthinkable to expose oneself in such a manner.)

It's kind of like seeing the undergirding of an exquisite building or sculpture, the mundane bones of the thing. I wonder here however if this photo was taken merely as a reference. Any artist worth his salt would need to work from "life", not a two-dimensional black-and-white photo. He would need to see skin pigment and folds of silk and individual petals. These models, if they did pose for him, probably had to hold the pose for hours. No wonder they used that prop. (And what if they had to go to the bathroom? It's hard for me to believe that people DID go to the bathroom in those days.) But the stool under the skirt just ruins the whole thing.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

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Twilight Zone - The Midnight Sun Clip

MUST READ! SEVEN KEYS to Prosperity, Wealth, and Happiness!

MUST READ:  Seven Keys to Lifelong Properity (Read 

right now this minute or your nose will fall off)

Hey!  Do you like to read those catchy lists you’re seeing everywhere these days, listing ten or seven or nineteen Best Ofs or Worst Ofs or Craziest or Sanest or Most Gross and Disgusting? YOU DO? Then, hey - this is your lucky day! So let's read it right now this minute: WHY WE SHOULD READ LISTS!

1. Lists are the hot thing now! They really are! That means they're good! Lists catch everybody’s attention! That means they want to read them, RIGHT NOW! That means they SHOULD read them, right now! That means they DO read them, RIGHT NOW!


2. It doesn’t matter if the lists have any content or not because that’s not the point! In fact, the less content the lists have, the better!

3. Lists make us think the person who made the list KNOWS SOMETHING! It means he looks SMART and isn't just somebody with the intelligence of an orangutan!


4. Not only that! Because the items are NUMBERED, the list makes us think that this person knew how to PUT THESE THINGS IN ORDER! Really! They’re not just slammed up here randomly to fill space (even if they are).

5. These lists are almost always accompanied by pop-up ads that pop up (maybe that’s why they’re called pop-up ads!), like popcorn or gophers or some other thing that pops up (maybe Pop Tarts?). Nobody knows why that is! But nobody cares, either!

6. Lists kind of boil everything down to a few words of one syllable so you don’t have to do any actual reading or thinking, which is a real time-saver in today’s stress-filled world!


7. Seven things is too many things to come up with right now so we’ll just say seven things even though it’s really six, because “six things” just sounds totally lame, you know? (And who's counting anyway?) But SEVEN things just seems magical, special, and something you JUST HAVE TO READ. And DON'T say I made a mistake in the title cuz I speled it in Tweetspeak where shorter is always better!

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What your mother never told you about writing

If you're a freelance writer and aren't used to being ignored, neglected, and generally given short shrift, you must not have been in the business very long.

Poppy Z. Brite 


Coleridge was a drug addict. Poe was an alcoholic. Marlowe was killed by a man whom he was treacherously trying to stab. Pope took money to keep a woman's name out of a satire then wrote a piece so that she could still be recognized anyhow. Chatterton killed himself. Byron was accused of incest. Do you still want to a writer - and if so, why?

Bennett Cerf

The work never matches the dream of perfection the artist has to start with. 

William Faulkner

I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within.

Gustave Flaubert


Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

Robert A. Heinlein 

It's tougher than Himalayan yak jerky in January.

Richard Krzemien 

Writing is not a genteel profession. It's quite nasty and tough and kind of dirty.

Rosemary Mahoney 

A person who publishes a book wilfully appears before the populace with his pants down.

Edna St. Vincent Millay


Follow the path of your aroused thought, and you will soon meet this infernal inscription: There is nothing so beautiful as that which does not exist.

Paul Valery 

Writing is so difficult that I feel that writers, having had their hell on earth, will escape all punishment hereafter.

Jessamyn West


I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again. 

Oscar Wilde 

If writing seems hard, it’s because it is hard. It’s one of the hardest things people do.William Zinsser 


Easy reading is damned hard writing.

