SHAT HAPPENS: What's William Shatner's secret?

I think one of my first Shat memories was on a TV program, not Star Trek at all (for I had just started watching it and had decided I liked Spock best,) but The Ed Sullivan Show, something we watched with religious regularity. It was just unthinkable NOT to watch Ed Sullivan (which meant we had nothing better to do on a Sunday night). 

Along with the plate-spinning acts, contortionists and Topo Gigio, there was the odd - very odd - monologuist, some ehk-torrr who got up there and recited something tony like Dylan Thomas or Shakespeare. This was the Culture part of the program, and there seemed to be some kind of quota. I vaguely remember Richard Burton, probably held up with some sort of stand, and David Hemmings (briefly famous after the movie version of Camelot) doing And Death Shall Have No Dominion with an orchestra playing  in the background.

Speaking of Dominion, that used to be the name of a chain of grocery stores in Canada, but it was never quite as popular as Loblaws. Which is why you see William Shatner doing a Loblaws commercial in this video in about 1978, a lean period when he supposedly lived out of his truck. But before all that, before the magnificent rise and fall, there was Shatner the young Shakespearian actor, and there he was on Ed Sullivan doing Hamlet's soliloquy.

Canned culture, for sure, but I remember my father looking at him and muttering, "This guy is supposed to be the next big thing in acting. Hmph." That "hmph" sealed it for me. If my father hated him, Shatner was officially "in".

I don't remember much about that reading, but I did find a YouTube video in which he does the same passage, "to be or not to be", on the Mike Douglas show. And - he's good. Actually, a little understated; maybe he needed to bring up the intensity a bit. But he did a creditable job and said all those antiquated words as if they actually meant something. 

It's funny, but I do not remember anyone complaining about his overacting during the 3-year run of the first Star Trek series. Nobody said boo because nobody thought he overacted. I've been watching those old Treks for the eleventeenth time (and somehow they must have enhanced them for HD, because they look a hell of a lot better now, except for Sulu's acne which is worse), and so far I'm not laughing or groaning. That's because I think he's good. 

All this Shatnerian overacting business seemed to be retroactive (so to speak). The parody came later, and Shatner sort of fell into it, went along with all of it because it meant more public exposure, more work. He has been criticized for ubiquity and self-caricature, but that's like criticizing someone for having fun with their job.  

Myself, I've begun to think that Shatner on Trek was just being true to Captain Kirk, who was always a bit of a drama queen. Like Anthony Perkins and a lot of other dreamy leading men of the period, the young Shatner had a slight peach-fuzzyness about him, appealing to be sure, but just a touch androgynous. And dynamite to young women.

Shatner always works, always has, and at 82 or something, some insane age like that, he's still at it, and will do anything it seems, even make a safety video about the dangers of deep-frying a turkey. He's just around and seems not to need to sleep. He has sort of enlarged since his fox days (and he WAS a fox, make no mistake, especially during his Twilight Zone years when he was downright painfully fox-ish). He doesn't seem exactly fat, just "blown up" or expanded in some way. He does not have the saggyness and seams and crinkles that all other old people have, nor does he look freakish like Mickey Rourke, so it's doubtful he has done too much to his face. So what gives here? His skin has gone kind of like orange peel, thicker, but not slack. He'd be harder to peel, so to speak.

Sometimes I think he's like that character on one of the old Star Treks, the guy who was a gazillion years old and had been all these different famous people on earth. (The only one I really remember is Brahms.) He must be doing something different, or. . . I don't know. He acts the buffoon so frequently that no one would ever suspect that he ISN'T "one of us", but comes from some other place or has been subjected to some sort of "treatment", experimental to be sure, but which in his case seems to have worked. Like Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit, he doesn't seem to know how to die. How will he look at 100. . . 110. . . 150? Has he sold his soul to the devil or made a bargain with the turkey farmers or what? 

It's a secret. A William Shatner secret, and I doubt that he is ever going to tell it. But when he outlives all his children and then his grandchildren, the world is going to be asking some pretty tough questions.

You don't look like that at 82, you don't sound like that at 82, and you don't go around doing turkey videos unless you have something going for you that is very, very strange indeed.

This is my usual p. s., meaning I forgot a whole bunch of stuff. I am a big fan of Shatner's quirky series Weird or What, in which he explores a whole bunch of bizarre phenomena every week with his usual wacko wit. The self-parody here reaches the level of the sublime: when he points to a shelf full of books he has written, one of them is about synchronized swimming. And it is just so cool when he rides in on a horse. I don't know if I believe any of the stuff he examines on the show, but some of it is intriguing (like the signals from Russian cosmonauts that I blogged about a long time ago). 

