80 years young(er)

These aren't representative of the whole clan, I'm afraid, but they did turn out nice. The occasion was my daughter-in-law's stepfather's 80th birthday (not as complicated as it sounds!). The pics of little Lauren came out the best. She's a gifted photographer at age three, and took that great shot of the other grandpa (in the grey shirt), Papa Gunning!
(P. S. The birthday boy, Aime Therrien, isn't really a Shriner. He just looks that way.)

I don't understand this at all: Harold Lloyd synchronicity

When I started this blog some months ago, I had a sort-of theme in mind.

I wanted it to be basically an ad for my fiction, so maybe, just maybe, somebody-out-there might see it and take some sort of an interest.

I mean, somebody who might be able to help.

This didn't happen. Instead, I became more close-mouthed than ever about the subject of my latest (unpublished) novel, The Glass Character, a fictionalized account of the life and times of silent screen comedian Harold Lloyd.

You know: that Harold Lloyd. The ordinary fellow, looking a little geeky in his hornrimmed glasses, who ended up doing daredevil stunts such as hanging off the hands of a huge clock 20 stories up.

I can't get into the complex, often paradoxical life of Lloyd right now. Instead, I want to write about some (many!) examples of synchronicity I've experienced since I began to research and write about this man a couple of years ago.

Synchronicity being, as I understand it, coincidences that don't seem like coincidences because of their existential/emotional significance. Or, in this case, sheer numbers.

It started small. I'd see the name Lloyd on a street sign, on the side of a truck or train, on a realtor's sign, in movie credits, in novels, in magazine pieces, in - well, it could be anywhere.

This escalated over time. It became routine to get at least one Lloyd-sighting somewhere, every day. I mean, every day. Sometimes, there were two or three.

"Oh, you're just noticing it because that's what you're writing about," my friend claimed. Ahhhh, maybe. But when I watched an odd little British comedy called The Wrong Box, I counted, not one, not two, not three. . .

There were five references to the name Lloyd, in the credits (2), in the cast (2), and even in a list, the Tontine, which was the pivotal subject of the movie. When people got bumped off, their name was crossed off the list. One of those names was Lloyd.

Would it surprise you if I said I am still getting this, nearly two years later? The name Lloyd jumps out at me from a newspaper article (but never when I am looking for it!), a doctor's sign, a DOG'S name (yes, a dog!), or just about anywhere else. And in Googling "Lloyd synchronicity", I had to give up after only a few examples.

One blogger kept encountering the name Frank Lloyd Wright, over and over and over again. A Kathrine Lloyd had a display of art prints called Synchronicity. Elizabeth Lloyd Mayer, a psychiatrist, contributed to a paper on synchronicity, a subject both acknowledged and discredited in the psychiatric realm. (Nobody wants to look that crazy, so everyone thinks they're the only one.) And so on, and on, and on, probably into the hundreds, if not the thousands.

Maybe I should tell you about the gold beads, or maybe I shouldn't, because I can't guarantee I didn't misinterpret this. Along with being a serious painter, dog breeder, amateur scientist, photographer, and Imperial Potentate of the Shriners, Harold Lloyd was a master magician, adept at sleight-of-hand (and this in spite of the fact that he lost the thumb, index finger and half the palm of his right hand in an accident early in his career). He made things appear. He made things disappear, then appear again. The coin behind your ear, or -

OK. Things started to disappear, but only in a certain spot in the house. It was in the centre of the bedroom upstairs. Watches went away. Rings. Gold pens. It was weird.

Then came the gold beads. Or, rather, the one. I have a necklace with four tiny charms, each representing one grandchild. I had these mounted on a gold hoop earring, and for some reason I wanted to unfasten it, perhaps to change the order of the charms.

The four were separated by small gold beads.

I unfastened the hoop, and, ta-poinggggg. One of the gold beads shot across the room and disappeared.

I was plenty miffed. I crawled all over the bedroom floor on my hands and knees. No gold bead. Vacuumed and vacuumed, then searched the gritty, fuzzy contents. No gold bead.

It maddened me. I looked for another gold bead, and could not find one just like it.

So I sort of gave up. Months went by. Maybe a year. I was walking around in my bare feet in the opposite side of the bedroom from the ta-poinggggg, then felt something sticking on the sole of my foot.

"Aha!" I cried. "Lloyd, you've done it again!"

I put the gold bead into a tiny drawer in my jewellery box.

More time went by, maybe months. I was walking barefoot in another part of the bedroom. I felt something stuck to the bottom of my foot.

Oh no.

Maybe, somehow, had the gold bead jumped out of the drawer? Or what? I knew I didn't have another one. I had already given up and replaced all the beads with shitty-looking ones, and glued the hoop shut. No more ta-poingggggs for me.

So I put the bead in the drawer with the other one. But you're not going to believe what happened after that.

I now have three perfect gold beads in the drawer. Does this have anything to do with the fact that the rather odd, not-terribly-common name Lloyd keeps popping up every day, sometimes two or three different times in different contexts?

What does it all mean? Lloyd always looks to me as if it spells something backwards. It almost spells "dolly".

It maddens me, because right now I have no prospects at all. I think The Glass Character is the best thing I've ever written, and at the moment it looks like it will die on the vine because agents and publishers won't even read my covering letter before firing it back at me with a (quite literal) rubber-stamped rejection that makes form letters look respectful.

Harold, either lay off, or help me here! I have enjoyed your presence immensely, but I can't believe it has no other purpose than to provide an odd but enjoyable experience, the kind you wouldn't want to relate at a psychiatric conference.

After all. . . they might think you're crazy.

Nephrologist: say it three times, backwards

The surprising thing about being, so help me, 57 years old (as of yesterday: happy birthday to me!), is that your insides age just like your outsides. Or maybe a bit more.

You can't see in there, and if you're not having any obvious problems, you can (wrongly) conclude that everything is chugging away normally.

