Tuesday, October 7, 2014

How not to do a search (or find anything)




Listen, I was just trying to find something on a site called, I think, SilentComedyMafia.com. So I thought I'd see what they had on Harold Lloyd. Their system seemed designed to help me NOT find ANYTHING EVER. I have no idea what a wildcard is. I will never look up this site again.

Information

 The following words in your search query were ignored because they are too common words: harold lloyd.
You must specify at least one word to search for. Each word must consist of at least 3 characters and must not contain more than 14 characters excluding wildcards.

SEARCH QUERY

Search for keywords:
Place + in front of a word which must be found and - in front of a word which must not be found. Put a list of words separated by | into brackets if only one of the words must be found. Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.

Search for all terms or use query as entered

Search for any terms

Search for author:
Use * as a wildcard for partial matches.

(Oh-but-there's-more. There's always more. Poking a little deeper into the site, I found just ONE page of about 15 pages of regulations you must follow before even looking at the site, let alone posting a message. Don't read this, please - I use it only as an example of how a web site can drive you into the woods before you even use it.)




SILENTCOMEDYMAFIA.COM WEBSITE TERMS AND CONDITIONS OF USE

Last Updated: July 2009

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© 2009 SilentComedyMafia.com. All rights reserved.SCM AdminSite Admin Posts: 3Joined: Sun May 17, 2009 4:05 pm

(Post-blahhhg thoughts: hmmmm, the word Mafia may apply here, in some obscure way. But I don't know how.)



  Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
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And he glittered when he walked


Richard Cory

BY EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
Whenever Richard Cory went down town,
We people on the pavement looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean favored, and imperially slim.

 And he was always quietly arrayed,
And he was always human when he talked;
But still he fluttered pulses when he said,
"Good-morning," and he glittered when he walked.

 And he was rich—yes, richer than a king—
And admirably schooled in every grace:
In fine, we thought that he was everything
To make us wish that we were in his place.

 So on we worked, and waited for the light,
And went without the meat, and cursed the bread;
And Richard Cory, one calm summer night,
Went home and put a bullet through his head.

I remember that we "took" this poem in school, way back in Grade 7 or thereabouts, and the chagrin, the consternation of the class: "But why did he DO that?" "He had everything." "Everyone envied him." "It's not fair." "It's a joke, isn't it?" " That would never happen."

 My "favorite" was this lovely statement, which I have heard echoed many times and from many people - I mean adults who should know better, not kids:

"You kill yourself because you're crazy, and you're only crazy if you want to be."

 I wonder now, if that kid is still alive, whether he thinks the same way.

 I'm not supposed to think about any of this, of course. As one writer said, Robin Williams' death caused many people to suddenly come out of the closet and proclaim, "Yes, me too". But where are they now? No doubt they have retreated in terror, hoping against hope that no one remembers their foolishness.

I've written about this before. Halloween is coming, and in the past I've seen "mental patient" costumes, often with restraints and lurid "nurses" with syringes full of "sedatives". It's funny, isn't it? Come on. Come on, don't you have a sense of humour?

 No. If that's what humour is, then no.

 My brother was in these "loony bins", "nut wards", etc., on and off for years. I loved him dearly, and by his own admission he was not just crazy but "ca-RAZY". Eerily, I used to compare him to Robin Williams in his madcap ability to riff on outrageous themes, putting on characters and taking them off like masks, only to change at light speed to another subject entirely. One time he did a riff on the '60s TV show The Real McCoys, doing every voice from Grandpa to Luke to Little Luke to Hassie to  Kate to - his personal favorite - Pepino. Some of it was so x-rated that we fell out of our chairs.

He died in 1980, not of suicide as almost everyone assumes, but an accident. Two months later, John Lennon was shot and killed. It was a point of despair in my life.

 So what is it about people who seem to have everything, who do themselves in anyway? I think of Phillip Seymour Hoffman, relapsing most awfully into a habit he thought he had beaten. I think of Amy Winehouse drinking a gallon of vodka and poisoning herself at age 27. I think we think they are immune. Not just that they are rich and famous, but loved - aren't they loved, too, I mean by friends and family?