Then there is that other thing, the thing that kind of shocks me now: there was a Star Trek episode called The Deadly Years in which everyone caught a horrible disease and began to age at a frightfully accelerated rate. The thing is, the makeup on this show was really bad, so no one really looked like an old person. Scotty looked like he'd stuck his face in a banana cream pie. Kirk, well. . . Kirk looked dumb, but absolutely nothing like his "old" self. Not even close.

When you think about it, it's all so - 

Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

Have you ever seen. . . a Mondegreen?

To me that sounds like a Dr. Seuss rhyme. Or  something to eat, like a madeleine or a macaroon or a meringue.

Or a meringa? Marimba? Marembo? Now we’re getting off course.

The name of this bit of word-torture (which refers to a mishearing of a song lyric or a common phrase) originally came from a line of boring poetry, which some boring old person mis-heard:

Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl O' Moray,

And Lady Mondegreen.

The actual fourth line is "And laid him on the green”.

So what, eh? But there’s more. More weird names for things you’re not spozed to say, but say anyway cuz you’re an idiot. I will let Wiki describe it because I'm too lazy to:

The unintentionally incorrect use of similar-sounding words or phrases in speaking is a malapropism. If there is a connection in meaning, it can be called an eggcorn. If a person stubbornly sticks to a mispronunciation after being corrected, that can be described as mumpsimus.

Mumpsimus. Sounds like somebody from that Monty Python movie Life of Brian (i. e. Biggus Dickus), maybe with a  glandular condition.  I don’t want to believe it, but it’s in Wikipedia, so it MUST be right.

But before Wikipedia even existed, we had mondegreens: creative mis-hearings of things like hymn lines, which unintentionally led to brand new Biblical characters such as “Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear” and “Round John Virgin (mother and child)”.

I once overheard my kids singing O Canada (before a pretend hockey game played with stuffed bears) with the line, “Ah, tease a man” (rather than “God keep our land”, a much less imaginitive reading).

But the best-known merengues or whatever-they-are (marimbas?) seem to come from pop music, where the lyrics are so blurred by stoned musicians that even THEY don’t know what they mean.

Wiki quotes two classics:

     There's a bathroom on the right (the line at the end of each verse of "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence Clearwater Revival: "There's a bad moon on the rise")

      

    'Scuse me while I kiss this guy (from a lyric in the song "Purple Haze", by Jimi Hendrix: "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky").

Kissing “this guy” makes more sense than kissing "the sky", which is idiotic. But what about that line from the Beatles’ first hit, She Loves You?

“You know it’s up to you

I think it’s only fair

(blank blank blank blank blank)

Apologize to her”

When I sang this along with my gang of ten-year-old friends, we sang something that sounded like ‘Frighten her to do”. We got by with this, because no one cared what the words were anyway. Paul was so cute ‘n fluffy, and Ringo made us want to take care of him. John was scary and looked a little mean, and George was just the fourth man, but never mind, they were the other two legs that held up the table.

It was only years later that I thought to myself, “Frighten her to DO?” and had to look up the real line.

Which is!

“Pride can hurt you too.”

There’s a sort of “oh, of course” reaction when we finally hear the correct words, as in my revelation/epiphany over “that line” in Elton John’s Rocket Man. I always thought it was,

“Rocket Man, wearing out his shoes in Avalon” (or Babylon).

You will never guess in a million years where I heard the right line. It was on a video of the incomparable William Shatner (and I like William Shatner, by the way – that’s for another post), in which his diction still carried something of that Shakespearian clarity he had when he started his career with the Stratford Festival.

He lounged in a world-weary fashion, smoking a cigarette, each line drawn out for about thirty seconds, with as much histrionic emotion and wild inflection as a rollercoaster. This was one of his first self-parodies, though the audience (this was in about 1978) took it seriously and applauded his performance wildly.

So what’s the real line?

“Burning out his fuse up here alone”.

Who'd-a thunk it?

Mondegreens can become malignant, as when they mestastasize into foreign-language stuff.  I remember seeing something called Mots D’Heures: Gousses, Rames which only made sense (sort of) when you read it out loud:

1. 
   
