Stranger than truth?

Mystery Horse

It looks like I'm not quite finished with my comic book ad obsession. I've found so many of these on so many sites, I feel glutted and overwhelmed.

I'll be using a few of them, of course, once I figure out which ones are my favorites (most bizarre, most unlikely, most tasteless, most unrealistic, and even most aesthetically pleasing: some of these are damn beautiful!). For now, I played around with the Mystery Horse, free inside every box of Wheat Honies.

I remember cereal box prizes. Oh yes, I do. In fact, I still have cornflake dust up to my elbow. I never waited until we used up all the cereal. Oh no. Did anyone, except some idiot with time to waste? I rummaged around with my grubby little paw until I got to the very bottom of the box, then grabbed the little red fire truck ("made of sturdy plastic!") or the submarine that you filled with baking soda so it would perform miracles in the bathtub.

The Mystery Horse is not some poor unfortunate beast who was cut off at the knees. He was one of those little walking toys with a string and a weight. You sat him on the table with the weight just over the edge, and as it slowly moved towards the floor the creature would "walk". I remember a yellow walking camel that came in the Chee-tohs bag, highly prized. (How I wish I had kept some of this stuff!).

When I tinker around with these images, which is probably highly illegal (but so were all those scans I found on the comic book sites), strange things happen. Colors spring out at me that aren't really there. This time, when I reversed the colors into a negative, it created an eerie 3D effect that I've never seen before.

I want a Mystery Horse. I want a horse that walks along on its knees, a horse made of sturdy plastic. I want to go back and back, to that time before I made any really serious mistakes. I want to be a child again, but this time happy, and aware it'll all go away so lightning-fast that I'd better enjoy it with all my might.

Ahnie: even then he liked to pick up women

Mail Order Monkey

This story has been repeated so many times on so many sites, I think it's in the public domain by now. It fascinates me because I always wondered if anyone actually got one of those monkeys you could supposedly "win" from comic book ads (after selling hundreds of dollars' worth of merchandise). The chihuahua in the teacup was dicey enough, but this monkey - ummm, primates aren't known to be particularly friendly (look at humans) unless bribed, and these little buggers didn't come pre-trained. The following account is a little hair-raising. I wish there were more of a denouement, i.e., what happened to the monkey, not to mention that poor guy, after the 28 stitches?

A firsthand account follows from a guy who ordered one of those monkeys from an ad in the back of a comic book. To keep his parents from finding out, he had it shipped to a friend's house...

It came in this little cardboard box. I mean, I’m saying small. It was probably the size of a shoebox, except it was higher. It had a little chicken wire screen window in it. There was a cut out. All you could see if you looked in there was his face. I brought it home, and I actually snuck it into the basement of the house.

No instructions [were included]. He had this waist belt on, a collar, if you will, on his waist, with an unattached leash inside the box. So I opened the box up inside the cage, the monkey jumped out, I withdrew the box and found the leash. I have no idea where it came from; I assumed it came from Florida. I figured, well, it’s probably near dehydration, so I opened up the cage to put some water in it. It leapt out of the cage when I opened it up the second time! I mean, it was eyeing the pipes that I was unaware of. As soon as I opened the cage, it leapt up and grabbed onto the plumbing up on the ceiling and started using them like monkey bars, and he was just shooting along in the basement, chirping pretty loud. It was heading towards the finished side of the basement, where there was a drop ceiling, and if it got into those channels, I never would have got it. It would have been days to get this thing out of there.

I grabbed it by its tail, and it came down on, starting literally up by my shoulder, like a drill press it landed on my arm, and every bite was breaking flesh. It was literally like an unsewing machine. It was literally unsewing my arm coming down, and I was pouring blood. I grabbed it by its neck with both my wrists, threw it back in the cage. It’s screaming like a scalded cat. I’m pouring blood. My friend’s laughing uncontrollably, and my father finally comes in the basement door and goes, ‘Jeffery! What are you doing to that rabbit?’ And I go, ‘It’s not a rabbit, it’s a monkey, and it just bit the hell out of me.’ ‘A monkey? Bring it up here!’ I’m pouring, I wrapped a t-shirt around my arm to stave off the bleeding, carried the cage upstairs, and I don’t know why I bothered sneaking it in, because they fell in love with it, and it was like, there was no problem at all. They took me to the emergency room and I got 28 stitches on my arm.