I seemed to be chugging away normally, except that my doctor (not the one I complained about a few posts ago) noticed an elevation in something called creatinine. Oh dear. Creatinine isn't a good thing if it's elevated. It was, in fact, elevated just a tiny bit, but this particular doctor, being a specialist and a nitpicker, decided to refer me to another specialist who turned out to be an even bigger nitpicker.

This was Dr. Schachter, the nephrologist.

Nowadays, instead of doctoring the whole person, most docs choose one part of the body and study it furiously. There are advantages and disadvantages to this approach.

The advantage is, these guys really know their stuff. Though I didn't know Dr. Schachter and didn't at all know what to expect, I was amazed at how thorough the exam was: far more thorough than the cursory open-the-mouth-and-look-at-the-horse's-teeth thing I have come to expect once a year from my family doctor.

The not-so-good thing is that, in focusing on only one body part, you can forget about all the rest, or not put it in the context of the whole person.

This guy, the nephrologist, had done a dizzying battery of tests on my blood and urine, stuff I'd never even heard of, but that didn't matter because he knew what it was. And he knew all the right questions to ask. He asked a lot of them. This might have got my back up, since some of it was pretty personal (I'm kind of attached to my kidneys), but for some reason it didn't.

Maybe it was bedside manner, a kind of professional concern that is missing from most medical care these days. It's as if doctors are afraid their patients will get attached to them or, even worse, trust them. This is why I often have that shoo'ed-out feeling with certain of my doctors. When you're feeling anxious about something and have it brushed off as hypochondria or sheer foolishness, it hurts.

When you hear horror stories of blatant misdiagnosis or doctors who overlook serious disease completely, it makes your hair stand on end.

This guy, however, well, for some reason I felt completely comfortable, and who knows why. For one thing, he was very (very very very) young. I swear these guys get younger every year. It could be that med schools are finally telling these guys and dolls to please, please consider the whole person while you're focusing so fiercely on those kidney-shaped organs on either side of the torso.

I noticed several other things about my visit. One was that the office, almost brand new, had been built so close to the exit of the Skytrain station that I blew right past it and couldn't find it. The hidden message seemed to be: don't rely on your cars so much, folks, it ain't healthy. Or maybe the property was cheaper, I don't know

Another thing: the waiting room was full, and the average age of the patients must have ranged from 85 - 90. Most of them looked in rough shape, as if they spent most of their time in waiting rooms. One very elderly woman had one of those oxygen thingies on a pole, and she had to wheel it around with her.

I was the blushing young flower of the group at 57. It was strange. Yet, in spite of how ill everyone looked, there was lots of joking and laughing going on, mostly about the indignities of the procedures. I saw this as a form of valour, of not just enduring serious illness but finding a way to transcend it.

After poking, prodding, listening to this and that, and tapping me all over, Dr. Schacter talked to me about my kidneys. They were in pretty good shape at this point, but pretty good didn't mean perfect. I was surprised to learn my blood pressure is somewhat elevated. Ye gods! My body is ageing. So what's happening to this piece of meat inside my skull?

Looks like I will be returning to this oddly-located office at intervals, but I don't mind. Dr. S. is a real sweetheart, the kind of person who makes older women proudly exclaim, "My son, the doctor!".

And the place has one other advantage. It makes me feel so young.

And a few more

Couldn't resist a few more comparisons of Cass Ole with the kind of Arabian I see on web sites today. Whew. Though he does have a tapered muzzle, the head is more substantial, not so "dished", and the neck well set on the body, not abnormally curved.

Obviously, like vain actors, these horses have a "good side"!

A horse is a horse is a. . .?

I don't know how many times I've seen this movie, but it always knocks me out. Almost brings me to tears with its beauty.

It's simple: a boy and a horse on an isolated beach, all wildness and sand and blistering sun. And a story, without words, of incredible bonding. The kid, Kelly Reno, was wonderful in this movie and looked as if he did much of his own riding. The horse, however, was the real star: a "superhorse" by the name of Cass Ole.

This horse, more of a dark chestnut than a true black stallion, could really act! He wheeled, and snorted, and raged on command, and burst forward with spurts of headreeling speed. He followed the boy around with the curiosity of a dog, his shining flanks reflecting the sun like black silk. He stepped and turned as delicately as a dancer. This was a horse among horses, and I don't remember ever seeing one more magnificent, not just because of his classic Arabian conformation but the way he moved, which was somehow mysteriously spiritual.

OK THEN: I have a beef! Why is it that when I see pics of Arabians now, some 30 years later, they look so weird? Something has happened to their heads, for sure, and the necks. . . long, skinny, high-crested, they're nothing like Cass Ole's powerful, almost Morgan-like neck. These are toy horses that look like bizarre china figurines, or, worse, My Little Pony.

This is what happens when breeders get carried away. You end up with a ridiculous-looking thing (with no acting ability either). I don't know what happens to temperament with this much inbreeding, but it can't be good.

I think these creech-ers must be bred specifically for the show ring, so that they can be draped in long fringey things while the owner tries to look like one-a-dem Arab guys. It's ridiculous.

I didn't have one of them, of course, but when I was a girl we all thought the Arabian (we called then Arabs then) was some kind of ultimate dream horse. I read King of the Wind by Marguerite Henry, a fictionalized story of the Godolphin Arabian, one of the main foundation sires of the racing Thoroughbred. Arabians were fiery yet gentle ("My beautiful! My beautiful! that standest meekly by," etc., etc.), not too tall so you could leap on to his back without stirrups, and all that girl-dreaming jazz. We didn't know that Arabs or Arabians or whatever they were farted and pooped and consumed prodigious amounts of food and had things go wrong with their feet and threw you off if they didn't like you. But they sure didn't look like this.

Myth has it that the Arabian should have a muzzle tiny enough to drink from a teacup. Nowadays it's more like a thimble. I feel a little sorry for these beasts, with their tubular noses and enormous round nostrils. They look weird.

I'm sorry, but they do. Come back, Cass Ole. We need you.

