Rob Ford. A man of vision.
Athlete.
Heavyweight.
Athlete (again).
Champion!
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Rob Ford: THE LOST VIDEO
Toronto Mayor Rob Ford appeared at a recent press conference to dispell the vicious, untrue, really really bad rumors swirling around his mayorship.
Among other things, Ford stated, "I do not use crack cocaine, nor am I an addict of crack cocaine. I did not use crack cocaine this morning. I did not use crack cocaine this afternoon. Nor do I intend to use crack cocaine during this press conference."
"I do not sell pot to middle school students. I did not sell pot to middle school students this morning, I did not sell pot to middle school students this afternoon, and I will not sell pot to middle school students during this press conference."
"I will make no comment on a video (which may or may not exist) depicting my use of a crack pipe (which may or may not exist) exposing a drug dependency (which may or may not exist) that will likely end my career (which may or may not exist)."
Monday, May 27, 2013
Attack of the Killer Carrots: or, do you really know what you're eating?
It's a Monday, and I suppose I must write about something (besides Harold Lloyd, I mean. My frequent repetition of subject matter presupposes that people aren't reading this blog every day, or even every six months.)
You know those cute little baby carrots you buy, the ones that are supposed to be extra-sweet and can be thrown into salads and stews without being peeled or cut up?
Why don't they have any peel on them? Did you ever wonder about that?
It's because they aren't baby carrots.
I think I first read about this in one of Cordelia Strube's rueful dystopic novels, and didn't believe it - surely it was an urban myth that baby carrots were engineered and not really what they seemed.
The other day the subject popped into my head again. In these days of Google, you don't really have to "dig" any more (to use a carrotine image) to get information. I quickly found this (and a lot of other stuff I won't include cuz it's boring):
"Baby-cut" carrots
Taking fully grown carrots and cutting them to make them smaller was the idea of California farmer Mike Yurosek. Yurosek was unhappy at having to discard carrots because of slight rotting or imperfections, and looked for a way to reclaim what would otherwise be a waste product. He was able to acquire an industrial green bean cutter, which cut his carrots into two lengths, and by placing these lengths into a potato peeler, he created the original "baby-cut" carrot, branded "Bunny-Luv".
.gif)
In other words, what happened is that some farmer had some rotten old carrots lying around, and instead of throwing them onto the compost heap he decided to make use of them for profit. Recycle them, if you will. So he broke them into pieces and ground them down into baby-carrot-sized objects. Not all the same size, of course (though why that would be seen as weird in this age of agricultural cloning is beyond me). Every so
often there would be a really dinky one to make everyone think they were real.
People bought them because they didn't know any different. They more-or-less looked the same as the ones they used to buy. The "baby" carrots always seemed suspiciously wet in the little bag, and once they had dried out they were sort of white-ish, but no one worried too much about that.
Then came the big expose: baby carrots are a sham! They're made from rotten carrots and have been soaked in chlorine bleach (causing the white crust) to disinfect them from the horseshit they have been lying in! Warning, warning: DO NOT eat baby carrots or you and your children will die!
If the X Files was still on TV, this would have made a very good story, with Mulder ducking behind a haystack to watch evil Farmer Yurosek grind his carrots down.
I couldn't find this "certain alarmist email" (which had apparently gone out to everyone and his hound dog) anywhere. Curiously, it doesn't seem to exist any more, though there are umpteen references to the not-true, very-bad, silly-and-inaccurate email written by some scraggly old granola type who won't get her kids vaccinated.
What I found were seemingly hundreds of web pages with strenuous denials from every corner that there is ANYTHING wrong with ground-down, reconstituted, faux baby carrots.
Oh, yes, they DO use chlorine in processing them, but it's only the tiniest drop, and besides, isn't there chlorine in a lot of products, like industrial cleaners? It's the same as the stuff in the water that those old cranks objected to, isn't it? (Oops, that was flouride.) Yes, there IS a nice white patina on the outside of the carrots, a sort of "bloom", a suntan from having their tender little skins removed so the consumer can eat them right away and not have to peel them. (Not that they ever HAD any peel on them.) All you have to do to remove the bloom (as if anyone would want to!) is soak them in cold water (changing the water every 2 or 3 hours) for oh, say, six days.