Angry beaver roams through N.W.T. town - North - CBC News

A large, agitated beaver attracted a crowd in Fort Smith, N.W.T., this week when it meandered through town and got hissy with a German shepherd.

The beaver was spotted Monday evening wandering around a residential neighbourhood, along a busy street, through a graveyard and golf course, all the while escorted by an N.W.T. Environment and Natural Resources officer.

Mike Keizer, a longtime resident in the town of 2,400 near the N.W.T.-Alberta border, said he hopped on his bicycle as soon as he heard there was a beaver on the loose.

"It looked huge. I always thought beavers would be smaller," Keizer told CBC News on Thursday.

"All the beavers I've ever seen have been in water, so you only ever see pieces of them; like, you don't get to see the whole beaver."

Another Fort Smith resident, Jason Mercredi, shot video footage of the beaver moving in a ditch and on a sidewalk along McDougal Street.

"There's a beaver holding up [the] main street," Mercredi says in the video, before asking his uncle if the animal would attack.

"He's pissed," Mercredi remarked.

Got agitated, flustered
The wayward animal, which Keizer estimated was the size of a dog, zigzagged across people's lawns and around their homes.

"Every time it got agitated or flustered, it would bang its tail on the ground. I mean, I was amazed at how fast it moved when it was agitated," he recalled.

Keizer said the beaver became especially agitated when it came nose-to-nose with somebody's German shepherd, with just a chain-link fence separating the two animals.

"It never backed down once. It grabbed the fence, it was hissing, and the dog was barking," Keizer said.

"When the ENR officer went to get it turned [around] so he'd get it away from town, he had a plywood sheet in front of him, and it rushed the sheet."

Keizer said he rode his bike ahead of the beaver, knocking on residents' doors and warning them to bring their dogs indoors "because there's a wild beaver walking through town, heading your way."

"While I was there, all kinds of people were driving up in their trucks and their cars and taking pictures," he said.

The beaver wandered about another kilometre or two before it headed towards the Slave River rapids and disappeared.

Keizer said in his 17 years living in Fort Smith, he has never seen a beaver — never mind a beaver so large — come into town.

Angry beaver roams through N.W.T. town - North - CBC News

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.com/2012/01/synopsis-glass-character-novel-by.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Memories

Alive

I've been on a bit of a Stephen Sondheim kick lately, maybe because of his longtime connection with Anthony Perkins, one of my perennial preoccupations/happy obsessions. These two were similar in that they were both intricate, impossible, brilliant, and (in spite of their vast creative contribution) essentially unknowable.

Though Perkins was prematurely snatched at 60, Sondheim is still with us at 80-some. One of his many legendary shows was Company (1970), in which T. P. almost played Bobby, the still point at the centre of a comedy of couples. When it comes to relationships and love, Bobby won't commit, but committed people (or people who should be committed) swirl all around him.

Somehow Tony Perkins wasn't available. Another commitment, you see. Or he didn't really need to "play" Bobby; he was too busy being him.

I tried to find a really good version of an incredible song, Being Alive, Bobby's final soliloquy/aria/heartsong. I went through Bernadette Peters, whom I've always loved; Patty LuPone; Barbra Streisand; even Julie Andrews. Nada, naynay, nonenonenone, can't get into it and am almost at the point of giving up.

Then I stumbled on. . . this.

It's Dean Jones, yes, that Dean Jones from the Love Bug series and innumerable other Disney flicks. I didn't even know he could sing. It's a recording session, probably the original cast recording judging by the fact that Sondheim looks like a middle-aged juvenile delinquent. But what Jones does here is beyond singing. He opens his mouth, his eyes soft with a frightened vulnerability, and releases this hymn, this almost unbearable paean to the aching neccessity of love.