OK, I'll get off this topic now

No, this ain't the Playboy mansion (or a bath house somewhere in deepest Arkansas): it's Ted Haggard and his hapless family having a nice hot soak. Don't know where he got the funds for his own hot tub, given his supposedly impoverished state.

I found this quote on a site about Haggard. I hereby respectfully share it with you, because frankly it made my hair stand on end. This is after his wife spoke passionately to a crowd of still-loyal followers.

"I was actually looking forward to hearing from him too, but he turned out to be a total train wreck. Still very bitter and angry at his old church. Maybe he’s a little justified there, but then he tried to crack a joke. Jets were flying over the arena we were in so he made this brilliant crack: “I hope those aren’t angry Muslims coming to fly those planes into this building.” No exaggeration, that’s a direct quote.
He followed that up with this great pearl of wisdom. When they asked him what advice he’d give a pastor struggling with sin, he said: “I would tell them to find a licensed therapist…..because they are legally bound by law to keep your secrets, that way if you ever run for governor or become famous they can’t use it against you and blackmail you.”

No mention of God or faith or prayer anywhere. But Haggard doesn't know how to spell the word: it always comes out "prey".

Ted. . . Fred. . . Fraud

It amazes me how quickly spare change can morph into wooden nickels.

Case in point. About a month ago, a homeless guy named Ted Williams (probably not his real name) "went viral" on YouTube for standing on a streetcorner in camouflage holding a piece of cardboard. On the video, this scruffy wraith spoke with a rich booming announcer's voice, and soon everyone in the nation was throwing job offers at him: advertising voiceovers, sportscasting, Disney characters (well, maybe). They did this to show the world how swell THEY were, not how swell they thought Ted was.

Everything moved so quickly, in a kind of blur. The story devolved from day to day: Ted not showing up for appointments. Ted acting strangely, speaking incoherently. Ted being taken in by police for an "altercation" with his daughter. Ted being lambasted on Dr. Phil for blowing all the opportunities life was throwing at him.

Just give the guy a job, and it'll all work out, won't it? His addiction, his criminal past, his nine alienated children by many different mothers, his current crack-whore girl friend, all these problems will melt away and he'll show up for work in the morning smiling, shaven and wearing a suit.

Right now his handlers are claiming we shouldn't worry that he bailed on expensive, paid-for rehab to hustle on the streets of Columbus again. He's receiving "outpatient" therapy, no doubt at a local watering hole.

It's tempting to blame Ted for all this. OK, I DO blame Ted for all this! But the bozos who thought they could immediately change entrenched, life-threatening behavior and a criminal past by throwing money at it were beyond naive. Where have they been hiding all these years?

So now I can't help but bring another Ted into the mishmosh, Ted Haggard, the not-gay pastor, who's now saying he's not bisexual but would be if he were 21 years old.

I don't get it. I don't get that he is now admitting he paid a gay hooker to masturbate him while high on crystal meth (not to mention his solitary activities while watching gay porn), but still hedges on admitting he's gay. Or even bisexual.

I don't know of any straight men who do this, or who even want to do this. I think he's dancing around a subject which obviously makes him profoundly uncomfortable. I think he's trying to save his face and his ass at the same time.

I think he's a fraud.

His new little barn church makes me wonder, too. I watched that TLC program in which he threw the doors of his crude sanctuary open to the wretched sinners of the earth. The darker the sin, the more he wanted you. This church was for really ba-a-a-a-a-ad people, sort of like Pastor Ted (who still isn't gay. Or bisexual. Though he would be if he was 21.)

Then I found a curious newspaper article from two years ago, saying Pastor Haggard had just opened up a new church in his barn. So he did this twice?

Or once more for the cameras?

These two Teds have certain things in common. They're both grandstanders who have learned how to fake sincerity. Both have traded on their wretchedness and on the public's fascination with the fallen.

Can they be redeemed? Well, what the hell does that mean? The man who once led a multimillion-dollar religious empire is now diving for spare change. The guy who chose the name of a famous ballplayer for his nom du guerre has slipped back into the poisonous stream of hustling for dope and dodging for dimes.

We love stories about how the mighty have fallen and been rescued by the grace of God and a wad of cash. But what do we do when these paragons of redemption fall on their asses again?

Kelsey's harem: blonde on blonde

Right, so everybody's been a-sayin' how much Kelsey Grammer's latest fiancee looks like the woman he's been trying so hard to shake off like so much sticky flypaper.

That Camille woman. The one he pledged to love and honor and blah blah blah blah for the rest of his life.

But we've dredged up one more, this Tammi Baliszewskinivitch (I think). She's a pretty close match to the other two but has had a lot more work done, perhaps because she goes back farther. Saw her on TV the other day, not that I ever watch entertainment shows (blush), and she had an acidy twangy voice, a standard issue nose, very much done to her eyes, and big blubbery lips. I wonder why women think it's attractive to have big blubbery lips.

Anyway, I didn't post this a-kuzza-da fact that the horse 'n' poodle pics are so much more attractive, but I found an old (OLD-old) cover of People Magazine showing Kelsey and Tammi (at least she wasn't called Tawni or Bambi) beaming into the camera. The caption reads, "Happy at last with a hit show and a new love, FRASIER's once-wild star is ready for marriage - and to fight a tabloid sex scandal." Oh, what was that about, anyway? Boinking the babysitter, wasn't it? And apparently, ready as he seemed to be for marriage, it didn't happen.

I was watching and trying to enjoy a series on PBS called Pioneers of Television. This must show my age, but I have a compulsive craving for this sort of thing. They interview extremely aged ex-stars that you never thought could've survived this long (James Garner trying to hide his utter baldness with a pretentious cowboy hat; Fess Parker looking like Fess Parker's great-grandfather; and so on down to Angie Dickinson, who said that playing a sex symbol came naturally to her because she "just had to be herself"). But there was something about the narration that sort of made my flesh crawl.

Oh no.

