Countdown

We went down in the basement, see. . . all us kids. . . it was a real old building. . . it was dark and the steps were so worn there were hollows in them from all those feet. . .

. . . and the teacher would say Now Boys and Girls, today we will be watching a Fillum. We were all so happy to be out of class and watching a Fillum that we didn't care what was in it. The projector made a very loud clattery noise and there was always this ring-y jingly sound in the background. It was called Bell & Howell, but my brother secretly called it Hell and Bowel. It was very dark in the basement and a bit scary, but not too bad because we had each other and could hold hands in the dark. We loved to watch the countdown at the beginning of the Fillum, it was like a rocket going off and we wanted to count, but nobody said it out loud because it was a really strict old school and you didn't say anything. But we all noticed there was never a 2 or a 1.

The Fillums were all in black and white, so no way could we be seeing colors. We didn't see colors on TV either. The Fillums were about hygiene and Arctic explorers and Getting Along with your Parents. We only saw colors at the movies and that wasn't very often. Later when we went to the newer school, there were movies we went to, the Capitol Theatre or the Centre, with a girl friend named Kim. We saw Clarence the Cross-Eyed Lion and The Trouble with Angels and Zebra in the Kitchen. We bought Mackintosh's toffee and sucked on it during the show. When people talked about each other's dreams, they always asked, "Do you dream in color?" If somebody dreamed in color, it was a very big deal.

Time goes very fast now. Very fast. Very fast. And there's no getting it back. You can't run the movie backwards any more, and if you did, I mean, if you kept on doing that, eventually you would just disappear.

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

All squirrelly

 

When you find a new way to make gifs, it's cause to celebrate. But what will our subject be? Rob Ford is just about crapped out.

This creature beating his knee with that strange pink cylindrical object looks even cooler with most of the color taken out. Gives it a sort of artsy look.

Can you read his furry little lips? What might he be saying, do you think?

Uhhhhhh. . . freaky.

The many faces of Rob Ford

Rob Ford, Rob Ford, our friend Rob Ford

If you didn't pull this shit, we'd soon get bored.

A drunken rant in a takeout joint?

Let's face it, he's crazy, we get the point.

Here RoFo moves at a faster pace.

The takeout customers think he's a a disgrace.

A guy in the bathroom is taking this video,

Until Ford hollers at him, "I want to get rid-e-o."

And now our boy is really shakin'

As he rants and shouts bad things in Jamaican.

Clearly this fellow is very upset;

More clearly, someone should go grab a net.

Here Rob Ford looks all artistic,

Though these gif settings don't make him any less sadistic.

He looks kind of cool though, all grainy and stuff,

Though the next day, he's gonna feel pretty rough.

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

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

What's the name of that - ?

And if you don't know the name of it, and it's hard to describe, and nobody else knows what the fxxk you're talking about. . .

This was a while ago, and I was going to post on it, then, mysteriously, lost interest and deleted everything I had on the subject. Then, inexplicably, my interest was piqued again.

It was those, whatchamacallits. You know what I mean. Those pictures that went back and forth. ("Back and forth?"). You know, there'd be a picture, then you turned it, and then there'd be another picture! ("Turned what?") The picture!!

When I was a kid, we all had these, these things that flashed back and forth. Some of them were religious, like the Last Supper flashing back and forth with the Crucifixion. The material wasn't paper, but a plastic-y stuff, rough with lines going both ways, kind of . . .

Try googling that.

I got nothing. I got blank stares. Nobody remembered this. I didn't know what to call them, which didn't help. But I knew they were real, I knew I had seen them and even owned them, and that everyone else did too and they just didn't remember! You could get one in the bottom of a Cracker Jack box, for God's sake. Then I just stumbled on a word that seemed to clear the fog a bit.

Lenticular.

The word could also mean cloud formations (!) and a lot of other things, but I finally found a teensy bit of material - I just squeaked it out, though YouTube videos were almost nonexistent. Why weren't there gifs of these things? Hadn't anyone collected them, the way you'd collect bubble gum cards or dryer lint or popsicle sticks?

I wish I'd kept mine from childhood, all of them, the Beatles and Fess Parker and Speedy Gonzales (whom I thought was called Speedy Guns Alice, though I wondered why he was a boy). Much more recently, I had some religious ones from the Vatican gift shop (religious gift stores abound with these things), then somehow, mysteriously, I must have thrown them away. I had a packet of stickers that were lenticular, from back when I wrote actual letters on paper and mailed them (and some of them had google-eyes, too). What happened? When did all this disappear?

I still don't have a lot of information on "those things, you know, that flash back and forth with two pictures", except some pretty far-fetched stuff on Wikipedia that says lenticular technology was invented in the 16th century by Sir Thomas More when he was fiddling around in the Tower trying not to go mad with boredom. Or something. The examples looked stupid and unlikely, more like fancy medieval ash trays.

