Woody Allen: creepier and creepier

Blogger's note: This is just a little piece that ran in Esquire, an update of a much earlier article that must have been ignored at the time. I remember trying to watch Hannah and her Sisters again a few years ago and having to turn it off because of all the child-molesting jokes. Yes, jokes. While this isn't legal proof that Woody Allen is a pedophile, it does reveal a sickening and stomach-turningly insensitive attitude towards the most horrific form of child abuse. 

That astonishing "oh, you were lucky, I WISH I had been molested" attitude is something I have actually heard people say. Everybody knows they enjoy it, after all. So it's no big deal, even pleasurable for them (or, even better, it initiates them into sex, which is doing them a favor).

What has always struck me about sexual abuse is that people can look right at it and not see it. When a lot of women and men stepped forward in the '80s and '90s to claim they had been psychologically devastated by incest, a juggernaut called the False Memory Syndrome Foundation sprang up to run them over. 

To some degree, it worked, but I can't help but notice a persistent theme in reality TV shows, the kind that feature people who weigh 600 pounds and can't get out of bed, or live in a festering landfill of rats and garbage heaped to the ceiling. Almost all of them say they were molested as children. Either they all got together and formed a Let's Pretend We Were Molested club, or they are revealing the horrific psychological aftereffects of being violated, a force that leaves a legacy of jaw-droppingly extreme damage that can be permanently crippling.

We laughed at this stuff. Think of it. I don't know why - it was like laughing at holocaust victims (which some people also do). It was a way of acknowledging abuse and burying it at the same time, joking it away as trivial, so that even if it IS happening, it's no big deal.

Dylan Farrow's accusations are, in my mind, becoming more and more plausible. But what makes me furious are the statements I keep hearing: "We can't comment on this because nobody really knows what went on in that attic." It's a neat way of avoiding indicting a beloved and rich and powerful figure, while at the same time leaving Dylan's accusations in that hazy area of "false memories", memories that were "implanted" by her hysterical mother.

Two people know what happened - I believe - but for absolute certain, one does, and he was the one who held all the cards, a father-figure to Mia's children (in spite of his strenuous denials) for years. If he did those things that Dylan Farrow is talking about, he will never confess to it because he truly can't or won't see what all the fuss is about.

Re-Watching Woody Allen

The newly-chilling themes that you can see throughout his movies

By Stephen Marche on February 4, 2014

FEBRUARY 5, 2014: This post has been updated to include more examples from Woody Allen's films.

MICKEY: Why all of a sudden is the sketch dirty?
ED: Child molestation is a touchy subject, and the affiliates...
MICKEY: Read the papers, half the country's doing it!

ED:Yes, but you name names.

The above is from an early scene in Woody Allen's 1986 film, Hannah and Her Sisters. I've been thinking about it since reading Dylan Farrow's essay in The New York Times, accusing her adoptive father of molesting her when she was a child. The allegations are nothing new. Nobody except Dylan Farrow and Woody Allen knows what happened in that attic, and no one else ever will. But the sheer vividness with which Farrow recounts the experience, as well as the forum in which she does so, is enough to make even the most ardent fan reevaluate an artist's entire body of work, especially one as personal as Allen's.

So what happens when you go looking for evidence of sex crimes in Woody Allen movies? If you look, you find it, again, and again, and again.

Take this scene from Manhattan, when the Allen character, Isaac, introduces his new girlfriend to his friends.

YALE: Jesus, she's gorgeous.

ISAAC: But she's seventeen. I'm forty-two and she's seventeen. I'm older than her father. Do you believe that? I'm dating a girl wherein I can beat up her father. That's the first time that phenomenon ever occurred in my life.

EMILY: He's drunk.

YALE: You're drunk. You know you should never drink.

ISAAC: Did I tell you that my ex-wife—

EMILY: Who, Tina?

ISAAC: My second ex-wife is writing a book about our marriage and the breakup…It's really depressing. You know she's going to give all those details out, all my little idiosyncrasies and my quirks and mannerisms. Not that I have anything to hide because, you know...but there are a few disgusting little moments that I regret.