It was Kelsey Grammer, who couldn't just leave the material alone but had to inject it with foaming artificial calories like nine cups of Kool Whip shoved into your mouth at once. It just felt effusive and overdone, oily almost. "Here! I! Am! Na! Ra! Ting! A! Show! A! Bout! T! V! Legends!", and stufflikethat.

He has replicated his Frasier-era fiancee Tammi-Lynn Whateveritis at least twice that we know of. ("He's getting older," Tammi quipped, "but the wives are staying the same.") There are no doubt a couple more exes hiding in the woodwork waiting to sell their stories, and that's not to mention all the Barbies lined up in his future. But by now we know his type. Stunning, slim, long blonde hair, just shy of 30, and content to hang on (or off) his arm while he smarms his way around Hollywood.

There's something disturbing about this man. But it looks like he can have any blonde he wants. Providing she's human.

Why won't my doctor listen?

Is this too inflammatory to write about?

We're all so dependent on the medical profession, especially as we age (and we're all doing that). We find we're developing symptoms, some of them mild and some of them alarming. And we don't know what they mean, and we don't know why they won't go away.

We're lucky if they go away. If they don't, we may have to step onto a dizzying merry-go-round (or awful-go-round) of baffling "treatment" that seems to be getting more and more removed from simple human attention.

It's easy to send someone away to the lab for a CAT scan or a blood test or for a consultation with a "specialist" who sees the world through the narrow lens of only one body part. When it all comes up negative, and if we try to speak up and say something like, no, that's not good enough, suddenly we're a "nuisance patient" with psychosomatic disorders (or maybe a hidden drug problem).

It gets worse. If we really have something wrong with us, it can be misdiagnosed and misdiagnosed for years, even decades, sometimes radically changing with every doctor you see. (Don't ask me how I know.) It can be mismedicated, overmedicated, or not medicated at all (though the former is more likely).

When your doctor packs you off to a "specialist", batten down the hatches and bring with you (along with a quart of your urine and an ultrasound of your kidneys) a medical dictionary, so you can try to keep up. You won't be able to. Doctors are taught to speak in this language, and it keeps them distant from all these needy people. These people who seem to want something totally unreasonable (care).

They used to call it care. It's rare now. Getting through medical school is a meat grinder, and only the strong survive. It's easier to send someone off to the lab than to try to figure out what is really going on within the context of the patient's individual life.

There is no solution to this. We're stuck with doctors, and with trying to deal with them and translate what they really mean. About a hundred years ago I went through an excruciating period in my life, didn't feel listened to at all (because I wasn't), and went through four doctors in the space of a year. I was labelled, if not branded, a hopeless hypochondriac who was "unstable" (and whatever you do, don't get labelled THAT).

When I finally found a good doctor, which I did, I stayed with her for fifteen years, until she finally retired. What happened to the diagnosis of hypochondriac? Were "they" wrong, did "they" misread a crisis situation and assume that I was that way all the time, throughout my entire life?

Yes!

That's called disrespect, and it's rife in the medical field. We're lab rats, folks, and finding real care is as rare as the dodo. "It's not that I'm calling you a malingerer," one doctor said to me. But who brought the subject up? I wanted to say back to him, but didn't dare, "It's not that I'm calling you a quack."

But I was. And he was. We are too often trapped by very limited options, and by the Byzantine labyrinth of professional bafflegab and passing the buck. But if we complain - oh, if we complain. . .

So I'm complaining, right now. I know this won't do any good. But I'm going to say to the medical profession what a doctor once said to me.

Shape up.

More Manglish!

(Note: these excerpts from the classic phrasebook English as she is Spoke have been boiled down enormously. Hope they still make sense.)

Of the Man.

The Brain The inferior lip
The brains The superior lip
The fat of the Leg The marrow
The ham The reins

Defects of the body.

A blind A left handed
A lame An ugly
A bald A squint-eyed
A deaf

Degrees of kindred.

The gossip the quater-grandfather
The gossip mistress The quater-grandmother
The Nurse A guardian
A relation An guardian
An relation A widower
An widow.

Trades.

Starch-maker Porter
Barber Chinaman
Coffeeman Founder
Porkshop-keeper Grave-digger
Cartwright Tradesman
Tinker, a brasier Stockingmender
Nailer Lochsmith

For the table.

Some knifes Some groceries
Some crumb.

Eatings.

Some sugar-plum Hog fat
Some wigs Some marchpanes
A chitterling sausages. An amelet
A dainty-dishes A slice, steak
A mutton shoulder Vegetables boiled to a pap

Seasonings.

Some wing Some pinions
Some cinnamon Some hog'slard
Some oranges Some verjuice

Drinkings.

Some orgeat Some paltry wine
Some sirup or sirop

Birds.

Becafico Heuth-cock
Calander Whoop
Stor Pea cock
Yeung turkey Pinch
Red-Breast, a robin

Insects-reptiles.

Asp, aspic Fly
Morpion Butter fly
Serpent.

Fishes and shell-fishes.

Calamary Large lobster
Dorado Snail
A sorte of fish Wolf
Hedge hog Torpedo
Sea-calf.

Colours.

White Gridelin
Cray Musk
Red.

Metals and minerals.

Starch Latten
Cooper Plaster
Vitriole

Weights.

Counterpoise An obole
A pound an half A quater ounce.

Games.

Football-ball Pile
Bar Mall
Gleek Even or non even
Carousal Keel

Perfumes.

Benzion Pomatum
Perfume paw Storax

On the church.

The sides of the nef The little cellal
The holywater-pot The boby of the church

Music's instruments.

A flagelet A dreum
A hurdy-gurdy.

Chastisements.

A fine To break upon
Honourable fine To tear off the flesh
To draw to four horses

POSTSCRIPT: I can identify with "vegetables boiled to a pap" (the story of my childhood), but what the samhill is a "becafico"?