But this one, proving the technology IS pretty old, is nice, and seems to tell the life story of a particular person.

Still and all, like the big tile display above with all the people on it, I'm not sure this is really lenticular. Unless it's going on in secret, nobody keeps these, not the old ones anyway, as if they're somehow ashamed of them, though some are making new ones in 3D that don't count at all because they're too good, not cheesy enough to suit me. For God's sake, they're not supposed to be good!

Then again. Maybe there are some really filthy ones, some private collections not available on eBay, but maybe on Smutbay or something. Involving horses, penises and unseemly acts.

This was the closest I could find to smutty, and it ain't much, but at least they didn't just throw it away.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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

My favorite scene from Amadeus

Everybody remembers this primal scene from Amadeus, when Salieri comes to realize that this snotty little pipsqueak he's been dealing with is the unlikely (unfair!) vessel for the Voice of God. His dotty little wife asks him, "Is it not good?" in the ultimate musical irony.

I made a gif out of the core of it, but then decided I needed to include the 3-minute clip, with the older Salieri attempting to explain his reaction to the music. The sheets sliding on to the floor is one of the most striking images in all of filmdom, and surely, seeing it again, F. Murray Abraham (now reduced to voice-overs on PBS nature shows) earned his column of plated gold.

(But what in God's name ever happened to Tom Hulce?)

Impromptu: mon amour

This was one of those Sherlock jobs, made easier for me by the internet (and how did I ever survive before? It would take months, and usually I would have to give up.) I was watching TCM, and there was a filler on about Spencer Tracy, one of my least favorite of the old-school actors. The piece was narrated by Burt Reynolds, so it was doubly cursed. But it had classical piano music in the background, and one piece snagged me. I had no idea who had written it or what it was called, though I did remember looking it up once before, years before, then forgetting all the information about it.

So which CD was it on, if any? Did it come on the radio, back when CBC Radio had anything to offer? Did I hear some pretentious concert pianist play it long ago, back when the VSO had anything to offer except middle-of-the-road, endlessly-repeated pulp? I couldn't say, and for all my poking around I couldn't find it, because it was too late to play things on YouTube with my sleeping husband in the next room.

This morning I thought I had the answer, and it was pretty quick. It was on a rather silly CD, an attempt to make the supposedly dry, dull and irrelevant world of classical music appealing to the consumer. The CD was called Mad About Romantic Piano, with a ludicrous cartoon on the front that looked like something out of the New Yorker, and I only bought it because it had some of my favorites on it. (Back then you couldn't download just the pieces you wanted, or YouTube them, because such options did not exist yet.) I started methodically sampling each track down the list, and near the end I hit pay dirt.

This version of the Schubert Impromptu No. 3, which I like, though it's a tad fast (some play it at 7:30!), is by someone called Theraud, and it was part of the sound track for a movie called Amour. I think it had something to do with Alzheimer's, so it was likely depressing. I did go and see it, whenever it came out, eons ago.

I can't describe what music does to me, because there are never any words for it - that's why we have it, and need it. One of the best verbal interpreters of classical music was a nasty old recluse who eventually cut me dead because he wanted me out of his life, period, when I had not done anything to him at all. I was supposed to ignore this when he died (so alone that his colleagues of 25 years did not even know if he had any next of kin), and sing his praises. I couldn't. He was a bitter old man, for reasons which can't be explained here, either gay or asexual, and in the end I don't believe his words or his music were of any comfort to him. Because he had left no tracks and broken no ground in his life, his memory soon disappeared.

But maybe, for all his fatal flaws, he could have explained this. Maybe not. He stayed in his little pond all his life, while people's real praise of him was withheld until after he was dead. Let us now praise the dead, in the lavish, glorious way we never chose to when they were still alive. It's the human thing to do.

POST-BLOG POST: Turns out I was wrong. Amour won the Best Foreign Language Oscar last year! The one I saw eons ago must have been a totally different film. My sense of time is so strangely distorted now. I will see some bumph about a movie I enjoyed a couple of years ago, and it will turn out it came out in 1993. I do remember, vaguely, the hype around Amour (now that I've been reminded). This theme was used a lot and probably became a "hit" briefly, like some of the pieces in Amadeus, before sinking back into the slough of perceived boredom and obsolescence that is classical music.

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

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

Sister Wives: hot and bothered in the kitchen!

(I shouldn't watch this program, shouldn't shouldn't, but I do. I found that this recipe somehow best represents the spirit of the show, especially in terms of spiritual nourishment.)