   (In case you didn't get that the first time - and by the way, how stupid can a person BE? You mean you didn't GET it? What the hell is the - oh well. Here it is again. Read it out loud, will you?)
   
   
   
   

   

   
   
   
   
   

   Et qui rit des curés d'Oc? 

   De Meuse raines, houp! de cloques. 

   De quelles loques ce turque coin. 

   Et ne d'anes ni rennes, 

   Ecuries des curés d'Oc.

Makes me want to go put on my old recording of Inna-Gada-Da-Vi-Da.

There is always one more. . . doll

I don't know what gets into me, I really don't. I can't leave it alone, and I never could.

A few posts ago I was talking about fan art, which I've never done before, mainly because I have no artistic sensibilities whatsoever and can't draw or paint to save my life. Once during a manic phase, I did a lot of abstract painting and was convinced it was REALLY GOOD and went around scanning it and sending it to everyone. Unfortunately, it was shit. I had no idea why everyone seemed so embarrassed.

I don't know how artists do it, except through true talent and determination.

I can't leave it alone. These dolls, these alabaster time-travellers created by the mysterious genius Marina Bychkova (a Vancouver girl, I'm happy to say) pull something out of me, something equally strange.

I want to unjoint them and take them apart and see how they work, or at least dress and undress them. Why? What's the matter with me? I hated dolls as a little girl.

I didn't even have any, except an execrable Debbie doll with a big head and permed black hair like my mother's, and an even worse one called Miss Debutante. Does the average eight-year-old know or care what a "debutante" is? It's a strange term at the best of times, and like "chatelaine" it has no male equivalent. I used to call her "Miss De-BUT-ton-ty", when I called her anything at all.

I did mummify my Barbie, and got some strange looks for it, even from my schizophrenic brother Arthur who seemed to be from some other planet. What can I say, I loved mummies and hated Barbie and it seemed like a good solution.

I can't play with dolls even now, I can't afford one as good as these, and feel a bit silly prowling around doll shows where people just hoard them. So this is my only way of playing. 

I have to reveal a secret: while I played with images today, I worried about a medical test I'm having in a week. I don't feel well and I haven't for some time, though as usual nobody has a clue about it because "you seem fine to me". When you've hidden depression and other kinds of wretched imbalance for nearly 60 years, you get awfully good at it.

This seems to be "physical", meaning "not my fault" and "not something I'm just making up to get attention that I could snap out of any time I wanted to, except I don't want to". It's weird, because part of me hopes there's something wrong, or at least something they can locate, so it won't be one of those vague situations where you KNOW there is something wrong but no one in the medical community will acknowledge it.

It seems a bit idiotic to say, "Gee, I sure hope they find something wrong."

But I do.

I have another secret, and now I will reveal it. I wanted to use one of those hideous birds by Hieronymus Bosch in my "fan art", but discovered it really wasn't do-able, any more than my equally bright idea to make my own Russian nesting dolls. But I did find this, some sort of hawk making that screaming noise they do. What struck me is that its mouth was a perfect mother-of-pearl-looking heart, so I used that as a basis for my fan art, or desecrations, or whatever they are.

It just worked so perfectly. 

EXTREMELY RARE: world's most idiotic cat food commercial!

I have noticed that if you put EXTREMELY RARE in a title, everyone reads the post. Or something.

This ad is, I will admit, extremely bizarre, with the "p-p-p-p-protein" and the dog chasing the three cats into a barrel (with an obvious break to get the freaking cats out of there). 

Cat food ads have always been way stupider than dog food ads. We had Morris, who used to complain endlessly in that smarmy voice. (In spite of his addiction to Nine Lives, he died.) We had "chow-chow-chow" and that weird running-the-film-backwards dance that no cat would do if they were starving to death. And we had the incomparable telephone-proficient Baxter ("Don't answer it, Frank"), whom I thought was lost forever until I dug up a couple of the commercials on an advertising site. 

Probably the best- known was the Meow Mix jingle, with the original subtitles reading, "I want chicken, I want liver, Meow Mix, Meow Mix, please deliver." There were infinite varieties on this, with the words gradually making less and less sense ("I want lightly-grilled sea bass, I want roast turkey with razzleberry dressing," etc.).  My all-time fave, which I think I already posted at some point, was the "Close Encounters" Meow Mix commercial of the mid-'80s: a cat is pictured gazing heavenwards and meows four times in the familiar Meow Mix "frequency". A huge spaceship appears and echoes the meows with "BOM BOM BOM BOM". All that's missing is Richard Dreyfuss digging up shrubs and having a nervous breakdown from sheer intensity.