 Are they? Is there - is there balm in Gilead?

 I have already published a couple of eerily similar photos of Robin Williams with dear friends who hold him so tenderly, he looks like a baby bird fallen from the nest. I once read that people who don't feel loved are like sawdust dolls with a tiny hole in the bottom. It keeps trickling out, almost imperceptibly, until the person is desperate for more supplies to keep from bleeding out.


What got all this started again? Well, it's close to Halloween which makes me think of all those awful mental patient costumes, totally dehumanizing but seen as ghoulishly funny, and CERTAINLY not anything to be offended about.  (You're too sensitive, you know? That's your whole problem.) We don't have Parkinson's or MS or ALS Halloween costumes, but then again, these illnesses are "physical", "real", no one's fault, with the sufferers seen as dignified and courageous, and therefore not frightening or subject to mockery. After all, it would be in very poor taste. 

  It's also from remembering Williams, who seems to have died a very long time ago (but at the same time, only yesterday), but most of all it's because yesterday I bought Billy Crystal's memoir, Still Foolin' 'Em: Where I've Been, Where I'm Going, and Where the Hell Are My Keys? It's typical self-deprecating Crystal humour, but not excoriating, with a sweetness, a gentleness that I have always loved about him. In fact, he is my favorite comedian.

 He and Robin Williams were best friends. Closer than brothers, in many ways. This book was written and published before his suicide, but on the back is a quote from Williams that now seems poignant and unsettling: "This book is kick-ass funny and truly unique. A Hollywood autobiography with only one wife, no rehab, a loving family, and loyal friends."




I wonder if Williams secretly feared he had none of those things. It's a bit scary that he focused on that, as if to shame himself for having three wives and multiple trips to rehab.  To imply, almost, that Crystal was a superior version of himself - or, at least, not so scarred, not so vulnerable.

 I don't want to go much farther into this because I don't fancy triggering off a lousy day of depression. It wouldn't do anything to change the situation. But oh how I wish people would wake up. I thought of a scenario that might have saved him - everyone has a theory, so here goes, here is mine:

 He is pacing the floor, both despondent and frantic, knowing there is no way out of the crushing adversity that is coming at him from all sides. Soon he will be paralyzed from Parkinson's, his career will be over, and he won't be able to take part in the cycling that has kept him sane. Rehab did no good at all and made everything worse. He looks back with shame over the battlefield of his life, and for that moment he can't see anything good about it. At all. He has made a mess of things, and there is only one way out.

 Though it is agonizing to do, though he has to stand up to an immense shame that is nearly overwhelming, he goes over to the phone, picks up the receiver, dials 9-1-1.

 "Hello. I'm going to kill myself. Come get me, please. NOW."

CODA. From Leonard Bernstein's Mass. I used to carry this around written on a little piece of paper. Once a counsellor took it from me and read it in a sing-songy, Betty Crocker voice, then handed it back to me saying, "Oh, that's nice."

I don't know where to start
There are scars I could show
If I opened my heart
But how far, Lord, how far can I go?
I don't know. 
What I say I don't feel
What I feel I don't show
What I show isn't real
What is real, Lord
I don't know 
No, no, no. . . I don't know.

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Monday, October 6, 2014

More delicious moments from Why Worry




A great pratfall with obvious sexual connotations. Note that she doesn't get up for a long time. Though he tries to ignore it, she has a certain effect on him that has him reaching for his heart pills.




These two are such a great team, with a dynamic force between them that works perfectly. Jobyna Ralston combines sweetness with intelligence and fire.  Harold has met his match.




He berates her for neglecting her duties, running around in boy's clothes when he should be looking after his health! The argument will soon escalate into something more.




Things are reaching the boiling point. . .




She's had it - had enough of his selfishness, his ridiculous imaginary ills, and she lets him have it. And he likes it.




Some nice stunt work here, which I am sure was NOT done by a double.