How are we supposed to read "a few disgusting little moments that I regret" when Isaac is dating a girl still in high school? And what are we to make of the scene in Love and Death (1975), in which the wise Father Andre tells the Allen character, "I have lived many years and, after many trials and tribulations, I have come to the conclusion that the best thing is…blond twelve-year-old girls. Two of them, whenever possible”? Or this exchange from Stardust Memories (1980), in which the Allen character, Sandy, hints at incest when talking with his lover Dorrie about her father?

SANDY: What about you? Did you have a little crush on him? You can admit this to me if you like.

DORRIE: Sure, we had a little flirting.

SANDY: A little small flirt? Mother away getting shock treatment, and the only beautiful daughter home. Long lingering breakfasts with Dad.

In a later scene, Sandy and Dorrie have the following argument, while in the background a large newspaper headline on a wall reads "Incest between father's..."
SANDY: I'm not attracted to her. What are you talking about?DORRIE: Staring at her all through dinner. Giving each other looks.

SANDY: Stop it. She's fourteen. She's not even fourteen. She's thirteen and a half.

DORRIE: I don't care. I used to play those games with my father, so I know. I've been through all that.

SANDY: What games? You think I'm flirting with your kid cousin?

DORRIE: You smile at her.

SANDY: Yeah, I smile at her. I'm a friendly person. What do you want? She's a kid. This is stupid. I don't want to have this conversation.

DORRIE: Don't tell me it's stupid. I used to do that with my father across the table. All those private jokes. I know.

Incestuous themes—stated or implicit—seethe throughout the whole of Allen's career. Here's a snippet of dialogue from Honeymoon Motel, a one-act play produced three years ago:

FAY: I was a little girl. I had an Uncle Shlomo…

NINA: Oh Mom!

FAY: Three fingers, he tried to molest me. Suddenly, three fingers I feel fondling me—

JUDY: What's the three fingers got to do with it?

FAY: It's hard to explain, but most people get groped by five.

SAM (to FAY): At least you were molested. I didn't have sex till I was twenty-five—you were the first one.

That idea: that sexual exploitation and education are conjoined also runs through the Allen canon. In Whatever Works (2009), the Allen character (played by Larry David) marries a childlike twenty-one-year-old, returning to the basic romantic situation that has motivated Allen's work from the beginning, and which you can see even in Annie Hall (1977): A man educates the women he sleeps with. He raises them. Once they're raised, he's no longer interested.

So what are we supposed to do? Every comedian alive, every writer alive, has been influenced by Woody Allen. In a way, the dilemma this poses is nothing new. Artists can be scum. Every grownup knows this. Roman Polanski was convicted of violating a thirteen-year-old girl, but he still made Chinatown. A recent biography of the German essayist Walter Benjamin, a personal intellectual hero of mine, revealed that when it came to his wife and child, he was, not to put too fine a point on it, an irresponsible asshole. The first compiler of the tales of King Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory, was a well-known rapist. Separating the quality of the art from the life of the artist is necessary for anyone who wants to enjoy anything.

But with Woody Allen, such a separation is impossible, because his movies are so thoroughly about himself, and about his own condition, and, as it turns out, the moral universe in which he exists—one in which there is no expectation of justice. Consider the final conversation in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), in which the main character, Judah, tells his story of getting away with a terrible crime, disguising it as a movie he's pitching:

JUDAH: People carry awful deeds around with them. What do you expect him to do, turn himself in? This is reality. In reality, we rationalize. We deny or we couldn't go on living.

CLIFF: Here's what I would do. I would have him turn himself in. 'Cause then you see your story assumes tragic proportions. Because in the absence of a God or something, he is forced to assume that responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.

JUDAH: But that's fiction. That's movies. I mean, you've seen too many movies. I'm talking about reality. If you want a happy ending you should go see a Hollywood movie.