This is a synopsis, of course, because it's Monday and I don't feel like quoting actual articles, but it's true, ANY mention of the controversy over "baby" carrots provokes the kind of strenuous, foaming, table-thumping denial that tells this reporter there's a coverup going on. As usual, Big Farmer has turned the tables on us: WE are to blame because we never really looked at the soggy wet little bags we were buying. It clearly says on the bag, not "baby carrots", but "baby-CUT carrots".
Got a pencil sharpener, anyone?
POST-POST REFLECTIONS. Since researching this piece (my research mainly consisting of making gifs of rabbits mating), I found this gem. It's one of the rare pieces that hasn't been "corrected" by the carrot industry, which must be run by William Randolph Hearst or something. I really think Ange makes some good points. It seems EVERYTHING we eat nowadays has been adulterated in some way. Is this why 8/10 kids have asthma and allergies, and girls are reaching puberty at age 9? Are carrots really being injected with growth hormones? Read on!
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Why Baby Carrots Are Killing You
by Angela Garrison
What could I possibly have against these cute little “healthy” snacks that can be found in school lunchboxes across America? It’s back to school time and baby carrots are one snack to keep out of your childs lunch.
It may shock you that baby carrots do not come out of the ground that way. There is no little baby carrot garden where these are harvested. Manufactured baby carrots are a result of taking all the broken and “ugly” big carrots they can’t put in the package, grinding them all up, processing them into the “baby” carrots and giving them a bath in chlorine to give them a bright happy orange color. There are also “Cut + Peel” baby carrots that are widdled into a miniature form. (Blogger's note. The correct term is "whittled", but "widdled" may somehow have more emotional reality. After all, those fake baby carrots really are "widdle".)
If you look on the package it doesn’t say “Chlorine”, because it was added as part of manufacturing and not added as an ingredient…why is that? Packaged foods contains lots of chemicals both in the ingredients and in the manufacturing process. The tricky part is chemicals added as part of the manufacturing process are not considered to be an ingredient therefore does not have to be listed on the food label. So there is no way to tell what else is hiding in that box or package.
As defined by the EPA, Chlorine is a pesticide. Its purpose is to kill living organisms. So it would make sense that when you ingest chlorine, it kills some parts of our body like the healthy bacteria in your gut and intestinal flora for instance. Chlorine is a highly toxic, yellow-green gas most heavily used in chemical agents like household cleaners and can be found in the air near industrial areas especially around paper processing plants.
Exposure to Chlorine has been linked to health problems such as sore throat, coughing, eye and skin irritation, rapid breathing, narrowing of the bronchi, wheezing, blue coloring of the skin, accumulation of fluid in the lungs, pain in the lung region, severe eye and skin burns, lung collapse, a type of asthma known as Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome (RADS).
Chlorine is also added to the public water supply. So not only are you drinking it, but you are absorbing it through the largest organ in your body, your skin. In fact, 2/3 of human absorption of chlorine is from inhaling the steam in the form of chloroform and fast absorption through your open pores in the warm shower or bath. The inhalation of chloroform is a suspected cause of asthma and bronchitis, especially in children… which has increased 300% in the last two decades. Other health risks associated with chloroform is cancer, potential reproductive damage, birth defects, dizziness, fatigue, headache, liver and kidney damage. Chloroform is also found in the air and in food, like baby carrots.
Conclusion: Stick to organically grown whole carrots. They are really easy to find as you can buy them at your local farmers market or grocery store. Wash them and cut them into sticks for your childs lunch box. Carrots are an excellent snack that we enjoy all the time. Enjoy!
Source: thealternativedaily
"Baby-cut" carrots
Taking fully grown carrots and cutting them to make them smaller was the idea of California farmer Mike Yurosek. Yurosek was unhappy at having to discard carrots because of slight rotting or imperfections, and looked for a way to reclaim what would otherwise be a waste product. He was able to acquire an industrial green bean cutter, which cut his carrots into two lengths, and by placing these lengths into a potato peeler, he created the original "baby-cut" carrot, branded "Bunny-Luv".