The thing about Why Worry is that beneath all that absurdity and comedy and charm, there's a cleverly hidden Lloydian message. This movie is all about a selfish, self-absorbed boy becoming a man. And how does this happen? LOVE! Love is always the motivation in every Harold Lloyd movie, for everything. By the end of the story he actually has a man's job and responsibilities, but when he finds out his wife (Jobyna, of course) has just had a baby, he leaps over the desk and begins to run like crazy to the hospital. Harold is telling us, without laying it on too thick, that it's possible to grow up without losing any of your natural exuberance.

A lesson he must have learned through experience.

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Sunday, October 5, 2014

One, two, three. . . KISS!!








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The hottest kiss in movie history!





YES: it's here in gif form, at long last, after seven years of waiting: my favorite scene from my absolute-favorite Harold Lloyd movie, Why Worry?

It's romantic and sexy enough that this is set on a tropical island where a revolution ferments. But it also has a kind of subconscious romance going on, with (ultimately) explosive results. Harold plays a hopeless hypochondriac, a self-absorbed fussbudget oblivious to the longing glances of his gorgeous nurse, Jobyna Ralston. That is. . . until the very end, when something erupts.




In typical wacky Lloydian fashion, he asks her indignantly, "Why didn't you tell me I love you?" But by this time, Jobyna knows he's in the bag. All she has to do is stand there and wait.




And here it is, one of the hottest, most impetuous kisses I've seen in silent film - or talkie film - or ANY film, for that matter. He doesn't just grab, he SEIZES her while she reacts with a kind of violent spasm, resists him (very weakly), then  melts into his arms, even doing a subtle leg-pop that might have been a first in motion pictures. Up to this point, movie kisses were coy, taking place behind screens or during the fadeout, or followed by big happy-happy grins of boyish glee. What makes it even more exciting is the fact that all through the movie there are not-so-subtle hints that Harold is attracted to her, but refuses to let himself know it. She plays him like a fish for an hour and two minutes, then lands him like a pro.




But it gets even better. The camera pans away for a few seconds, as if to let your eyeballs cool off a bit, then comes back to the lovers, who are STILL KISSING. As I researched Harold's life, I came across several references to his affair with Ralson. This was their first movie together, meaning that we have a sort of Bogart and Bacall thing going, with sparks flying that show up onscreen. Her utter confidence in her charms, her adorable boy's clothing, her swivelling hips - well. Harold never was much of one for marital fidelity .We all have our frailties, and in this case resistance was futile.

I had no idea up to now that my gif program could handle an hour-long movie (in fact, it probably couldn't, and must have been upgraded by the site at some point) or that I could set it up "blind" without using the slider, but voila et voici! Now I want to gif the entire movie, and I might just try it, doing it in 10-second installments. There are many great moments in this film, and I still maintain that with its upside-down dynamics and general wackiness, it's the first screwball comedy ever made, the prototype for everything that came after.

And just when I'm tired of Harold Lloyd, or at least tired of the heartbreak of a book that probably isn't going anywhere, something like this comes along.




SPECIAL BONUS PHOTO! Only a few still photos exist of this amazing scene, likely "captures" taken directly from the film. This one is new to me, with Jobyna's right arm registering surprise and her leg-pop at its maximum. The more I look at this, the more eyebrow-raising it is, because it really does look as if their lower bodies are touching. Was Hal Roach asleep that day? Why doesn't anyone say anything about this? I'm sure I don't know.



Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!


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Dear sir or madam, will you read my book, take two (or three)


 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Should my books be free? Sure, Bub!




I decided to run a comment (below) which was posted in reply to Russell Smith's Globe and Mail column about the ascendency of blockbuster books (i.e. Fifty Shades of Grey), which have rendered the moderately-selling "midlist" novel practically obsolete. I found Russell Smith's piece oddly comforting because it made me realize (unlike all the other forces around me, which seem to be telling me it's all my fault) that all this is driven by global economic conditions and not the personal failure that has sometimes rendered me suicidal. In fact I  have re-run it a couple of times, as a reality check and to keep me from jumping off the bridge.

But this is the first time I have read the comments. I took the name off this - something I would normally never do - because it's a comment, not an article, and because I'm not maligning this writer so much as demonstrating just how desperate we have become just to get our work out there.




