The care and feeding of an Amazon author

Long ago, and oh so far away, I was a book reviewer. Books came out every season, and my editor

for whatever publication I was writing for (Vancouver Sun, Montreal Gazette, Edmonton Journal, etc.) would phone me and run some titles by me, or even send a few and let me pick. I did this for a shocking, disgraceful and deeply embarrassing 25 or 30 years, which I've been told I must take off my resume so it won't look "dated". But I loved the work and I suppose would have kept on with it.

I wonder what happened to it all.

Now it's slam, click, like, buy, gulp, consume, poop it out the other side, with normalized ADD as a laxative. More than ever, it's "product" like Dairy Queen soft-serve, only brown.

I got out of it, I had to, the last book nearly killed me because I didn't understand the language of barter: you give me five stars for MY book, I'll give you five stars for YOUR book, and neither one of us will have read the book because we're too busy turning out more slop and swill.

(The worst example of this was a published author who "friended" me, then immediately messaged me and said she had looked at my Amazon author page and noticed I "didn't have too many reviews". She said my work looked "great" and would love to rate it with five stars if I'd take a look at HER page, which "didn't have too many reviews" either, so maybe we could help each other. She said she'd try to take a closer look at my stuff - meaning, read it - if she had time. Her page had a sci-fi dragon/maiden-with-flaxen-hair/his-manhood-stood-erect series (oh, these endless SERIES - big sellers, I'm told) with approximately 200 reviews. OK then. The "unfriend" button is a Godsend sometimes.)

You can't say I didn't try, in fact I tried everything I could think of, but somehow the "everything" was always desperate, embarrassing and "wrong".  I just don't know the secret handshake, and as far as my self-esteem is concerned, I'm still being shunned on the playground because I just don't know how to do this. And PLEASE, don't anybody send me instructions, because that is not what I am talking about. 

Did I stop writing? I write for myself now, every single day, and it is intensely enjoyable, but I don't mean to show it to anyone. Ever. This is the only way I can maintain the purity of the experience and keep my sanity intact.

(A P. S. to the sci-fi dragon-lady story: she mentioned the name of a Hollywood producer who might be interested in looking at The Glass Character, deliberate catnip. I did a little research on this guy, and while he pretends to be a producer, he is a convicted felon who has never "produced" anything but a criminal record. If you're a serious writer, if there are any of you left out there, watch your back.)

Upside-down and backwards

I love old film leaders, and they make swell gifs, so I've giffed quite a few of them. This is from an old Terrytoons cartoon from 1930, the kind they used to show on Saturday morning. What I love about this one is that, for some unknown reason, the countdown is UPSIDE-DOWN. I like the splashy effect from all the grease pencil notations, or whatever they are, and the general deterioration of the film stock, which I also love.

Made this one quite a while ago, when Gifsforum was still working and you had some flexibility in speed, etc. It's quite a long one, too. I've posted the slowest of the three versions I made, so you can see all those lovely fuzzy, blurry, scribbly details, along with the countdown that stops at two. I notice here that the writing is backwards, too. A film technician would know why.

This is a little bonus, one of my favorite old movie logos with a CHICKEN instead of a lion roaring. Well, a rooster. Still, it's pretty bizarre.

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It's very clear

Rummaging through my files of scans - and of course I didn't find the item I wanted - I came across this, obviously scanned from a book. But most of my book scans turn out shitty, grainy or covered in criss-cross lines. That's partly due to the fact that my scanner costs  $14.99, but this - this actually came out nicely, with a lot of detail, a sense of infinity which lends it that lovely sense of certain doom.  I had to tweak it a bit to bring out the contrast, as Harold sort of greyed out and blended in to the building. These types of shots are posed promotional photos, nothing like screenshots, and there must have been tons of them, which necessitated hanging on to the wall and remaining absolutely still with the right facial expression. Some have noted that there is a naturalness to HL's stills which makes people think they were taken directly from the films. You find these little nooks and crannies of craftsmanship when you study Harold. He took the trouble, and whether his fans consciously knew it or not, it's one of the reasons they kept coming back for more.

One of the better gifs found on Facebook

 

and death shall have no dominion.

Happy. . . birth. . .day. . .Mr. . . Pres-i-dent. . .

 

At least they don't melt

Every summer, we have a tradish - or I do - of knitting something for the girls while they're away on their camping trip, usually animals of some kind. Not sure when this started, but apparently it led to squeals of delight: "Look what Nanny made!'.