Jesus! He can't just sing: he can fly. Where has he been all my life? I don't know if I've ever heard a song turned inside-out like this. Along with flat-out artistry, he possesses a soaring technical brilliance, the ability to sustain a phrase in a clean, steady arc for an impossibly long time. He builds and builds the drama as the orchestra crescendos and begins to thunder at the end. . .and when it's over and he stands there with a tense, "was that any good?" look clearly visible on his face, there's an eerie silence in the studio. Sondheim mumbles something about it being adequate. Then, almost like at the end of Laugh-in, sparse applause, the sound of a few hands clapping.

When I hear something this good, which is never, I want to do something really extreme, like throw all my manuscripts on a bonfire, committ suttee or whatever it is (but my husband would have to do it first, damn it). When I hear something this exalted, I want to just chuck my ambitions and go take a long walk in the park (ten years ought to do it). But at the same time, it goads me to be better than I know how to be.

This song is about someone who can't fully live until he learns to open himself wide to the splendors and catastrophes of love. I wonder why I have such a visceral response to it. Love is at the centre of my life, and in fact, I know it is my central purpose. Of this I have no doubt. But what does it mean, what does it really mean to love? Do we ever get it right?

Grog Grows Own Tail

Can't say just what started this, but maybe it was my daughter-in-law saying, "By the way, I sent away for the Sea Monkeys."

"The. . . the. . . (gulp)". . . (I was already being dragged into the past, and all those summers at the cottage with the Jimmy Olsen Annual).

"Oh yeah, but there's only one problem with them. They only come with a year's supply of food. So what are you supposed to feed them after that? Rubber boots?"

So you could still get them. It was hard to believe, in this age of cynicism and truth in advertising, but there it was. And kids still wanted them. My own grandkids wanted them. It was all a little hard to absorb.

The sea monkeys, along with so many things we yearned for in those old comic book ads, were the stuff of legend. We never actually sent away for them or for anything else, though I considered the 100 Dolls for $1 (not having any idea what they meant by "Lilliputian cuteness": would 9-year-old girls be likely to read Jonathan Swift?). It all had to do with American-ness, the American dollar looking nothing like the Canadian dollar. We just knew it was Different. You had to send actual dollars, because no one had heard of a money order in those days, plus all these things only cost about a buck.

Anyway, back to the sea monkeys: it was a very long time before I actually saw any, and I don't recall whose house I was in. There was a small plastic tank full of cloudy, smelly, slimy water, with little multi-legged things squirming around in it. Doing tricks, I suppose. No sign of a castle or royal sceptres.

The rest of the story wasn't filled in until about 10 years ago, when my husband and I made a trip to Utah and saw millions of brine shrimp, the only creatures who can withstand the thick saline waters of the Great Salt Lake.

Oh, OK then (choke), but there was still the Onion Gum ("Tastes like. . . like. . . ONIONS! It's too funny!" This was one of our favorites. I devoted a whole post to this tiny ad, riffing on it with all sorts of different photographic/photoshop effects.) And there were the hundreds of strong man ads with pictures of nearly-nude, wildly overdeveloped men flexing every muscle at once. These seemed to interest my brother Arthur, though I have come to wonder about it since.

Comic book ads were all tied in with summers at Bondi, a resort in Muskoka that qualifies as a little bit of heaven on earth. (The fact that Bondi is still there, preserved by my friend Nancy and her brother Brian, is even more of a marvel, and somehow gives me hope). For two weeks we were absolutely free. And of course we didn't fully appreciate it: we rampaged through that time like wild horses, and before we knew it we came to that miserable moment when we began to count the days we had left.

I wonder to this day how many live chihuahuas were delivered to kids willing to sell photo-finishing door to door, or unload tubes of salve. Or that poor monkey: how would it survive, and wouldn't it be so full of fear that it would bite everyone? Attitudes towards animals were different then (and the word chihuahua wasn't even used: but for God's sake, if we were supposed to understand lilliputian, what was so hard about chihuahua??). They were freight to be shipped. I wonder how many kids just didn't tell their parents.

I used to wonder about Grog, until I saw a Hawaiian ti plant at some sort of horticultural display. You just stuck it in the ground, and, voila! a shade tree in minutes. Whether Grog kept producing another tail, and another and another and another, was anyone's guess. But what can you expect for a buck?