Only in Allen's case, Hollywood isn't the bringer of false light, but a willing accomplice to darkness. The end of Dylan Farrow's letter, not anything said by Sarah Palin or any other Fox News commentator, is the most stinging indictment of Hollywood I have ever read:

What if it had been your child, Cate Blanchett? Louis CK? Alec Baldwin? What if it had been you, Emma Stone? Or you, Scarlett Johansson? You knew me when I was a little girl, Diane Keaton. Have you forgotten me?
Are you imagining that? Now, what's your favorite Woody Allen movie?

But it's not just Hollywood. It's the rest of us, too. What about those of us who are Woody Allen's fans? What the hell have we been watching all this time?

 Esquire's Woody Allen Profile From 1994

Read more: Rewatching Woody Allen - Dylan Farrow Woody Allen Movies - Esquire
Follow us: @Esquiremag on Twitter | Esquire on Facebook
Visit us at Esquire.com

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The Woody Allen scandal: call me a victim, and I'll kick your ass!

Blogger's note: I didn't write the piece below, but it raises many interesting points. For one thing, it applies directly to my own family system and describes with hair-raising accuracy just what happens when one person finally stands up and cries 'Abuse!'. It amazes me how similar the reactions are, as if abusive families are all part of one big clan secretly trained to behave the same way. I DID go see Blue Jasmine, and I tried to push Woody Allen into the background. Though he still turns out a picture a year, I wonder how much of it is actually him, if he's doing the work, or if he's a sort of cardboard veneer. I have often heard that he doesn't really direct at all, just lets the actors figure it out for themselves. In my books, this is called "phoning it in".

His strenuous denial that he was ever a father-figure to "Mia's children" is violently contradicted by these photos, in which he snuggles a very unhappy little Dylan against himself. The fact is, and most of us know this, he was "around" as a quasi-Dad ( or at least willingly posing for publicity photos with them), for years and years. And then came the rape of Lucretia, bearing away Mia's daughter Soon Yi  (who may have been as young as 17), while being completely incapable of seeing anything wrong with it. "The heart wants what it wants," he famously said.

And then tonight on one of the entertainment shows, a woman comes forward claiming that she knows Allen, and is certain that he "would never" sexually abuse a child (the Great American "Would Never" defense, which seems to hold up well in a court of law). She just knows. Then it comes out that they dated years ago, back when he was 42 and she was 17. This precariously-teetering-on-the-verge-of-statutory relationship was supposedly the inspiration for one of his creepiest movies, Manhattan, in which middle-aged Woody "dates" a girl still in high school. No one sees the irony of the fact that this woman with her strident defense of Woody Allen was one of his victims and apparently didn't even know it.

My husband, generally an accepting soul who seldom judges a book by its cover, saw a picture of Allen on TV recently and said, "No wonder they're saying that about him. Look at him" (meaning his general air of squirm-inducing creepiness). Certainly it looks as if he has caved in on himself. There is a cost to this, not just to the "victim". And oh, how I wish Tanya Steele would stop using that term, which appears about 35 times in this piece! "Survivor" would be much more respectful and even accurate.

Remember a few years ago, the media always spoke of "cancer victims"? Why have we forgotten that? Because the anti-cancer lobby, especially the breast cancer lobby, arm-wrestled that term out of the public consciousness. And a good thing, too.

But why are the men and women who lived through this private holocaust still labelled "victims", a passive, wounded term that implies a slinking, ashamed, or at least damaged and incomplete life? The survivors I know, men and women alike, quite frankly kick ass. No matter what the obstacles, they all seem to move forward. As, gentle reader, I have had to do myself. But inevitably, these articles seem to imply that anyone who has been molested has either been completely demolished, gone irretrievably crazy or committed suicide.

As usual, the text is broken up with photos, mainly so you won't be left with an unmanageable block of often-repetitive, sometimes preachy text. But I still think this is worth a read.