.gif)
In other words, what happened is that some farmer had some rotten old carrots lying around, and instead of throwing them onto the compost heap he decided to make use of them for profit. Recycle them, if you will. So he broke them into pieces and ground them down into baby-carrot-sized objects. Not all the same size, of course (though why that would be seen as weird in this age of agricultural cloning is beyond me). Every so
often there would be a really dinky one to make everyone think they were real.
People bought them because they didn't know any different. They more-or-less looked the same as the ones they used to buy. The "baby" carrots always seemed suspiciously wet in the little bag, and once they had dried out they were sort of white-ish, but no one worried too much about that.
Then came the big expose: baby carrots are a sham! They're made from rotten carrots and have been soaked in chlorine bleach (causing the white crust) to disinfect them from the horseshit they have been lying in! Warning, warning: DO NOT eat baby carrots or you and your children will die!
If the X Files was still on TV, this would have made a very good story, with Mulder ducking behind a haystack to watch evil Farmer Yurosek grind his carrots down.
I couldn't find this "certain alarmist email" (which had apparently gone out to everyone and his hound dog) anywhere. Curiously, it doesn't seem to exist any more, though there are umpteen references to the not-true, very-bad, silly-and-inaccurate email written by some scraggly old granola type who won't get her kids vaccinated.
What I found were seemingly hundreds of web pages with strenuous denials from every corner that there is ANYTHING wrong with ground-down, reconstituted, faux baby carrots.
Oh, yes, they DO use chlorine in processing them, but it's only the tiniest drop, and besides, isn't there chlorine in a lot of products, like industrial cleaners? It's the same as the stuff in the water that those old cranks objected to, isn't it? (Oops, that was flouride.) Yes, there IS a nice white patina on the outside of the carrots, a sort of "bloom", a suntan from having their tender little skins removed so the consumer can eat them right away and not have to peel them. (Not that they ever HAD any peel on them.) All you have to do to remove the bloom (as if anyone would want to!) is soak them in cold water (changing the water every 2 or 3 hours) for oh, say, six days.
This is a synopsis, of course, because it's Monday and I don't feel like quoting actual articles, but it's true, ANY mention of the controversy over "baby" carrots provokes the kind of strenuous, foaming, table-thumping denial that tells this reporter there's a coverup going on. As usual, Big Farmer has turned the tables on us: WE are to blame because we never really looked at the soggy wet little bags we were buying. It clearly says on the bag, not "baby carrots", but "baby-CUT carrots".
Got a pencil sharpener, anyone?
POST-POST REFLECTIONS. Since researching this piece (my research mainly consisting of making gifs of rabbits mating), I found this gem. It's one of the rare pieces that hasn't been "corrected" by the carrot industry, which must be run by William Randolph Hearst or something. I really think Ange makes some good points. It seems EVERYTHING we eat nowadays has been adulterated in some way. Is this why 8/10 kids have asthma and allergies, and girls are reaching puberty at age 9? Are carrots really being injected with growth hormones? Read on!
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Why Baby Carrots Are Killing You
by Angela Garrison
What could I possibly have against these cute little “healthy” snacks that can be found in school lunchboxes across America? It’s back to school time and baby carrots are one snack to keep out of your childs lunch.
It may shock you that baby carrots do not come out of the ground that way. There is no little baby carrot garden where these are harvested. Manufactured baby carrots are a result of taking all the broken and “ugly” big carrots they can’t put in the package, grinding them all up, processing them into the “baby” carrots and giving them a bath in chlorine to give them a bright happy orange color. There are also “Cut + Peel” baby carrots that are widdled into a miniature form. (Blogger's note. The correct term is "whittled", but "widdled" may somehow have more emotional reality. After all, those fake baby carrots really are "widdle".)