Seeing these again gives me that queer feeling of deeply-buried deja vu. Many of the ads have been so enhanced that they look a thousand times more vibrant than the original grainy, 2" square things, usually plastered together on a great exuberant wall of ads. (These make great wallpaper, by the way.) And I even solved a few mysteries. For example, I found out exactly what you got if you sent away for the 100 dolls.

These looked like very chintzy Monopoly tokens, all of them made of pink plastic. There were maybe 30 different designs, but the thing is, they were 2" high and about a billionth of an inch thick, standing up on bases like those farm animals I used to have. I saw a collection of them on eBay, where they are now worth a lot of money as collectibles (though only if the 100-piece set is intact: people do count them).

I don't know, I get the strangest feeling seeing these. Paradise Lost, then found again. Not having, of course, and not just looking, but coveting. We wanted these things, we ached for them as only a child can ache, a child with no money and no power and no parental approval. I know a buck meant a lot more then, but why go to so much effort for such a lousy return? And wouldn't most people want their money back?

I don't look at comics now, they're all different, though I guess you can snoop around and find vintage ones if you're willing to pay top dollar (and I'm not). We don't put 15 cents into an envelope to get Onion Gum, not when there's PayPal and the like. I don't save Kellogg's box tops and send away for little plastic submarines that you fill with baking soda. It's a whole different game.

Tastes like. . . like. . .

Why Archie and Jimmy Olsen are the same person

Are you gay or bipolar?

Actual conversation, recently overheard at a party.

(Her) So they're saying, you know, he's (blblblb)

(Him) He's bi-whut?

You know. Bipolar. That's where -

Yeah, I know what it is, baby.

So he says he's like, on this stuff that's like, um I guess it's like lithium, and I'm like

What sort of shit is that?

You know, it's like when you have mood swings?

Shit.

And you take this and it like, levels them out?

Bipolar. That's all I ever hear about. All of a sudden everybody's bipolar.

Like, I don't think so? Like, he's never been what you'd call normal.

If I thought my son was bipolar, you know what I'd do?

(seductively) Whuu-uut?

I'd take him out back and shoot him.

You would?

Put him out of his misery. Hell, I'd do it for my goddamn dogs.

So, you'd like. . . I mean, kill him if he was like. . .

Like I said, put him out of his misery. I'd rather he be dead than fucking crazy.

What if he was, you know?

(mockingly, but she doesn't get it) Whuuu-uuut?

You know, gay.

Jesus.

What would you do?

Well. (Thinks, with difficulty). I don't know, I guess if he has a job -

And a haircut? (giggles)

If he was, you know, holding it together. If he kept on going to church.

Does your son go to church?

What the hell are you talking about?

I mean, do you know anybody like that.

Of course not. But I mean a person can change.

They can change if they're bipolar?

Shit no. I just told you I'd shoot him in the head and it would be the best thing for him.

But they can change if they're you know. . .(coyly) gay?

I saw this thing on TV. Gospel camp, a bunch of ex-gays. Sure, a person can if they want to.

Can they?

Hey, listen. If you were in love with your boss, would you just come up to him and say. . .

Doubt it (giggles).

So you'd keep it to yourself.

So it's OK to be gay if you keep it to yourself.

That's what I'm sayin'. It's a decision, you just don't act on it.

So if you're like, heterosexual, you can just decide not to act on it.

I guess maybe. . . I don't know, that's different. But I guess so.

So being gay is OK so long as you don't act on it.

If you don't make a big deal out of it. Just keep it to yourself.

But if you're bipolar -

I told you, I'd blow his brains out.

What if he like learned to, like, keep it together? Kept on going to church.

I see where you're going. No thanks, dear, it's a whole 'nother issue.

I don't believe you.

I told you already. I'd do it out of love. I'd do it for one of my dogs, and I'd do it for my son.

But is it OK if you, like, keep it to yourself?

Forget it, darlin'. Mental illness is the end of the line.

One more time. . . one more time

Johnny Adams - There Is Always One More Time