When An Artist You Admire Is An Accused Predator

by Tanya Steele
February 3, 2014 4:53 PM

Recently, I read “An Open Letter From Dylan Farrow’ in the New York Times. Immediately, I posted it on my social networking accounts. I stopped paying to see Woody Allen movies when I learned of his marriage to Mia Farrow’s daughter, Soon-Yi. The fact that he married his lover’s child was enough to disgust me.

I was not aware of the other allegations until Ronan Farrow’s Tweet the night of the Golden Globes: “Missed the Woody Allen tribute - did they put the part where a woman publicly confirmed he molested her at age 7 before or after Annie Hall?” Honestly, I thought he was referring to Soon-Yi. However, when I discovered he was referring to his other sister, I was not surprised. Offenders have patterns.

I am a former counselor to victims and survivors of incest. I also counseled sex offenders. At a very young age, I was trained to understand the culture that is created around sexual violence, how sexual violence is enacted and how victims/survivors respond. I was also trained to understand how perpetrators respond. Because of this, I try not to become too involved in discussions about sexual violence. Who did what? Did he actually do it? Is it a rush to judgment? Usually, from looking at the patterns of someone’s life, professionals can identify a sexual predator. As a rule, I choose to believe the accuser.

I try not to become involved in discussions on these topics because the public is not trained to understand the dynamics of abuse, sexual violence or predatory behavior. And, people who are in denial about their own abuse, people who are predators or may be, unconsciously, acting in defense of a predator, in their own life, are also a part of the discussion. So, these discussions get stalled with word play, tempers, “you weren’t there” type accusations. For me, it’s best to avoid them.

Sexual violence happens in secret. It can happen to a child (includes teenagers); a girl or a boy. It also happens, primarily, to women and, yes, men. In this piece, I am not going to explain the dynamics of abuse. I will not explain why I believe Dylan Farrow and how I came to that decision. What I will do is try and help you find another way to approach the very complex terrain that surfaces when an Artist that you admire is labeled a perpetrator.

I was not aware that Marvin Gaye was involved with a 16 year old girl when he recorded the album ‘Let’s Get It On’. Mind you, I learned this, casually, as I sat with a friend who is a musician. She said, “did you know that he is singing to a 16 year old?”. Stunned. The first reaction was guttural. No. No. Just no. I did the research. Yes. Wow. Okay. Breathe. That is one of my favorite albums. 

What was I to do? Marvin Gaye had already entered the most intimate aspects of my life with that album. I had grown to love Marvin through that album (clearly, never knowing him). But, the gentle, tender way that he sang his love was arresting. Not to mention the genius with which it was constructed and delivered. As an Artist, I admired the craftsmanship. As a woman, I admired the sentiment. I have been listening to that album since I was a child. Marvin Gaye’s music was a part of me.

How was I to reconcile my beliefs with attachment to this music? Simply, I was not aware of his actions when I allowed the music into my spirit, into my soul. Marvin Gaye had firmly situated himself in my heart and mind long before I knew the transgressions in his life. This is not a question of my right and wrong, the issue is more complex. Marvin did not sing, “I am a 33 year old man molesting a 16 year old girl.” I had no knowledge of that. So, I won’t allow myself to feel like I am in any way complicit with his actions. I did not cause them. I did not give consent to them.

He reached that place in me, that Artists do, the crevices of my being. They come into your life and situate themselves in your interior, sometimes, more than friends can. Music, film, painting, literature, we form connections to these Artists. They sing our life. They help us to understand what love is. How to express it. They even assist us while loving our beloved. I am aware of that. And, I respect that my relationship with them was formed before my knowledge of their personal behavior. One cannot take these connections for granted. They are very deep and personal.

For the longest time, I couldn’t listen to the album. I couldn’t. One day, a song from the album came on my Spotify station. I sang along. At the end, I realized, holy crap, what did I just do? I stopped. I forgave myself. Look, I did not molest and form a relationship with someone under age, he did. I am not, in any way, complicit with his behavior. Although, it is easy to get caught up in the ‘right and wrong’ argument. I understand that Marvin Gaye was in my heart long before I knew what he did. I had to develop a way to reconcile these two worlds. So, what I do now is say, at this time, I choose to honor the 16 year old girl. So, I will not listen to the album. Slowly, this takes away my desire to engage with the Art. If I should listen, I make sure I’m consciously aware of the choice I’m making.