He is with nails up: a literary classic

ENGLISH AS SHE IS SPOKE

By Jose da Fonseca and Pedro Carolino

Here is a small fragment of a little-known classic: an English phrasebook created from translating Portuguese into French into English. Something got lost in the translation, but something else was gained: see for yourself!

(NOTE: For those who think I shouldn’t borrow things that rightfully belong to all of humanity: “This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net.”

So there.)

For to ride a horse.

Here is a horse who have a bad looks. Give me another; I will
not that. He not sail know to march, he is pursy, he is foundered.
Don't you are ashamed to give me a jade as like? he is undshoed,
he is with nails up; it want to lead to the farrier.

Your pistols are its loads?
No; I forgot to buy gun-powder and balls. Let us prick. Go us more
fast never I was seen a so much bad beast; she will not nor to
bring forward neither put back.
Strek him the bridle, hold him the reins sharters. Pique
stron gly, make to marsh him.
I have pricked him enough. But I can't to make march him.
Go down, I shall make march.
Take care that he not give you a foot kick's. Then he kicks for that I look? Sook here if I knew to tame hix.

One eyed was laied against a man which had good eyes that he saw
better than him. The party was accepted. "I had gain, over said the
one eyed; why I see you two eyes, and you not look me who one."

A duchess accused of magic being interrogated for a commissary
extremely unhandsome, this was beg him selve one she had look the
devil. "Yes, sir, I did see him, was answer the duchess, and he was
like you as two water's drops."

A Lady, which was to dine, chid to her servant that she not had used
butter enough. This girl, for to excuse him selve, was bing a little
cat on the hand, and told that she came to take him in the crime,
finishing to eat the two pounds from butter who remain. The Lady took
immediately the cat, was put into the balances it had not weighted
that one an half pound.

Idiotisms and Proverbs.

The necessity don't know the low.
Few, few the bird make her nest.
He is not valuable to breat that he eat.
Its are some blu stories.
Nothing some money, nothing of Swiss.
He sin in trouble water.
A bad arrangement is better than a process.
He has a good beak.
In the country of blinds, the one eyed men are kings.
To build castles in Espagnish.
Cat scalded fear the cold water.
To do the fine spirit.
With a tongue one go to Roma.
There is not any rnler without a exception.
Take out the live coals with the hand of the cat.
A horse baared don't look him the tooth.
Take the occasion for the hairs.
To do a wink to some body.
So many go the jar to spring, than at last rest there.
He eat untill to can't more.
Which like Bertram, love hir dog.
It want to beat the iron during it is hot.
He is not so devil as he is black.
It is better be single as a bad company.
The stone as roll not heap up not foam.
They shurt him the doar in face.
He has fond the knuckle of the business.
He turns as a weath turcocl.
There is not better sauce who the appetite.
The pains come at horse and turn one's self at foot.
He is beggar as a church rat.
So much go the jar to spring that at last it break there.
To force to forge, becomes smith.
Keep the chestnut of the fire with the cat foot.
Friendship of a child is water into a basket.
At some thing the misforte is good.
Burn the politeness.
Tell me whom thou frequent, I will tell you which you are.
After the paunch comes the dance.
Of the hand to mouth, one lose often the soup.
To look for a needle in a hay bundle.
To craunch the marmoset.
To buy cat in pocket.
To be as a fish into the water.
To make paps for the cats.
To fatten the foot.
To come back at their muttons.

Ted Haggard, the latest Swaggart

Since it's Sunday, I think it's time for a little confession.

I watched that goldern show about Ted Haggard. That TLC show. Which means it's likely the debut of a new reality series (and surely we need another one of those!)

He's the guy, remember, the pastor of about a million churches nationwide, that uncomfortably weaselly-looking sanctimonious guy who. . . well, he used to denounce gay sex, and drugs along with it. But like Jimmy Swaggart before him, he was soon on his knees (oops, wrong expression) in repentence. Nevertheless, his church threw him out with a resounding thud.


What I have trouble with, and what a lot of people are having trouble with still, is how he now denounces the gay sex he had with a male "escort" who threw in a little crystal meth to sweeten the deal. He insists, stridently, over and over again, that in spite of having sex with a man, he's "not gay". (Also says he didn't use the meth, either. Hmm, let's have a look at his teeth.)

My husband's not gay either. So is he ready to call up a male hooker any time soon? How many hetero married evangelical pastors call up drug-addicted male hookers for a date anyway?

(Hey, an infamous quote suddenly comes to mind, one that made it into Bartlett's Quotations: "I did not have sex with that woman, Miss Lewinski.")

This Haggard guy has bafflegabbed his way through a very rocky recovery. Then he got an idea (an awful idea, some would say. . . a wonderful, awful idea) to start his own church. In a barn.

All that's missing is Mickey Rooney saying to Judy Garland, "Hey, let's put on a show!"

His barn church will be "open to all, even those who have committed the darkest sins". Apparently it will stress "acceptance". Even of the darkest sins.

Hmmm. I have a little trouble with this. It will "accept" the most awful, evil, slimy people who ever crawled the earth, those scum-bags who can't get into a "real" church to save their lives. But why does he welcome all these worthless people? Because then Pastor Ted will fit right in. Compared to all this pond scum, he'll come up pretty righteous.

I have to admit, however, that as I watched this thing unfold (with Part I written all over it: the TLC execs no doubt had their finger on the pulse of the ratings), it seemed to me as if something sincere was trying to come through.

Even as he enabled the voracious needs of a slurring addict who'd lost everything and arranged for her to stay at a fellow parishioner's home (!!!!!), there was a sense that he was trying. Trying for something.

The trouble is, he's an Elmer Gantry and doesn't even know it. Does he think he's gay? If he did, he'd probably kill himself. Or his wife would kill him.

So he has jumped back into the closet, but hey, since he was branded such a sinner, that allows him to counsel and pray and dither over REAL sinners who maybe are gay.

His sons look exactly like him, which is creepy. His wife is a total codependent with no personality of her own, the "good wife" of TV repute. Evangelists invented the concept of "stand by your man", after all.