If you look on the package it doesn’t say “Chlorine”, because it was added as part of manufacturing and not added as an ingredient…why is that? Packaged foods contains lots of chemicals both in the ingredients and in the manufacturing process. The tricky part is chemicals added as part of the manufacturing process are not considered to be an ingredient therefore does not have to be listed on the food label. So there is no way to tell what else is hiding in that box or package.
As defined by the EPA, Chlorine is a pesticide. Its purpose is to kill living organisms. So it would make sense that when you ingest chlorine, it kills some parts of our body like the healthy bacteria in your gut and intestinal flora for instance. Chlorine is a highly toxic, yellow-green gas most heavily used in chemical agents like household cleaners and can be found in the air near industrial areas especially around paper processing plants.
Exposure to Chlorine has been linked to health problems such as sore throat, coughing, eye and skin irritation, rapid breathing, narrowing of the bronchi, wheezing, blue coloring of the skin, accumulation of fluid in the lungs, pain in the lung region, severe eye and skin burns, lung collapse, a type of asthma known as Reactive Airways Dysfunction Syndrome (RADS).
Chlorine is also added to the public water supply. So not only are you drinking it, but you are absorbing it through the largest organ in your body, your skin. In fact, 2/3 of human absorption of chlorine is from inhaling the steam in the form of chloroform and fast absorption through your open pores in the warm shower or bath. The inhalation of chloroform is a suspected cause of asthma and bronchitis, especially in children… which has increased 300% in the last two decades. Other health risks associated with chloroform is cancer, potential reproductive damage, birth defects, dizziness, fatigue, headache, liver and kidney damage. Chloroform is also found in the air and in food, like baby carrots.
Conclusion: Stick to organically grown whole carrots. They are really easy to find as you can buy them at your local farmers market or grocery store. Wash them and cut them into sticks for your childs lunch box. Carrots are an excellent snack that we enjoy all the time. Enjoy!
Source: thealternativedaily
Yo! Ange! I think that makes good sense. But how many baby-cut carrots would you have to eat, exactly, to experience "cancer, potential reproductive damage, birth defects, dizziness, fatigue, headache, liver and kidney damage"? If yuz don't like 'em, yuz don't has to eat them. Like the hippies did in the good old days, why not grow your own?
Sunday, May 26, 2013
Oscar Levant: one-man band
Oscar, reclining and reflective, begins to dream. He dreams he is in a vast concert hall. . .
. . . playing Gershwin's Concerto in F with his cigarette-stained fingers. . .
. . . and conducting at the same time. . . (and he was a real conductor so he isn't just waving his arms)
. . . and likewise the percussion, he's really playing (an early
example of cloning, or else he accelerates himself to the speed of sound)
My personal fave, cuz he looks so sexy. . .
Cute with a gong (and doesn't he look a bit like Buster Keaton?)
"Bravo! Bravo!"
Poems from the Land of Random (or: it's my painting and I'll cheat if I want to)
I would say
I would say that you are springtime,
That lambs
could not be lovelier: laughing bells
Of eyes bright with seeing,
the shining, shone of you.
I would say that you are a
Renaissance painting
of a beautiful woman:
so restored
that the paint gleams; its sheen
Fresh from the brush; its wetness
smelling new.
I would say that you are living
Water:
I see tiny
perfect selves, suspended
upside-down in the silver
Merriment of your eyes.
If true, then I would say that you are
Not my brother; but some other; some
me not yet thought of; next year’s
reflection
cast lightly (God’s amusement)
over waters
rendered still.
Smile
The one thing we shared
that day, after the wrench
and wrangle of misunderstandings,
pride, ego batted back and forth
like an exhausted bird,
was the look, that precious, that infinite,
the
tinkling of camel bells
five thousand years ago on the Syrian
desert, with one gleam
(a star the size of Christ, or a
small diamond
briefly appearing on your
perfect front tooth)
Sideways, barely caught, like the music
that breathes over the horizon at very
dawn,
hush of Bach unravelling in the
midst of my tears, fragile veil of flowers
pulled aside, revealing a shyness, a sweet
almost succulent, bashful ripeness,
all this bloomed, bloomed in less than a
second –
then
quicker than a cat off a windowsill,
your face relaxed into its
Forty-four years of God knows what:
but for that flash, that flush, that
sprinkling moment of
stars pale as laughter,
I turned; I saw.