It seems it's now necessary to give our work away in mass quantities, powered by something called (astonishingly) BookBub, in order to eventually take in "hundreds of dollars" by selling our books at the astonishing price of  $2.99! But how to sustain yourself on a few hundred dollars? Is that a living wage? Where has our dignity gone?

What bothers me most of all however is the eagerness, the excitement, the sense of promise, even gratitude for this opportunity, the "next big thing" for writers. No one seems to see the sweating desperation behind it, but maybe that's because nobody feels it any more.  Give it away? Are our stories worth literally nothing, after so many years of hard work, reams of time, careful crafting and praying for opportunity? Must we grovel and scrape and learn to love Big Brother to get anywhere at all, to keep from dropping into the pit of oblivion that swallowed me a long time ago?




I can't keep up with things like this, or with ugly, even grotesque names like BookBub. At first I thought this was satire. It had to be. Then I PRAYED it was satire: Jesus, look at the lengths we have to go to, just to get our work into people's hands and people's skulls! Then, with a sickening feeling of the floor dropping out from under me, I realized it was true. Not only that - you have to PAY them to give your work away, in full knowledge of the fact that in our money-driven culture, free things are generally perceived as worthless, of interest only to garbage-pickers and other scavenger types.

This is what we must do and even what we must feel good about in these shark-infested waters. We must keep up with all the new warts popping up, infestations that ask YOU to pay THEM so that you can get your books out there for free.  I am constantly told, "well, Margaret, that's just what you have to do these days, you don't have any choice, just hold your nose and do it." Open your legs, and close your mind.

No thanks. I'd rather be a no-list writer, keep my dignity, and make my few hundred dollars from actual sales of actual books, bought by actual people. And that's the way it's going to stay - Bub.
Mr. Smith offers us a snapshot of a continuously evolving process. No one knows what publishing will be like a year from now, or two, or ten. We are making it up as we go along.

I'm what the industry calls a midlist author, neither a bestselling star nor a miserable failure. I'm paid (though not very much) for the sf and crime novels and short stories I write, and my readership occupies a definable niche well away from the middle of the bell curve.

To see what the long tail might mean to me, nine months ago I began self-publishing my backlist -- books that had been trade-published but whose rights had reverted back to me -- as well as collections of short stories that had appeared in mass-market magazines. I found I could sell ten ebooks a day, which didn't make me rich but it did give me an income stream from past work that otherwise had no commercial value. 



But then the sales began to trail off, despite all the Facebooking, blogging, and tweeting to which we midlisters are encouraged to devote daily time. So I cast around for another strategy and came across BookBub. It's a service that advertises ebook bargains (free or 99 cents) to more than a million subscribers.

I reduced the price of one of my sf titles to zero, and for $80 BookBub sent an email to 240,000 sf ebook readers. In 24 hours, some 15,000 people downloaded the free text off Amazon, Kobo, and Smashwords. Now I wait and see how many of those freebie-takers will come back and buy one of my $2.99 titles. 



Even if only one or two per cent do so, I will earn hundreds of dollars from that $80 investment. If ten per cent come back for more, I'll take in thousands.

The thing is, I couldn't have done any of this two years ago, because BookBub didn't exist before January 2012. Now it's a serious player for self-publishers needing marketing support. And next year, or the year after, some bright spark will come up with yet another profitable way to help us authors make money off the long tail.

Because this revolution is just getting started.




 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look



 (WARNING: this is a real book, sold for real money. But not too much. I promise you!)

Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
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Friday, October 3, 2014

A horrible transformation




One of the rare intriguing things I've seen on Facebook lately. As usual, there was no credit given anywhere for who did the animation. I've looked all over the place. It's creepy and fascinating and all too true what happens to this pink little figure, ruthlessly mauled by calipers and scalpels and pliers and suction hoses. I just did a post on how "neurotic" women (women who are "reserved", worry about things, get angry, anxious, etc.) are more likely to get Alzheimer's. For some creepy reason, this feels like part of the same thing. Now, girls. Don't have a body like THAT. Have a body like THIS, and maybe your rate of acceptability will fall into line. It's all a way of containing us, because if we're not contained we turn into madwomen. We run amok.