This is the first time I have knitted food for them (though I did an assortment of vegetables in a basket for their Mum): ice cream cones, and they're harder than they look. There are two components (I won't tell you what they are, eejit), the bottom half usually being harder. Displaying them without them falling over is a challenge. I used those plastic molds that you use to make juice popsicles. They had to be good for something.

The element of surprise in these projects is crucial, though I never get to see it. This all started small and escalated, a little alarmingly. A couple of years ago I made a tableau called Snail Valley (still reverberating in memory) that I am particularly proud of:

This is only a tiny percentage of it, as I photographed the snails before I knitted the leaves, branches, mushrooms, rocks, trees, etc. that completed the scene. I don't know how many snails I completed, probably at least ten, all different from each other.  I must say they're cool. The pattern had the snail's eyes in a jolly, winky position on their head. SNAILS DO NOT HAVE THEIR EYES ON THEIR HEADS. They loll out on gooey, freaky stalks, the ends of their slimy retractable antennae.

This is the Megasnail, about ten inches long, commissioned for an 8th birthday. 

The body was harder to make than the shell.

Oh well.

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THIS is why I unfriend on Facebook!

This hateful meme showed up on my news feed, posted by someone I thought I knew. Not quite as bad as the Tea Party Republican I had to cut loose, in spite of the fact she was cozied up to the Lloyd family (though she cut all ties with me for no reason that was ever explained). Her meme stated that the wrong Democrat had been assassinated: it shouldn't have been JFK (which was a waste of a good bullet), but Obama.

It's been stated that mass shootings wouldn't happen if everyone in the United States was armed at all times. THEY could kill THEM first, solving the problem. We have no such problems in Canada, but we do have despair. There are guns, but mostly in the hands of gangs.

I have known, in my lifetime, two people with guns: a collector of antique rifles, and a cop. The gun didn't even belong to the cop.

I just don't see how this can work.

It's lies, I tell you! Dirty, filthy lies!

I will confess to one thing: I stay up late at night, and look for photos of - two! Two things I confess to. I stay up late at night and look for photos of Harold Lloyd - THREE! Three things I -

Sorry, I've just been in a Monty Python mood lately. It's the silly season, and I want to coast along and not put in the usual feverish effort that makes this blog so totally obscure, not to mention primitive to look at.

I found this lovely shot of HL, obviously a candid photo. I love the quality of light in it, sifting down as if some sun or moon dwells in the corner.  Someone is wearing a silk top hat, which is not something you saw every day even back then (likely in the  mid-1930s). Harold is wearing very fancy evening wear and, as usual, looks splendid in it (and as he said himself in his Nebraska-born way, "Well, some say I don't clean up too bad"). This was a  gentleman to the manor born, but what's he doing here? Who is the blonde, and why does Harold look just a tad guilty?

As you can see here, the private Harold looked very different from the Glass Character who propelled him to fame. He was better-looking, for one thing, with the clean Gregory Peck jawline that makes male movie stars so photogenic. He carried himself differently. He rocked a tux like no one else. But what's going on here - just the usual social whirl he was obliged to engage in (not always happily, as he was essentially a family man)? Then why does it look as if the attractive, willowly blonde, dressed to the nines, is signing a hotel register? Is it just too hazardous if HE signs it, even if it's Mr. and Mrs. Smith?  He might as well relax, because his fans won't recognize him anyway.

The faces in the background look vaguely familiar to me. Can you make them out? So could this just be one of those elegant Hollywood soirees that - no. Harold liked women, and he sort of liked them in bulk. Skimming through the photos, some of which I'd never seen, there were several of him as an older man photographing female nudes, his favorite of his many hobbies. Nudes, as in women decorously draped below the waist, but with mammoth breasts and considerable curves elsewhere. To his credit, Harold would not photograph a skinny woman and liked bodies that were not so much modelled on Monroe (whom he photographed, though clothed) as Jane Russell, practically exploding out of her Howard Hughes-designed bra.

These photos of the photographer make me uneasy, for obvious reasons. Some of them are plain bizarre, with oddball props that make you wonder just what is going on. The family released a coffee table book a decade or so ago featuring the best of these nudes, so obviously they're not trying to hide anything. Some of them are in 3D, a technology which Harold may not have invented (that was Grandma's old Stereoscope that you held away from yourself like a selfie stick), but developed from its primitive William Castle roots to something that could  be seriously used in theatres. In an interview late in life, he claimed that in the future every movie would be shot and shown in 3D, and the interviewer made sure he mentioned in his writeup that Harold had gone a little crazy in his old age.

Now there is a Harold Lloyd Award for Excellence in 3D Photography. Martin Scorsese notably won it for - ironically - Hugo, where the main character dangles off the hands of a huge clock. Since he was a humble man, I think Harold would have been pleased by the respectful quote.