I'm glad to find these things again, because they're fun, and my grandkids whoop and scream over them. They don't make ads like that any more, with those stupid cats, or rather, those stupid advertising copywriters. Paging Freddy Rumsen!

One!. . . More!. . . Time!

If your whole life somehow

Wasn't much 'til now

And you've almost lost

Your will to live

No matter what you've been through

Long as there's breath in you

There is always one more time

And if your dreams go bad

Every one that you've had

That don't mean that some dreams

Can't come true

'Cause it's funny about dreams

As strange as it seems

There is always one more time

Oh turnin' corners

Is only a state of mind

Keeping your eyes closed

Is worse than being blind

If there's a heart out there

Looking for someone to share

I don't care if it's been

Turned down time and time again

And if we meet one day

Please don't walk away

'Cause there is always one more time

There is always one more time

Blogger's note. Why do I spend so much time doing these things? Something to help the video down, I guess. Something to force me to concentrate so I won't sink ever deeper into depression and despair. What? I'm not happy all the time? Of course I am! It's just that I have this bad case of reality. Plus my Kicked post with the Cole Porter lyric (very mysteriously) got something like 400 views!

When I first heard this song in the movie Bowfinger, I was riveted. Then I forgot all about it. Then I saw Bowfinger again, but this time I was actually able to look it up and hear it again. I think it saved my life (at least for now). 

Johnny Depp: FOLLOW THE RULES OR ELSE!

You know, I'm always a little intimidated when the first thing I read on an unfamiliar web site is a detailed and very long list of rules.

I was particularly astonished when this headspinningly complex list (below) appeared on a fan site about that rascally social rebel, that mascara-eyed Caribbean ne'er-do-well, that stereotype-shattering gender-bending Ed Wood of the modern cinema, Johnny Depp.

Johnny Depp is a fox- let's get that out of the way first - and ever since my then-teenage daughter told me breathlessly about a painfully-gorgeous young hunk on a show called 21 Jump Street, he has taken on interesting parts, the sort of roles that a Gary Oldman might choose (or a Danny DeVito or a whoever-is-a-subversive-character-but-not-especially-good-looking-or-over-the-height-of-four-feet-one-inch-tall).  And he has made a go of it for a very long time, decades in fact, an unusual thing for a slightly off-the-wall leading man.  And he has attracted female fans everywhere. Especially me. 

Do I have a favorite? I do.  Though the movie Benny and Joon is not especially good in story line, and not much acting ever takes place, I love Depp's nearly-mute amalgam of Chaplin, Keaton and even my beloved Harold Lloyd as he swings from a rope past the window of his girl friend who is incarcerated in a mental institution.  He's all in, as they say.

So I was kind of, well, ah, er, taken aback when I investigated the web site I recommended at the end of my post about automatons. When I finally looked at it in detail, I found this, this, this - edifice of rules, this - this boarding school, this itchy crinoline, this Little House on the Prairie bonnet of restriction! Compared to this, my Grade Four grammar teacher was a raving slut. 

Yes, I appreciate the fact that the comments have to be written in complete sentences. Most of my sentences are complete, and if they aren't, it's 

I can see ruling out those lols and rotfl and grmlds and stuff like that. I hate them and fear that the language will become irreversibly eroded if they take over any more than they already have.  I can see ruling out abusive language and blatant Depp sexual fantasies, although. . . 

Although. People can't express feelings about him, share dreams or fantasies, or post fan art or Johnny Depp coloring pages or anything like that. No good steamy gossip or "hearsay" is allowed, nor can you quote those scumbag entertainment sites.  It's completely sexless, devoid of the giddy joy these Hollywood gods are meant to provoke in us mortals.  This fan site is under such tight control, it only has something like 33 followers, all of whom seem deeply intimidated when they approach the Headmistress with their timid questions.

I'm just sayin'.  All passion seems to have been squashed down by one of those squashing-down things.

Once you've carefully read through ALL the rules, and don't you dare just skim them like you'd do on a surgical permission form or a divorce settlement or whatever, you discover there is in fact very little that you CAN do on this site. I wonder, then, why even have a Johnny Depp fan site, if indeed that's what it is? And what would Johnny Depp think about it?