Dressing for death
I just don't know what to wear
to the funeral
even tho I know
she’s not really dead
I don’t know why flowers /why?
I bought this skirt
but it was for a recital
She was alive yesterday
though
/
not eating
then I saw her face in the crowd
knowing she was in the hospital
I don’t know what to wear to the ceremony
almost
It’s/as hard to figure out as
where they go
where they go
Sorry
My heart unclasped
one day in your office,
suddenly, all in a shot, the catch
broke loose, and it
fell behind a pile of files.
I did not mean to;
it was an accident of gravity.
Earth reached up and pulled it down.
I stood dizzy,
my centre lost, the core
Riven.
It felt silly
to lean over like that.
My face grew hot.
There was no way to put it back.
The space had grown over already;
the fall had changed me.
I left that place different,
Looked outside. The light
hurt my skin. The world
was a new color.
I wiped my eyes, and kept on walking.
A small place
in my chest
Grew still with singing.
THREE-PART INVENTION
(a) indigo eyes
I am the salt
you are the sweet
hair/
My heartsprung
(horse) of the air,
au
clair
ah! care,
clover
to the/stables,
We.
Drenched with the scent
of hens of hay
dear
of tree: your/odor
(of salt
(of sap
(of sea
b)
cunningerotic
Lip, let me laugh
You.
Set the salt
Sally, sashay down
The hay of my mind.
Seashorn,
feverworn
hairborne:
Your
face a chiming, a
Brining.
The
(stainglassed
seahorse
of your
(voicy
(ice
c) Fifth chakra
(for ray lynch)
a blues tunnel
blamed open
pitched down
to the base of the soul
Mermaids spinning
in your throat, Dear
heart:
shining vessel,
opened for a song,
shut open,
Wept for a penny
disabled
the
by/(dreaming
(door
Blogger's note. NEVER explain poetry. Ever. So now I will explain it a bit. I sometimes trawl/crawl through the files to see what I can see, and so I won't have to write anything that day. Lately I've happened upon poetry, stuff I mostly wrote a long time ago. But there are surprises. The stuff I was SURE was good then has somehow changed. Now it's not so good. The really slight stuff, the ones I felt I tossed off, feel better to me now. I actually like some of them.
The paintings, well. . . I originally painted these during a fever of creativity that I would never want to repeat, the type that requires medication. I was sure they were the best things ever painted, so I kept them. When I found them I went, whew, oh sure. The paper was all yellowed and bumpy from using too much poster paint. So scanned them and basically forgot about them.
Then every so often I'd find the file and fool around. My computer wasn't up to much on altering color, focus, etc. Then I got a new computer, and bam. I was inverting them into negatives, increasing saturation to make up for the fade of time, turning dials and knobs. It's cheating, I know, but is it really? It's my painting and I'll cheat if I want to. I still have to fool around to get the effects I want, or (better) to happen upon things I never even counted on. Somebody has to do it, I guess, and if it's me, isn't it still my painting? And I'll cry if I want to.
Saturday, May 25, 2013
The day I saw Harold's shorts
I want to tell you about a really bizarre dream I had last night. Let’s see if I can make the weird pieces of it fit together. Someone, maybe my mother when she was younger, was holding up a baby, swinging it like a prize turkey from the straps of a front-carrier. She said something like, “Do you want this?” I was a bit embarrassed because I wasn’t sure. Then I saw Suzanne Lloyd, Harold Lloyd's granddaughter, and it appeared that she was giving the baby to me. She was sort of bequeathing it to me in a way that was actually very tender. So I said yes. Then I realized the “baby” was a reborn doll, one of those silicone things that looks so real it’s creepy. Nevertheless, I began to take care of the doll exactly as if it were real.
Which brings me to my central point: yesterday, for the first time in my life, I saw Harold Lloyd’s shorts.