Sister Wives Recipes

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

Janelle's Peanut Butter Fritos

INGREDIENTS

• 1 cup corn syrup, like Karo Syrup
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 cup peanut butter
• 1 large bag Fritos scoops

PREPARATION:

1. Spread fritos out on a big jelly roll pan turning them so most of the scoop sides
are up.

2. In a sauce pan combine corn syrup and sugar and stir gently.

3. Cook only until little bubbles begin to form. Do not cook too long or it will get
 too hard when it cools.

4. Remove from heat and mix in peanut butter until it melts. Pour over chips on pan.

Good to eat immediately. Sometimes we melt chocolate chips and drizzle 
over the top.

(Emphasis mine.)

Oh OK then. . . ONE more recipe. . .

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise Toffee

Meri's Soda Cracker Surprise

INGREDIENTS

• saltine crackers
• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 package chocolate chips
• 1 cup finely chopped walnuts

PREPARATION:

1. Line jelly roll pan with foil and spray with pan spray. Place saltine crackers close together covering entire pan.

2. Bring butter and sugar to boil for 2-1/2 minutes, pour over crackers.

3. Bake at 400 for 5 minutes. Pour chocolate chips on top, spreading as they melt. Sprinkle with chopped nuts.

So what does patriarch Kody Brown say about all this? "As polygamist cooking goes, this cookbook surpasses all the rest. I mean, our house hasn't seen a vegetable since 1983, but our starch favorites can't be beat! Right, Brigham?"

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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

Mystery solved?

   

Could this be the one? 

Like the Handsome Prince, I have sought Cinderella for years now. I've schlelpped around a very big glass slipper - glass boot maybe  - trying to find The Car, the gaspingly beautiful car I saw a long time ago, years ago, when I was standing at a bus stop.

I don't care two figs about cars. I don't drive them, and I think they are the worst culprit in global climate change. I hate them, in fact. But every once in a while. . . 

I seem to favor the late '30s - early '40s models, maybe because they were featured in hyper-romantic movies like Casablanca. I love the bulges, the sleek lines, the tiny freakish rear windows you could barely peep out of.

Anyway, I was standing there minding my own business, when something sailed past me. A ship in full billow. It was huge, sleekly curved, and two-toned, painted gleamingly in maroon and cream with chrome trim. I remembered that there was a local car show on the weekend, and wondered if it had come from - somewhere - to take part in the annual orgy of hopeless yearning.

It did a strange thing then. Rather than drive on, it turned into a demi-strip-mall, but the driver didn't get out. He (I could just barely see it was a he) drove around the perimeter in a half-circle, very slowly, then pulled out and drove away.

Was it preening, primping, parading just for me, or were there other gawkers? It was obviously a vanity move. Look at me. Rather, look at "it", this treasure from another time, beautifully restored in probably about a billion hours for a billion dollars.

I realize now that in spite of the similar coloring, this isn't the car. There was more chrome on it, and the colors were placed differently, separated sort of diagonally.  It sloped down more dramatically at the back, and was quite a bit longer, with those odd covered back wheels I could never understand, giving the impression the car was growing out of the pavement. And it didn't have a running board, meaning it was probably a year or two newer than this photo.

For a long time I thought it was a 1940 Mercury Westergard, and I guess it's possible. Anything is possible, except I've never seen a Westergard (even in a photo) that wasn't gleaming cherry red. Seems like some sort of an automobilic law. 

But this is the closest I have come. It's called a Stowe Vermont Packard, which means  nothing to me except that many of the car photos I'm collecting now are Packards. 

It's not the car. But maybe a distant cousin. 

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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

Children of the Damned

                                                 
                                                 Cellophane Brand bread.

                                            Brings out the vampire in little girls.

  What is this gory mess, and why are there 1 1/2 hot dogs 

sitting on the table beside his plate?

Beware of Hamgirl!

Hamgirl's demented sister, Cakeface.

Mmmmm, mmm!

Beyond car

1950 Buick

Beauty!

1951 Hudson Hornet

Ditto (likely copied from identical image above)

1940 Oldsmobile

1942  Oldsmobile

Really old car

1938 Packard

Mid- '30s Packard (guess)

Gaspingly beautiful car (probably Packard)

Beyond car.

Cars I just happen to like. In no particular order. I like turquoise cars with lots of chrome trim (whatever happened to chrome? People used to brag that their cars had "lots of chrome".) I picked vintage magazine ads because they reminded me of Mad Men, but I cropped out most of the cars so I could use them as Facebook covers. Plus the ads are pretty repetitive, with too much text. I do like the backgrounds on a lot of them, but many of them have a sort of Dick and Jane quality, wholesome, indicating a "family car". (A couple of them are "artistic" in a way that is frankly gorgeous.) Interesting that the two Hudson Hornet ads depict identical cars, reminding me of the Harold Lloyd caricature which was obviously copied from a photograph. Maybe even traced.

I guess you can see I favor late '30s to early '40s. Cars were bulbous tanks then, with a certain erotic quality. You could get up to a lot in the back seat.

Before they were famous (most of them were nerds)

???

http://www.viralnova.com/young-famous-people/