Similarly, as a filmmaker, I was influenced by Woody Allen long before I was aware of any of his behaviors. I stopped going to Woody Allen films when I learned that he married Soon-Yi. That was my choice. But, before this, he inspired me. There is one film of his that I love- “Broadway Danny Rose”. And, as a filmmaker, it is a reference source for me. “Broadway Danny Rose” made such an impression that I don’t have to revisit it. I fell in love with that film long before I knew about Soon-Yi or the molestation allegations. The imprint of that film is in me and influences me. I can’t feel guilty about that. I acknowledge it. And, I don’t let it interfere with my support for his accuser.

I have not listened to R. Kelly for over a decade. If I am in a club or environment where he is played, I go and stand or sit in silence. I choose to honor the victims. And, that is what I say when I no longer listen to Marvin or watch Woody or, or, or. I simply say, right now, I am honoring the victim. It is a way to bring compassion to the victim. It is a way to relax that muscle that wants to flex in resistance because someone tells you you’re wrong for listening to or admiring the work of an Artist you loved before their truth surfaced. It is a way for family members to not get caught in the web of deciding whether or not to continue a relationship with a family member who abused another relative.

As a child, I was best friends with my grandfather. He taught me many things. I loved sitting on the bathroom sink and watching him shave as I popped the peanut M&M’s that he gave me. I loved my grandfather. Later in life, I learned that he beat my grandmother and molested children in the family. How in the hell am I supposed to reconcile that? He never harmed me in any way. Immediately, a burden is placed at my feet that I did not create. 

I have fond my memories of my grandfather. I hold them a little less dear because I honor the victims in my family. I give space to understanding the wreckage that he caused. When I’m in the presence of someone he abused, I do not mention him. I allow the survivor to speak in any way they choose to and I respect that. Their pain trumps anything in that moment. My memories of him will be what they are. I have enough space in me to allow their to grief to take center stage. My love is expansive enough to honor their pain.

Predators create a vortex. When it’s a celebrity, we are invited into that vortex. They commit their violations in private and then create a web of confusion. They blame the victim, speak of being the victim and create smoke and mirrors to divert from the truth. Predators are cagey and tricky individuals. They only show their demon side to the child or adult that they violate. They make a conscious choice to enact their violence in private. And, on the most vulnerable among us- children. Silence protects them. If it comes to light, the rest of us are asked to side with or against them. The same choices we are presented with in the discussions around Farrow vs. Allen, are the same choices that are thrust upon us in our families. It is the other level of horror that the abuser creates. Choose. Choose your family or me. Choose my financial contribution to your life or lose it. Choose to believe a “fickle” child or me. Choose to engage with my Art or lose it.

Honor the victim. I understand the complex nature of abuse. The dynamics that are created. Most importantly, I understand the insurmountable pain it causes in the victim. I am the person who honors the victim. And, if I could erase the artistic contributions of the perpetrator to ease the pain of the victim- I would. The perpetrator has infected the life of the victim. The perpetrator, as Artist, infects, in a different way, our lives, too. I cannot erase the footprints that were laid long before the truth of an individual is revealed.

What can I do? Certainly, I can sacrifice a song or movie, in protest, as an offer of peace to another human being. I can stand with the victim. The culture has been terribly lacking in support of victims when it comes to celebrity. Why is this happening? I don’t know. I think people are defending against the guilt they may feel for appreciating an Artist’s work. I let go of that guilt. The artwork is not the act of molestation. But, it is created by the individual who did great harm to another human being. So, I close my senses and pocketbook to the Artist as a form of protest. And, I open my heart to the victim. It’s the least I can do.