So what started all this? Why Harold Lloyd? I was initially led into this exploration by seeing his back. Not many actors can act with their back, but he could. I had Turner Classics on and was half-asleep, when a “figure” appeared walking in a certain jaunty manner, walking away from the camera I mean. All we saw was his back. I found myself saying out loud, “That’s Harold Lloyd.”
When I saw Harold's shorts, he came racing frenetically back into my life.
This dream didn’t lead to anything, but, like most dreams, just trickled away. In spite of how it sounds, it wasn't clear who the baby was supposed to be (though it was a boy with black hair). I was once told that baby dreams represent the rebirth of self. Hooey, really, unless rubber dolls express the soul.
So what IS a doll, anyway: a representation, a symbol? We still seem to need them. Right now as I write this, a Harold Lloyd doll sits on my desk, perpetually smiling. I designed him a couple of years ago, stitched him together and made him saddle shoes and a little straw hat. A juju, no doubt, emanating a spooky black-and-white power.
So what IS a doll, anyway: a representation, a symbol? We still seem to need them. Right now as I write this, a Harold Lloyd doll sits on my desk, perpetually smiling. I designed him a couple of years ago, stitched him together and made him saddle shoes and a little straw hat. A juju, no doubt, emanating a spooky black-and-white power.
Shorts. Yes. Specifically, these were his
first popular films, made between 1917 and 1919. He had just latched on to his
Glass Character (the eccentric name Lloyd used to describe the “glasses
character” that made him famous), and was testing it out in one-reel comedies
that raced along at a terrific pace.
Before these
came on, I was having another attack of “Lloyd synchronicity”. I’ve written
about this before: strange coincidences, encounters with the name Lloyd or
even images of Harold himself. The other day, I could tell it was starting
again: I watched a quirky show called William Shatner’s Weird or What?,
an episode in which the name Lloyd appeared three times (two different
scientists, and a producer). I thought to myself: OK, I’ve had the trifecta, so
what if I had a fourth? You don’t need a fourth, a little voice in my head warned me.
Only a moment later
I changed channels, and . . . there was my fourth. My hair nearly stood on end, just like Harold’s: it was a stylish little animated
segment, only a few seconds long, of a cartoon Harold Lloyd swinging from a huge clock,
the image that made him famous all over the world.
So my trifecta
had somehow evolved into a quadrifecta. But this was before the shorts, which I
encountered quite by accident the next evening when I flipped to Turner Classics, my
default channel. (This is my sanctuary when “reality” TV and other mediocre
programming becomes too much, or not enough.) There was Suzanne Lloyd, yes, the same Suzanne Lloyd as in my dream, talking
to Ben Mankiewicz about the restoration of Harold’s early one-reel comedies.
The early
comedies! I hadn’t seen them, because for the most part they weren’t available,
or existed only in muddy unrestored versions. I had that
pulled-back-and-forth feeling I always get when faced with a new Lloyd
treasure. I wanted to see it, and I didn't want to see it.
I saw it.
The only
reason I wouldn’t want to see it is the fact that a few years ago, I wrote a
novel with Harold Lloyd at its core. At this point, editors and publishers are
kind of looking at it and not seeing it. I even had one tell me, “I don’t think
the public is interested in silent movies” (and this was right around the time The
Artist, a silent movie about silent movies, was winning the Best Picture
and Best Actor Oscars). What I`m getting now is, “The 1920s is too out of date, no one wants to
read about it.” So the Jazz Age is boring? I want to say to them: does the name Jay Gatsby mean anything to
you?
Harold,
Harold! If only you hadn’t smiled that way. I don’t know, he's contagious or
something, and somehow (after all these years) he finds his way into your heart.
This is why he got so famous to begin with (along with certain other things,
like charisma, inventiveness, great stories, dramatic acting skills – and, to top all that – being damn funny!).
So what started all this? Why Harold Lloyd? I was initially led into this exploration by seeing his back. Not many actors can act with their back, but he could. I had Turner Classics on and was half-asleep, when a “figure” appeared walking in a certain jaunty manner, walking away from the camera I mean. All we saw was his back. I found myself saying out loud, “That’s Harold Lloyd.”