But getting back to it: Harold was human, but did absolutely nothing to attract women. They came to him. Flocked. It was wrong to say he chased them. He paid his models a flat fifty bucks, and the lineup ran around the corner of the block. There is a lot of evidence these bodaceously curvaceous women were quite willing to sneak into bed with the photographer.

I read part of a disgusting book called The Secret Life of Humphrey Bogart. I forget who wrote it. I didn't buy it, folks, I read the "Look Inside!" excerpt on Amazon. It's one of the sleaziest things I've ever seen, so of course I had to read it (given my insatiable appetite for the tawdry). Pure fiction, so I should not pay any attention to the fact that there was a tell-all passage about Bebe Daniels, Harold's first leading lady in the 19-teens. She claimed that Harold was "proficient and good at" the sex act - well, my goodness! Hardly sweep-you-off-your-feet stuff, but BD then claimed she could expect to have at least three orgasms during these sessions.

It's lies, I tell you - a pack of dirty, filthy lies! But with HL's Nebraskan' thoroughness and his propensity for studying every facet of life until he WAS good at it, it may well be true. "Good at" means "satisfaction guaranteed, Ma'am", among other things.

Or so my wicked imagination tells me.

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Star Trek Meets Monty Python

Broke Trek - a Star Trek Brokeback Mountain parody

Can't seem to get enough of these good ol' Star Trek Brokeback Mountain parodies! I have a feeling this was pirated from an earlier video called Gay Trek or some-such. I think it's funny, but I don't think it insults my gay friends, or if it does, come on, guys! It's Kirk and Spock. They're funny whether they're gay or not. And we all knew they had a love that dared not speak its name, unless they were speaking in Klingon.

I Wish I Knew How To Quit You

This is the line everyone remembers from Brokeback Mountain. The fact Jake says it with his back to the camera makes it super-effective. I haven't seen this movie since it came out, and that was quite a while ago, a few lifetimes I think. How would it strike me now? Heath Ledger is dead and gone, which is still a gut-wrenching shock. The waste. Success, fame, all that stuff, eats human beings alive.

I used to think Jake would make a pretty good Harold Lloyd, but it's a wet dream of monstrous proportions that now must be hung out to dry. He has just the right world-seducing, fuck-me quality. Well, he does. I might as well say it.

You were temptation: the strange sins of St. Anthony

 

I don't know much about Hieronymus Bosch, but then again, I think I am afraid to know. When I first saw one of his paintings, the triptych called The Garden of Earthly Delights, I thought,   he's crazy. He's a schizophrenic. Most people in their right mind/worst nightmares would not even think of the horrific spectacles he creates.

Imagine doing this to a human body, making it part of a house (the house having been built around him so that he is buried in it), with his bare ass sticking out as he kneels in an awful parody of prayer. A sort of gridwork door comes down at the "entrance", and a shadowy someone peeks out. The man's genitalia don't show, so he has either been emasculated or they've been painted out for the sake of modesty. His anus looks to have been sealed, or perhaps clenched against the threat of sodomy (for his position seems to helplessly invite it). .A gaudy faux priest or priestess does a sort of "behold!" gesture with its back turned (and imagine the symbolism of that!), and in the rest of the painting we see the usual bird-headed humans, flying fish, and unidentifiable contraptions that are meant to represent the worst kind of sin (I presume, sexual pleasure of any kind).

For this is The Temptation of St. Anthony, representing the torment of one of these hermetic/anchorite figures that you cannot imagine sinning anyway. Out there in the woods, what would he do? I can only think of one thing, but back then I guess it was enough to consign you to the eternal fires of hell.

But where does all this shit come from? It's a bad trip, is what it is, the brown acid of all time. Bosch needs to go lie down in one of those tents, like in Woodstock, know what I mean? Come down!

I have a theory about all this, so get ready, art historians, here it comes, a completely uneducated opinion that comes right from my gut. I think Bosch got off on this stuff.  If any art critics are reading this, they are wincing right now. As a writer, or one who tries to be, I know what it is to toy with my characters, to get off on the power of it, sadistically manipulate them. The stuff I am writing now, NO ONE is ever going to see it, so I am completely free. I can sweep them offstage with the flick of an imagination. One of them recently had an epileptic seizure and died on the floor in front of his lover. Up until then he had been the main character. So why did I kill him off? I was tired of him.