If this series flies, and maybe it won't because Part I was pretty limp and uninspiring and public opinion of Haggard still so negative, they're going to have to punch it up a little. That "barn" looks like a storage shed gone to seed, with plywood walls and old chairs dredged up from an episode of Hoarders. If they were going for Abe Lincoln log-cabin rustic sincerity, they missed by a mile. If this is the only facility they can afford, they better pack it in, or else rent a hall somewhere.

But still. It could get interesting to see Haggard get involved in "counseling" people who are way out of his depth. They might really be gay and he might have to tell them to give it up! (Like he did. Ooops, no! Because he's not really gay.)

There are already churches kind of like this that claim to truly welcome the sinner, but I have problems resolving their ultra-conservative and fiercely judgmental theology with that open, inclusive, come-unto-me philosophy. Also, the folks that will be attracted to Haggard's makeshift storage-room church won't have any political clout, or any money either.

So, the question comes up once again. Do people get paid to do reality TV?

Well, do they?

They get their rehab paid for in sunny resorts with horse ranches, personal trainers, crystalline beaches and a masseuse. Makes ME want to turn alcoholic for a while.

They get their hoard-crammed, miserable, urine-soaked, vermin-crawling, stinking holes of houses bulldozed for free, along with concerned counselling by that crinkle-browed therapist who always asks them, "Is this bringing anything up for you?" (While the rest of us just bring up.)

It's all part of the ingrained theory (see another Ted by the name of Williams) that anyone can be redeemed if you throw enough money at them. Everyone's potentially employable and emotionally balanced. They just have to get that awful childhood trauma out of the way.

What bizarre myths we promote! If Haggard really does attract the kind of people he says he wants, they will be manipulative, lying crack whores and felons and pimps. But at the same time, they will be blisteringly honest, attacking any weakness they can find in their fearless leader.

If this succeeds, watch out, Ted. They will destroy you unless you truly confess what you did, and who you are.

Backward child

Today I found two books I had given up for dead. You know how you just can't find a book? It must be somewhere. I felt as if I was going out of my mind.

This all started a few months ago, I think. I was in the bird room (my bird's bedroom, downstairs, also a catch-all for my husband's TEN YEARS' WORTH of receipts for such important purchases as foam insoles at Walmart and two loaves of bread from the Safeway). No, back up a little. I couldn't find my music books! Caitlin, now 7, got a guitar for Xmas and wanted me to help her and I could not find ANY of my 25 or so music books!!

I don't know, I didn't even think to look in the bird room, nor did I remember moving a whole bookcase down there with lots of "tall" books in it, books that just didn't fit anywhere else. Anyways.

The 2 books I found today, in the tall book case in the bird room, are called (firstly) Panati's Extraordinary Endings of Practically Everything and Everybody. Most of it is boring, the rest of it gruesome. It talks about how a man, after being beheaded, retains consciousness (presumably in his head) for several seconds after "severance". Once a researcher asked a poor beheaded guy to blink three times after they removed his melon. He blinked twice.

I won't tell you about Thomas Edison's early failed experiments (on humans) in electrocution, or the death of William the Conqueror whose body exploded like Mr. Creosote in Monty Python, because it is simply too disgusting (and when I visited England, a tour guide at the Tower of London told a horrible fable about a drunken executioner, Jack Ketch, who mis-chopped about fourteen times before successfully offing the poor guy's head).

But I will say, during one of the worst bouts of the Black Plague, 10,000 people were dying per day. Unable to accommodate the bodies even in burning pits, they had to remove the roofs from massive guard towers, throw the bodies in, cover the whole thing with quicklime and nail the roof back on.

I think my day just got a whole lot brighter.

Enough of this Panati stuff: and who is he, anyway? Some ghoul? On to the other one, equally boring except in spots, called An Almanac of Words at Play by Willard R. Espy.

A lot of this is bad poetry and tricky little word-things, and the anagrams are atrocious, but I do like the palindromes, words or names or phrases that read the same forwards as backwards ("Otto"; "Anna"; "Norma is as selfless as I am, Ron"; "'Naomi, sex at noon taxes,' I moan").

I want to share with you, dear readers, before I nod off into another bout of foggy depression, what I've come to think of as the Ultimate Palindrome. For some reason it's called The Faded Bloomers' Rhapsody. I will have to transcribe it, damn it, and it's long!

Flee to me, remote elf - Sal a dewan desired;
Now is a Late-Petal Era.
We fade: lucid Iris, red Rose of Sharon;
Goldenrod a silly ram ate.
Wan olives teem (ah, Satan lives!);
A star eyes pale Roses.

Revel, big elf on a mayonnaise man -
A tinsel baton-dragging nice elf too.
Lisp, oh sibyl, dragging Nola along;
Niggardly bishops I loot.
Fleecing niggard notables Nita names,
I annoy a Man of Legible Verse.

So relapse, ye rats,
As evil Natasha meets Evil
On a wet, amaryllis-adorned log.
Norah's foes' orders (I ridiculed a few) are late, Pet.
Alas, I wonder! Is Edna wed?
Alas - flee to me, remote elf.

This is simply gorgeous, and you just gotta start at the end and go backwards. It will at least distract you for a while.

Oprah Confesses She Ate 30 Lbs. of Mac & Cheese

The press has this totally wrong: she says "Oh, about thirty pounds' worth": meaning thirty pounds of weight gain. I am sure this is what she meant. The "thirty pounds of macaroni" makes her seem like a pig at a trough, so of course everyone seizes on that. Wow. We sure like to tear down our idols.

Someone left the cake out in the rain

Right after his huge success in Camelot (or was it before? Ah, my mind's a wall!), Richard Harris had a brief turn as a pop star. MacArthur Park, written by the genius Jimmy Webb ("See the tree, how big it`s grown. . . The first day that she planted it was just a twig." Grammar wasn`t his strong suit) shot to the top of the pop charts.