I don’t know
how I knew.
Of course I
remember seeing the iconic photo of Harold dangling from the hands of a huge
clock 20 stories up. It was in some big coffee-table book of my childhood, a
book I loved – I think it was called The Movies or some-such thing. I
don’t know if I ever saw a film clip of that scene – perhaps, in one of those
awful compilations that used to appear in movie theatres in the 1960s.
Awful because shown at the wrong speed, horribly edited, and scored with clangy
ridiculous music, not to mention embarrassing narration which was completely
unnecessary in an age when story was conveyed visually and didn’t need idiotic
explanations.
Anyway, the
hunt was on for YouTube snippets, and I quickly found them and became addicted.
I didn’t even think of writing about him at that point because the task seemed too huge. I was digging around the internet and finding things, putting
scraps together into a meaningful whole. I had ordered the Harold Lloyd
Comedy Collection on DVD, but I hadn’t seen it yet.
It was a
Sunday afternoon, I was sitting in my office not thinking of anything, in a
sort of twilight state, when – something landed on me, “fell” on me like those big anvils in cartoons. BONGGGG. My next thought was, “Oh, noooooo.”
No, because an idea had fallen on me that
I knew I couldn’t say no to. An idea that would probably kill me, or at least
break my heart.
Then it was: you have to. No, no! You must have the wrong person.
Reluctantly, I rolled up to my computer. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to sketch a little, to get
some ideas down.
Three hours
later I looked up, and I realized I had the nucleus of my novel. Cells had
begun to split and multiply like mad. I was powerless in the hands of Harold.
In spite of my
early trepidations, this was the most enjoyable writing project I had ever
undertaken. I couldn’t wait to get to the computer every morning, couldn’t wait
to solve another mystery. The story evolved and evolved. I became, I suppose, wildly overconfident,
just certain that this novel would be snapped up somewhere, that someone else would
feel the same way I did.
At the same
time, that weird “Lloyd synchronicity” began, coming thick and fast. At the peak of it, it was averaging three or four times a
day: a street sign, a name on the side of a train, an actor on TV, a realtor,
a bull terrier. One tiny movie, The Wrong Box with Michael Caine, had
three (or maybe four) Lloyds in it. It was spooky, but I never figured out what it
meant.
One day,
driving towards North
Vancouver on a
I guess I’d
better tell you that Gloria was the name of Lloyd’s daughter.
And oh, there was more! Watching old Twilight Zone episodes, I always had an eerie feeling when the end credits came on. Well might I have felt strange: one night the name Suzanne Lloyd flashed on the screen. Not the same one, of course, but an actress with the same name. Not "close" but bang-on.
I won't count all those other strange things, such as pictures jumping off the walls or setting a knife down on the edge of a plate and hearing it buzz for about ten seconds (only to have it stop, then start again), or losing things and finding them in a different part of the house. No doubt it was seismic activity, or the weird energy that turned the TV on and off by itself when my daughter hit puberty (not a ghost, my medium friend assured me, but concentrated energy manifesting in all sorts of weird ways). I also can't explain why none of this scared me, though at times it could get annoying.
But publishers don't care about psychic phenomena, real or imagined. They want to make money, and one can't blame them. Though quite a few houses wanted to see the work, I wondered if they were actually reading it. I kept hearing that things were tough all over, that lots of writers were being affected by the economic downturn and the fact that “people don’t read any more” (a blatant untruth).
I won't count all those other strange things, such as pictures jumping off the walls or setting a knife down on the edge of a plate and hearing it buzz for about ten seconds (only to have it stop, then start again), or losing things and finding them in a different part of the house. No doubt it was seismic activity, or the weird energy that turned the TV on and off by itself when my daughter hit puberty (not a ghost, my medium friend assured me, but concentrated energy manifesting in all sorts of weird ways). I also can't explain why none of this scared me, though at times it could get annoying.