Anonymous

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Sex and cigarettes

How is it that when certain movies come on TV, you drop what you're doing and watch them even if you don't like them very much? Or, at least, when said movies are seriously flawed.

This happens with Now, Voyager - EVERY time. Though I know it's nothing more than a semi-intelligent soaper with pretensions of a Heroic Journey (circa 1942), there's just something about Miz Charlotte and her travail (tra-Vale?) that sucks me in every time.

Speaking of suck. From the beginning of this thing, even before Charlotte Vale the sad little rich girl metamorphoses into Charlotte Vale the sad little rich WOMAN (having been screwed  in the tropics by Gerry, the biggest asshole to come down the turnpike since Jimmy Cagney shoved the grapefruit in Mae Clarke's face), there is smoking. Lots and lots of smoking. Charlotte the repressed spinster smokes in her room, and it's a wonder she doesn't set the whole place on fire by being so secretive with her butts.

Suck, suck, suck. Just picture all those cancer cells forming deep down in the lungs. Yet in that era, sex and seduction were all intertwined with cigarettes. In this movie, smoking is more ritualized than in any other I can think of. Gerry (a carnivorous bastard happily juggling two women, neither of which can actually have him) has a charming habit of shoving two cigarettes in his face, lighting them both in a great livid explosion, then handing one of them to Charlotte like she's being granted her last wish before being executed.

Ah, those smoldering looks. He can afford to smolder because he has no goddamn responsibilities whatsoever. This is one of several things that bother the hell out me about this movie - that, and the way he is portrayed as some sort of saint when he's really just busy cattin' around from woman to woman  and blowing lots of smoke. The other thing that sets my teeth on edge is that daughter of his, Tina, a whiny, clingy sort of lamprey whom Charlotte fastens on to as a DEVICE (no less) to force Gerry to stay in her life and not chase the next piece of tail that comes down the turnpike.

Ahhhh! Gerry in that tent or wherever-the-fuck they are! Out somewhere. Anyway, they're all bundled up talking (smoking, too, I think) and there's this big fire in the fireplace, and then the fire burns down real low and the camera pans back to them and it looks like she's wearing his pajamas. This means they must have had sex. Charlotte keeps referring to it over and over again in the most coy manner possible, i. e. telling her fiance (whom she rejects, maybe because he's too nice or doesn't smoke enough) that she "must sound depraved", which she does. But when you think about it, screwing around with a married man IS a form of moral turpitude and can't really be defended, even if Charlotte takes on the noble, selfless role of Tina's quasi-mother to save Gerry's family/keep him on the string. 

But ya gotta wonder. . . are these guys smokin', or tokin'?

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Pretty poison

Maybe I should title this post "nasty behaviour from nice people". Or at least, people who truly believe they are nice, and who have convinced everyone around them that they're nice.

But what's that smell?

I'll tell you. They exude just a trace of toxic fumes, just enough to unsettle those with a good enough olfactory sense to pick it up. This is confusing because it doesn't match up with their social gloss.

Sociopaths? Of course not. This could be your Aunt Edna - in fact, it probably is your Aunt Edna.. Do these people even know they are taking people by the nose and twisting it as hard as they can?

Probably not. Their self-awareness is close to zero, whereas their ability to size up and minutely analyze their prey is astonishing.

The better to eat them with.

The first example, which is often quite subtle and usually happens over the phone, is one I call "and how is". This person incessantly asks after others. Your husband, your brother, your children, your gynecologist, your garage mechanic. You sort of go along with it, feeling increasingly squirmy and not knowing why.

I WILL TELL YOU WHY.

When a person incessantly "asks after" people, it makes them look super-polite and interested in other people, which is always a good thing, isn't it? Admirable, isn't it? Then why does the person posing all the questions never actually SAY anything? And why, when you finally hang up after 90 minutes of "and how is", do you feel like you could drop dead in your tracks?