It's too long (over 7 minutes, a Wagnerian opera in pop music terms) and too excruciating to reproduce here, so I'll give you just the lyrics. Back then, we studied those lyrics, worried over them, tried to figure out what they meant (a "strip-ed pair of pants"??). We did go-go girl dances to that Mason Williams-esque interlude in the middle. The thing is, Richard Harris was a good enough actor to more-or-less put the song over, but seen on the page it's lame indeed.
(And why he calls it MacArthur's Park remains mysterious.)

Spring was never waiting for us, girl
It ran one step ahead
As we followed in the dance
Between the parted pages and were pressed,
In love's hot, fevered iron
Like a striped pair of pants

CHORUS

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!

I recall the yellow cotton dress
Foaming like a wave
On the ground around your knees
The birds, like tender babies in your hands
And the old men playing checkers by the trees

CHORUS

There will be another song for me
For I will sing it
There will be another dream for me
Someone will bring it
I will drink the wine while it is warm
And never let you catch me looking at the sun
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
You'll still be the one.

I will take my life into my hands and I will use it
I will win the worship in their eyes and I will lose it
I will have the things that I desire
And my passion flow like rivers through the sky.
And after all the loves of my life
After all the loves of my life
I'll be thinking of you
And wondering why.

(Long disco-esque musical interlude)

MacArthur's Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, no!
Oh, no
No, no
Oh NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!

(As usual, there's a postscript. More memories came back, though God knows why. After Camelot I went a little nuts and bought all of Richard Harris's records. All the songs were written by JimmyWebb. My brother Arthur - synchronicity, right? Arthur? - used to make terrible fun of the lyrics: "All my dreeeeeeeeams have tuuuuuurrrned to saaaaaaaaaaaannnd. . . " Though he never said that. Anyway, some months or years later we unearthed these albums and decided we needed to do something with them. "Let's put them in the oven," Arthur said. "OK," I said. They got all soft and then we bent them around in weird shapes. I said we could use them for an ash tray and Arthur said, no we can't cuzzatha hole in the bottom!)

Il Camelotti

I love clips like this (the original scene from the movie Camelot dubbed in Italian). I don't know where it came from. This Marzocchi fellow can sing: he has hints of operatic phrasing, and is using the sweet side of his voice, which tells us it has another side, full of resonance and power.

Frankly, I was just looking for the montage of the lovers, especially for the incredible seen where Guenevere, hair drifting supernaturally around her face, comes to Lance's bed. Never mind that she never seems to close her mouth.

(Oh, and - you know English is the worst language ever for romance when you stack up "spring" against "primavera"!)

One brief shining moment

OK, here's the truth about what Jackie said. JFK's royal reign was never known as Camelot until after he died, and his widow spoke about that brief and supposedly idyllic time (Cuban Missile Crisis? Bay of Pigs?) in retrospect. So now everyone calls it Camelot.

Come to that, Camelot, as portrayed by Lerner and Loewe, was pretty hellish in itself.

I got watching it (again) the other night on Turner Classics. It's immediately addictive. I jumped in in the middle, and it didn't seem to matter. I first saw it at thirteen - went with my mother, who loved it and approved of my crush on Richard Harris (to nullify my previous crush on Tiny Tim) - then dragged my brother to it so I could see it again. He kept making sardonic comments (i.e. muttering "I wonder what the King is doing tonight" while Jenny and Lance were making feverish love), but it didn't really matter.

Ah! Richard Harris at his dishy best, Vanessa Redgrave trailing filmy gowns and hair red as flame (though she has one very irritating quirk: she never closes her mouth), Franco Nero looking so earnest his brow might break. Never mind that most of them didn't do their own singing. It worked for me.

I cried again last night, and I know why. It was "What do the Simple Folk Do?", near the end, when Arthur and Jenny try to grasp at one last wisp of happiness, and fail. The look he gives her has seventeen layers of emotion in it, shattered pride, longing, rage, impotence, desire, nostalgia. . . Jenny is simply skinless, her shame and guilt stripped bare.

These guys have great acting chops, even if the production is overblown and sometimes overacted. Franco Nero is just a big hunk, in the tradition of the non-acting Robert Goulet who started it all (but at least he did his own singing). BUT: here's the truly golden part.

While filming this extravaganza, Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero (who each presumably had other attachments) fell in love. I don't know if it was proximity, or what. They had a relationship which produced a son, parted, but remained friends.

Here's the incredible part. According to Robert Osborne, they met again forty years later, and - GOT MARRIED.

Now that is romantic.

Those grainy newspaper photos - well, I was in a production of Camelot a very long time ago. God, the costumes were great. I had an uninspiring part in the chorus (top photo - also a smaller version squeezed between the two actors, just under the stuffed dog) where I had to pretend to watch a joust that couldn't be staged (not enough room for horses in a high school gym).

There's sort of another part to this. I went to audition for Guenevere, and discovered a couple dozen other potential Gueneveres warbling away. The audition lasted forever. Though I think my voice was in its best shape then, I didn't get it. At best I must have come in third, as they double-cast it. The musical director of the show cast herself as Guenevere (?!! What the - ), and selected for her second choice a very strange-looking, almost Goth girl who really couldn't sing very well. Apparently, she had a "quality".

So. . .the production grinds on, beset with problems. Then, the self-cast Guenevere turns up pregnant (she was a Mormon in her mid-20s, and this was her fifth child), and the second-cast Guenevere gains even more weight from eating junk food while stoned, then just disappears.

SOOOOOO. . . who you gonna call?

Who you gonna get to jump in at the last minute (almost literally!) to play Guenevere, with nearly no rehearsal?

I said no. I said no because I was offended. I was offended because I was probably their fifth choice to begin with. I didn't have trailing blonde hair and I wasn't 25 years old (I was 29). They only asked me because they just assumed I would say yes. They assumed I would say yes because they knew how hungry and desperate I was.

I can just hear them: "Yes, but we know she's reliable." "She'll just jump at it! Remember how badly she wanted it?" To be honest, they knew they could use me and that I would flail around and scramble to catch up and never ask them for a thing.