But publishers don't care about psychic phenomena, real or imagined. They want to make money, and one can't blame them. Though quite a few houses wanted to see the work, I wondered if they were actually reading it. I kept hearing that things were tough all over, that lots of writers were being affected by the economic downturn and the fact that “people don’t read any more” (a blatant untruth).
Battlescarred,
I retreated. I retreated for a long time. About eleven months. I did not want
to see Lloyd movies or read Lloyd material, and I certainly did not want to
look at my manuscript. I assumed it was over.
A couple of
weeks ago, there was a strange sort of thaw. It wasn’t a conscious decision. I woke up and found myself back in Lloyd territory again, maybe looking at pictures at
first. Throwing out a crumb about the novel. I posted something on Facebook,
when my Facebook account had been dormant for a year. The Lloyd synchronicity
that had come so thick and fast, then vanished just as quickly, started up again. Was I imagining the whole
thing?
When I saw Harold's shorts, he came racing frenetically back into my life.
I don’t regret
all of this, or maybe I do, or else I am just powerless. Whenever I am about
to walk away, the path doubles back. I am reminded of one of Harold's title cards: "Now then, everybody hold on tight, we're going around a curve." As the song says, there is always
something there to remind me.
It’s kind of
like a marriage that didn’t work out. Yet you can’t quite quit the person, still
want to see him, DO see him and then sort of regret it. I saw Harold's shorts yesterday because I couldn’t get enough of him, this dazzlingly
charming, rascally young man who probably had no idea how famous he was going
to be (and for how long). Along with
everything else that was extraordinary about him, he was absolutely gorgeous.
At the same
time, I felt like my heart was caving in.
Well, can’t I
just enjoy his films and forget about the novel? Does the word “no” mean
anything to you? The novel is my love letter, not just to Harold but to his times. Most silent comedies got buried: they rotted from neglect, burst into flames or were just thrown away. Was that OK, had they had their few
minutes on-screen and in history? Were they even relevant any more, did anybody care?
Why should we care? Those little flickers of captured magic will never happen again. They cannot happen again because those times are gone, that style of comedy, that style of living and breathing and being, is long gone, and this is the only moving record we will ever have. And we will never have Harold again, because that kind of genius does not happen twice.
Why should we care? Those little flickers of captured magic will never happen again. They cannot happen again because those times are gone, that style of comedy, that style of living and breathing and being, is long gone, and this is the only moving record we will ever have. And we will never have Harold again, because that kind of genius does not happen twice.
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Blogger's Post-post. Though I decided not to change or update this piece, written several years ago, there WAS a development about a year later: Harold got published, or I did, or, at least, The Glass Character did. Though it was a thrill for me to be in print again (I do have two other novels, dear readers, that you can still snag on Amazon if you really want them), I was to find out the hard way that publishing had changed in the few years I had been away: it got harder, a LOT harder to make a go of it. Sales weren't great, and unfortunately, in this age of likes and views and clickbait, the numbers are everything.
I get depressed about this sometimes, yes I do, but I have no regrets about my Harold journey. After much discouragement, I decided to keep up my Harold Facebook page, in part due to the sheer volume of material I collected about him over five years or so. It would be nice to share it with people who love Harold. So it ain't over yet. I still harbour this dream. . . every novelist has it, so please don't look at me that way! I want some Hollywood producer to see the light on this thing, and make it into a big-box movie.
What frustrates me is that I know such a thing is possible, in that I believe the potential is there - the quality is there. What would I be doing wasting my time writing junk? But it's a million light years away because I have no "connections". I'm a good writer, but a lousy hustler. So the book kind of went the way of my other two novels.
Nobody warns incipient writers about this - that the writing is the easy part - and even getting a publisher, relative to the rest of it, is easy too. What's hard, and absolutely indispensible in the industry, is "making it", and that is ALL about numbers and nothing else.
But you know, people, you can still buy my novel! Just click on the link (above) to my Amazon Author Page. It's all there - all three of my novels, in fact. The flip side of the Darwinian ruthlessness of the internet is that nothing ever quite goes away. It just goes on sale. On Amazon.com.
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