Bosch seemed to be able to ruthlessly manipulate human horrors in the same way (though somehow, I think, a tad more effectively). As an artist, he had the power. His work is almost unimagineably detailed, and every detail unspeakably macabre. He had the ability to dig right to the bottom of the human soul and dredge up stuff so horrible I can't even comprehend most of it.  Fevered, spiritually diseased, howling like an animal, we see a man - a saint! -  buried in - what, sin? A haystack, or, more likely, a pile of manure? Who lives in that place, anyway - the local priest? (We won't go into the very strange sense of proportion, the tiny figures living right next to giants, that is almost Swiftian in its paradox. Are the ordinary folk really so puny in relation to the main players?)

What did St. Anthony DO exactly, that he might be tortured this way? We never find out. What is sin? Do these saintly types take it all upon themselves, Christlike, while the rest of us happily roll around in the mud? It's more likely this was painted to scare the living shit out of ordinary people, to keep them in line, for if this saintly figure was so tortured, imagine what was going to happen to US if we dared to stand up to the absolute power of the Church.

Post-blog thoughts. I must have an awful mind, for it occurs to me that the shadowy face peeping out from that awful gridwork door might suggest part of St. Anthony's genitalia. The door itself looks vaguely net-like, as if they've quite literally got him by the balls. And look at the outstretched hand of the gaudy faux priest: the position of it has a sort of creepy, "feely" sense to it. If it were placed slightly differently, it would literally be grabbing his privates. The fact that he/she/it is turning away adds to that impression: turn your head and cough.  But it might also represent a cash grab so crass that the priest must pretend he/she/it isn't doing it. If so, Bosch was cleverly embedding a dig at the hypocrisy of the church in a so-called religious work. 

So all this might actually have been about tithing and what might happen to you if you didn't. You think not? Think it. Human beings are human beings, aren't they? They all have the same parts, and the same depraved desires, and have been that way since the beginning of the species.

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I don't think that I can take it

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

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 noooooo

I recall the yellow cotton dress

Foaming like a wave

On the ground around your knees

Birds like tender babies in your hands

And the old men playing checkers, by the trees

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 noooooo

(Short instrumental interlude)

There would be another song for me

For I will sing it

There would 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

Oh, after all the loves of my life

I'll be thinking of you - and wondering why

(Longer instrumental 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 noooooo, o-oh no-ooooo

"You had me at hello"

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Monty Python - we're still not sure what happened

Monty Python comes around but rarely. Ten years can go by without it. Then I stumbled upon it on the Sundance Channel (?), which was showing Fawlty Towers and, as it turned out, Python. These are truly wretched Beta videotapes from the mid-'80s that have been badly transferred, muddy, with all that sparkly stuff on the edges. Some of them blur past me in a surrealism that is hard to hold on to, let alone laugh at. But this got me laughing so hard that tears ran down my face. I just kept howling, helplessly. Not sure why, can't analyze it at all, just lunacy. They don't make them like that any more. Maybe ever. We're still not sure what happened here.

But they're cousins

Brain-dead because it's summer, deeply unhappy over the state of the world and the people in it (for my jolly satire is mostly a pose to cheer myself up), I nevertheless discover I can still make a damn good gif. Anyone who ever watched The Patty Duke Show (meaning anyone over 100 years old) remembers her insane boogaloo in the opening credits, which is unlike any dance ever seen before or since. "Our Patty loves the rock-n'-roll, a hotdog makes her lose control," went the lyrics. You will lose your mind.

By the way, I am in mourning over the apparent passing of Gifsforum, the best of all the YouTube-to-gif sites. It had the most flexibility and allowed you to adjust speed, colour and many other things. You could go to tenths of a second and make gifs from movie-length videos. Sometimes features disappeared, probably from causing too many problems. Now I use makeagif, which is almost as good and certainly improved from what it used to be. Most of the others are atrocious and impossible to figure out. Makeagif supposedly allows you to make 20-second gifs, which is really long, but after about ten seconds they are too jerky to be watchable. 

Gifsforum has been down for a long time now, at least according to all those "up or down?" sites. So I don't think it's just me. I wonder if it will ever be back.

"Oh my God - it's a waterfall!" Laughing on the edge of death

I might have posted this before - in fact, I probably HAVE posted this before - but if I want to see it again, I might as well see it here. This is a much better quality version from YouTube than the grainy, distorted thing going the rounds on Facebook. I know nothing about these guys or if there is more to the video than this, or, more importantly, WHO is shooting the video (which nobody thinks about). It seems impossible, unless some other vehicle is trailing them. Even more importantly, I want to know if they survived. But if they didn't, at least they went down laughing.

One of the best gifs I've ever seen