Let's go, then.



 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


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Dementia: don't worry your pretty little head!



Neurotic women 'more likely to get Alzheimer's'

Helen Williams

PUBLISHED 02/10/2014 | 02:30

Anxious, jealous, moody or distressed middle aged women may be putting themselves at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a 38-year long study.

The claim, which appears in Neurology online, comes after scientists used personality and memory tests to track the health and welfare of 800 women who had an average age of 46. They found that 19pc of those women developed dementia in later life.

The tests also looked at their levels of neuroticism, whether they appeared to be shy and reserved, and if they were outgoing characters.




Neurology online is the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Study author Lena Johannsson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, said: "Most Alzheimer's research has been devoted to factors such as education, heart and blood risk factors, head trauma and family history.

"Personality may influence the individual's risk for dementia through its effect on behaviour, lifestyle or reactions to stress."




Neuroticism involves being easily distressed and can be linked to worrying, jealousy or moodiness. People who are neurotic are more likely to express anger, guilt, envy, anxiety or depression. The study also looked at women who appeared to be shy and reserved plus those who seemed to be outgoing.




The women were asked if their work, health or family situation had left them feeling stressed for at least a month. Stress might be spotted by feeling irritable, tense, nervous, fearful, anxious and not being able to sleep properly.

Responses were ranked from zero, where the women never felt stressed, to five, where they had constantly experienced stress in the last five years. Women who chose responses from three and five were considered to have distress.

Those women with the highest scores on the tests for neuroticism had double the risk of developing dementia compared to those who scored lowest on the tests, according to the study.




This foul little report is currently all over the internet, leading me to wonder: whatever happened to all the progress we supposedly made in the last 60 years?

Not only is all this crap completely skewed by the fact that MEN ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED (any more than they are ever shown wearing adult diapers on TV), the tone of it is just headspinning in its implications.

It reminds me of those old Miles Nervine ads, with women being encouraged to take sedatives rather than express their discontent, or the Bayer aspirin commercial with the irritable woman snapping, "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself!" Surely a woman who allows herself to fuss and fret and get her head in a tizzy DESERVES to end up as a drooling idiot. She's bringing it on herself, isn't she? Getting herself all worked up over nothing. The implication is that you'd better put a lid on all that neurotic, needless fulminating, ladies, or guess what. You may just end up in the loony bin, the place of no return.




Under the medicalise in this probably-completely-meaningless study I smell the faint stink of punishment, the price for for deviating from certain expected norms. Good little women, cheerful little women, women who don't fuss, who "accept", who don't rock the boat by becoming pointlessly angry about things (rape, child abuse, the destruction of the planet) are far more likely to make good, cheerful little grandmothers! They'll keep their marbles, in other words. None of that awful drooling, incontinence, brain rot and puzzling resistence to artificial restraints. 

Or could it be this way? Good little women are so conditioned to be bright and cheery and outgoing, to be happy all the day, to always smile, smile, smile (as so many women are rigidly trained to do) that when those pesky lines and wrinkles begin to show, there won't be any DIFFERENCE between the frozen zombie state of their emotional and spiritual submission to societal norms (smile!) and the frozen zombie state of Alzheimer's. 




What an advantage! No one will even NOTICE they have dementia because they were Stepford Wives for an entire lifetime! The advantages of this can't be stressed enough.  The transition will be ultra-smooth, from spotless kitchen to bright, sparkling ward.

Meantime, women who allow their feelings to show, who dare take time for themselves instead of constantly pleasing and hostessing the world, who aren't always cheerful but express anger and indignation and fear and lust and exultation and anxiety and depression and all the things human beings are known to feel BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMAN, will at least KNOW when they are being pursued by the forces of sexist medical oppression. They can put on their neurotic little running shoes and RUN RUN RUN from the suffocating norms that would keep them safely corralled in cheery 1950s-style servitude.

Don't be nice, girls. Don't smile unless you mean it. And when the threat comes, run. Run for your lives. Even if you do go barmy, at least you'll have the satisfaction of being who you really are.


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