I have never regretted my decision. The self-appointed lead, the music director who crowned herself Queen, was five months along and her costumes straining at the seams, but she went on because she was the only one left standing.

I won't be treated that way. So my one brief shining moment was brief indeed. By the way, everyone involved was furious with me, thought I was selfish and ruining the show just for spite.

(The clip is a real find, if a bit bizarre with its clunky subtitles. Gianni Marzocchi couldn't be more Italian, but it works because of his sweet, expressive lyric tenor. And the unabashed, lush, oversentimental, glorious romanticism, which is eternal.

Vanessa and Franco will tell you so.)

Always the Twain shall meet

You gotta dig this Mark Twain fella.

He seemed to move from situation to situation like a mercilessly sharp camera lens, taking everything in and giving it back, inimitably, in Twain. Though he was one of the great humorists, he was often melancholy, and no one can find a smiling portrait of him anywhere. He experienced several incarnations within one lifetime: riverboat pilot (where he may well have cried out his own pen-name to indicate safe waters), rough-and-ready reporter in the Wild West who converted every story, momentous or trivial, into sharp-pointed satire, and - let's not forget - one of the most celebrated writers of the Western World.

But before he did all that, he wangled himself passage (sponsored by the newspaper he wrote for) on a luxury liner set to explore the Holy Land. The resulting semi-factual book The Innocents Abroad converted his fan base from small but loyal, to huge and clamoring. (Clamoring for his next book, that is.) Suddenly everyone wanted him to come to their town to lecture and spin his yarns, eager to partake of his dry drawl and lightning mind. His fame began to spread like a YouTube video gone viral, except that in this case, genius was behind it all.

I found this paragraph, and it's neat because it's so Twainian. On the Azores island of Fayal (don't ask me where that is), he and some fellow travellers hired some donkeys, presumably to carry them up and down rough terrain, and panic ensued. One donkey entered the open door of a house, scraping its rider off to land with a thud. At one point they all ran into each other and fell down like bowling pins. I guess you hadda be there.

So now I come to the neat part.

"The party started at 10 A.M. Dan was on his ass the last time I saw him. At this time Mr. Foster was following, & Mr. Haldeman came next after Foster - Mr. Foster being close to Dan's ass, & his own ass being very near to Mr. Haldeman's ass. After this Capt. Bursley joined the party with his ass, & all went well till on turning a corner of the road a most frightful & unexpected noise issued from Capt. Bursley's ass, which for a moment threw the party into confusion, & at the same time a portughee boy stuck a nail into Mr. Foster's ass & he ran - ran against Dan, who fell - fell on his ass, & then, like so many bricks they all came down - each & every one of them - & each & every one of them fell on his ass."

I wonder who else could've gotten away with this. Twain was known to be outrageous and play with social taboos, once lecturing a gentleman's club about the pleasures of "onanism" (a code word for masturbation), stating that it was the birthright of every red-blooded American boy. To say this at a time when most people thought it would make you go irretrievably mad, or at least make your guy parts fall off, was provocative indeed.

But then, the best writers don't colour inside the lines. Do they?

OK, Ted. . .

So I guess I was right about Ted Williams. After the homeless hero insisted he wanted rehab, needed rehab, was all ready to go to rehab, Dr. Phil laid out the plan: get on the plane right now, and fly to Pleasant Valley or wherever, where he could recover in privacy (recover in privacy, after just giving away where he'd be for the next 30 days???)

Then it started. The gaunt, glassy-eyed Williams, the most famous panhandling junkie in the world, the man who was loved and adored because he was homeless but still had a special gift (impossible!), began to shift around in his chair. He started wiggling around like a kindergarten kid with ADD.

His eyes shifted. He began to make excuses. I can't exactly transcribe his bafflegab, except to say that he wasn't going to get on that plane because he had to go to Columbus "to see his grandchildren and girl friend" first.

Columbus, where he skulked the streets, breaking laws and scamming citizens.
This was beginning to sound like an episode of Intervention, in which many of the addicts have "yeah, but" syndrome: Yeah, I want to go to rehab, BUT I have to take care of some things first (i.e., score some dope).

The headlines are saying he's either on his way to recovery, or has checked in. I hope so. Dr. Phil reluctantly let him go to Columbus, and my heart sank. Though he was escorted by the friendly man from Heavenly Hills or whatever that addiction spa is called, I have no doubt that Williams will give everyone the slip.

See, he'd rather drink and use and panhandle than have all that pressure on him to succeed. He doesn't know anything else. He has never been taught anything else. Dr. Phil revealed that he had missed, not one, not two, but three important appointments, just didn't show up. Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding: he's not reliable! A man who's been living on the street for years isn't reliable. Didn't anyone think of that when they handed him all those absurdly inflated opportunities?

I hate to have to say it, but I am very doubtful that Ted Williams will find long-term sobriety and/or recovery (and the two are not the same!). What happened to him was flukey and not really planned, in spite of that infamous piece of damp cardboard. He wants to run. He looked ready to bolt yesterday on Dr. Phil, his eyes full of primal fear. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. Rehab? Can this guy get through even one day sober?

If you watch Intervention, and I stopped doing so some time ago because they all seemed like one big fat dysfunctional family (most of them bankrolling the addicts' drug or alcohol habit "so we'll know where he is"), you often see an end caption saying the person was thrown out of rehab after a few days for using. Then at the very end, the producers desperately put together a happy ending, saying the addict has two weeks clean or something like that, and has moved back in with the family, now completely recovered and with all their generational conflicts resolved.

I think Ted Williams misses the street, where he at least had some sense of control. The wraith with the feverish eyes I saw yesterday was probably quite drunk on Grey Goose or whatever that rotgut is called, but also terrified. Terrified of capture. Terrified of giving it all up.

Though this is a compelling story, it's also a revealing one. And, as usual, we aren't learning a thing from it.