Because they have siphoned you, that's why. Pretty Poison people are emotional vampires, and they know all sorts of subtle ways to suck your vital energy so that it becomes their own. "And how is" means they never have to say anything, so YOU have to do all the talking (read: self-revealing). After a while you realize you can't get out of this. You are forced to tell, tell, tell, until eventually you're telling them things you never intended to reveal to anyone.

Meantime, the person on the other end remains in a secure and invulnerable fortress, completely safe from any kind of probing. He/she has just laid the other person open, even gutted them, while remaining completely defended and protected. Genius, isn't it.

Oh God, we're just starting here! I'll never get them all in, but I'll try. Turning it around. This was a favorite ploy in my family of origin. I knew I had been emotionally abused as a child, and my sister even acknowledged it years ago. But when I stated it a little more firmly in a letter, there was a huge outcry that I was being horribly abusive. How could I even think of accusing anyone in this family of anything except loving kindness? My Dad's alcoholism, which my sister had clearly acknowledged on paper, was suddenly sucked back and no longer existed. The wagons went in a circle and I was shut out. Later I discovered that when my mother died, my name was casually left out of the obituary as if I had never existed. The record had been wiped clean.

That's what you get for messing with such "nice" people.

I'll make this one short, but it's especially awful: a thin girl says, "oh, I'm so FAT" in front of a girl who truly is fat. I don't need to add more to this one, as it happens all the time, with adults as well as children.

"You're too sensitive." (Corollary, kicking it up a notch: "You're crazy.") This too-sensitive amateur diagnosis means the other person has license to treat you like shit stuck to somebody's shoe. If you react at all, you're obviously fucked up. Another nice way of abdicating responsibility and making the injured party the source of the problem.

There's one I call "vague-ing". Pretending not to remember things, commitments, messages, etc. and claiming these things either never happened, or were so insignificant as to not even register. Often these are related to having your basic needs met in the relationship (chief among them acknowledgement that you exist). This involves ignoring, consistently losing or "misplacing" important things: "oh, did you send me something? It's just that I get SO many emails, maybe yours just got lost."  But if you call them on all this toxic swill, suddenly YOU are being unkind and hypercritical. "Why are you picking on ME for something so petty? I really think you need to work on your abandonment issues." (Assuming the role of "healer" when you're hopelessly fucked-up yourself deserves a post of its own.)

Dumptruck Syndrome. This occurs especially after a breakup. The phone calls gradually escalate and become more and more one-sided, but it is impossible to get away without just hanging up. Winding it up is agonizing, and the call "ends" about fifteen times before another freshet of self-pity cascades down and washes your vitality down the drain. These can also come by email, usually from the person who completely ignored your messages because they "just get so many emails, they can't keep track of them all" (see above). And yet, strangely enough, they suddenly tell you that "you're the only person in the world who understands me" (often accompanied by vague threats of suicide). So how can you fail to support them in their hour of need? What's the matter with you - how heartless can a person be?

A related syndrome is Human Vacuum Cleaner. Often you don't even know you're being sucked. This is usually an especially nice, compassionate person who is essentially alone except for her cats. Every time you try to have a conversation with her, it immediately slides into "drone mode" - endless chains of boring drivel about her Grade 10 biology teacher and the color of tie he wore to school, or the symbolic dream she had last night about her cats standing up on two legs and walking around, or New Age crap books you wouldn't touch with a 10-foot pole. (Later she will press one of them into your hands, leaving you with the uncomfortable feeling that you "owe" her, and ask you incessantly "how much you liked it".) You start to feel an actual, physical sucking sensation, being drawn into her astonishingly dull orbit, and on the phone it's so bad you disappear into the receiver and can't be found. She never states outright that you are her only friend, but one day she unleashes a torrent of dark childhood memories and recounts all the gruesome forms of self-mutilation she has never told anyone else about. This is just before referring to her cat as her "spouse".

If one of these parasites saw this article, they would probably say, look, you'd better read this one, it sounds exactly like you.

Jesus! It sucks.

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