I don't think he'd read a web site, to tell the truth. I don't think he would read one about himself, in particular. He'd be out there jumping into his next role, which is what real actors do. He'd be out there shattering the dull tradition of good-looking actors mainly functioning as backdrops on wheels.

But that's just me.

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NOTE. I don't think it's fair to assume a fan site about Johnny Depp is going to have a Depp-like, devil-may-care disregard for social convention. But it just strikes me as strange, is all. It's so careful, careful, careful, and seems at odds with his rebellious and often very sexual persona. Oh, but we CAN allude to sex if it's done in an earthy, oh-so-English way ("Quite the ripper, is Johnny, eh, Honoria dear?" Assuming this site is English.) 

Anyway, I didn't write any of this, I'm just using it as an example of internet curiosa. Oh my God, I think that's a run-on sentence!

Just playing around (driving myself crazy)

The most beautiful thing I have ever seen

Dead monk in the middle of the road: the ultimate automaton

From Wikipedia, under the entry of Automata:

In 1562, the heir to the throne of Spain sustained a serious head wound that caused him fever and blindness. His father, the king, thought all was lost, until the heir was reportedly cured by the miraculous corpse of a Spanish monk that had been dead for 100 years.In his desperation, the king had allowed the monk's mummified body to be placed in bed with his sick son and he was so thankful when this dubious medical treatment actually worked that he commissioned a moving replica of the dead monk.


You see? You see how wrong I was about automatons (or automata, if you want to get technical about it - just don't say automaTRON, as too many people on YouTube videos did - collectors!!). I thought they were a Victorian invention, maybe because of that scene in A Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim is staring into the store window as they take away the wooden boat he covets. But soon he is beaming again with his crooked English teeth, because of the jouncing clown that leers and laughs at him, which I just ASSUMED was an automaton.

Which maybe it was, but it was a pretty shitty one. If this monk-on-wheels (currently moldering away in the Smithsonian) is indeed dated back to 1562, there's more going on here than I thought. For one thing, I must have seriously underestimated human technology. (BTW, there's no sound on this video, probably to disguise the creaks, groans, whirrs and thuds these creepy homunculi produce).

I can't begin to figure out how these things move, and when I see the inner workings of them they look like giant pocket watches ticking away. I don't see how else they could have stayed in motion, though, like a pocket watch, I assume they would have to be wound at intervals.

My readings about automata are fascinating, if pretty strange. The medieval monk-y business is nothing compared to this far-fetched Biblical tale of automatiana:

According to Jewish legend, Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It's also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne.

I don't see how this could have happened, unless a time-traveller (perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory) went back and built the thing for Solomon. I also wonder about that "legend" bit: legend usually means "something that maybe sort of should be true because we want it to be, but probably isn't". 

But this one takes the cake, and I am sure was written as a form of satire, perhaps to take a swipe at people's wide-eyed awe when watching these things. I can imagine them exclaiming about how lifelike they were, even if they were about as animated as that monk's mummified corpse.

In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling):

The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.

Could Walking Baby Alive have done any better? 

 http://www.johnnydepp-zone.com/boards/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=48978

(I've barely looked at this site, but it looks promising, though I have no idea what it has to do with Johnny Depp. Except that maybe he's an automaton.)

It's Nancy (but where's Sluggo?)

Once you start watching these, you're a goner. Nancy is particularly "lifelike", meaning she isn't lifelike at all and scares the Jesus out of you.

Screek, scrawk. . . it's alive, ALIVE, I tell you!

This strange embalmed-looking automaton was once a form of Victorian entertainment, a technological marvel of its time. The sounds she makes are the best part.

Super-creepy, heeby-jeeby, WORST clown ever seen!

What makes these hideously fascinating figures even more fascinating is that you just keep finding them. One YouTube video leads to twenty more. These were marvels of high technology during the Victorian-Edwardian era and were driven by a hand-cranked clockwork mechanism. I tried to find a quite long video shot by a tourist which featured a fascinating museum in Switzerland, mostly a collection of self-playing musical instruments. Can't find it now, but maybe it lingers somewhere in a backwash of YouTube-opia.

I suppose people must collect these at great price, or else they appear only in museums and are seldom - what, played? Cranked? What ARE these things, anyway, and why do I have nightmares about them? The sounds they make are the worst, the creakings and bangings and muffled thuds. 

I mean, clowns are bad enough, aren't they, but half a clown made out of wires, rolling some sort of ball and sticking his tongue out at us, is the stuff of Tim Burton movies.