I do not want this piece to devolve into the right and wrong. What is true or not. I want this to promote understanding and healing for victims who live with a pain that is unfathomable.  Certainly, we can figure out ways to honor victims without throwing them under the bus in defense of Art. In that vein, I ask you, how do you show support to strangers who are victims of sexual violence? How do you show support to your loved ones who are victims of sexual violence? How do you show support for yourself as a victim of sexual violence?

Follow Tanya Steele on Twitter at @digtanya. Or on facebook at https://www.facebook.com/SteeleInk. Or visit digtanya.com.

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February: you may be little, but you're small!

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong.

Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes – and you’ll never catch February in stocking feet – it’s a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April’s nose.

However more abbreviated than its cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behaviour that grows quickly old.

February is pitiless, and it is boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine’s Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine’s Day on February’s shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed.

Except to the extent that it “tints the buds and swells the leaves within,” February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui, holding both progress and contentment at bay.

James Joyce was born in February, as was Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo, which goes to show that writers are poor at beginnings, although worse at knowing when to stop.

If February is the colour of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you’re small! Were you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

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Phillip Seymour Hoffman: beyond good

From a news report on the death of actor Phillip Seymour Hoffman by heroin overdose:

At present it is not understood why the actor fell back into the habit, if there were any events in his personal life that were besieging the actor or if it was just a case of hedonistic pleasure uncontrolled? Interestingly many of the roles he portrayed were often that of conflicted characters caught in deep moral and existential crises, something one suspects were themes very close to the actor’s heart.

I don't know about that. Don't know about that at all. Hoffman was always a supporting player, a damn skilful one, but in that capacity couldn't draw too much attention to himself.

Then came Capote.

The bizarre thing was, there were two pictures about Truman Capote out that year (2006), both covering the same time and territory: his long investigation of the butchering of a rural family that led to his masterpiece, In Cold Blood. Very quickly, "that other Capote movie" (Infamous with Toby Jones) was largely forgotten, perhaps due to Jones' performance as an out-and-out caricature, a sadistic little munchkin more interested in posturing at parties than ferreting out the truth.

Hoffman, a tall man with scruffy blond hair, a broad unhandsome Anglo-Saxon face and an ungainly body, won. He won the Oscar. I remember it, I remember him ascending to the podium, and I remember exclaiming, "Yes!" He had nailed Capote, a man both brilliant and repulsive, his life an exercise in squandered talent and agonizingly prolonged, brutal self-destruction.

It's not that I found Hoffman particularly attractive as a person, because he was always pretty scraggly and looked like an unmade bed. But I knew that as an actor, he was beyond good. Now he's dead. I'm trying to take it in. No doubt what I'm writing right now, raw and unprocessed, isn't very good, but it has to be light-years better than the shit at the start of this post: At present it is not understood why the actor fell back into the habit, if there were any events in his personal life that were besieging the actor or if it was just a case of hedonistic pleasure uncontrolled?

Pleasure! Yes, they actually used the word "pleasure" to describe sticking a needle into your arm. The asshole who wrote this report either had never experienced the agony of withdrawal, the gut-sucking sensation that you will literally die if you don't get a hit, and soon, or had experienced it and was too much of a prick to admit it and would rather write off the howling desperation of addiction as "hedonistic pleasure".

NOBODY takes heroin at that level for "pleasure", "recreation", or anything else except survival. The amount needed just to feel "normal" keeps on escalating until it becomes impossible to feel anything but horrifying hollowness and despair. Since drug abuse is so drenched in shame in our culture, abuse leads to abuse, to try to drown that shame and keep it from consuming your soul.

No, I've never taken heroin - my poison was something much more prosaic (though also easier to obtain). But an addiction is an addiction is an addiction. I know this stuff better than I ever wanted to.

The most howlingly awful part of this story is the fact that Hoffman had been clean for 23 years, half his life. Those of us (I mean us, I mean me) who have struggled with addiction in any form know that we are NEVER completely safe, and that anything at all, even a celebratory event that causes us to take a tiny sip of champagne "because it can't hurt this once", can tip us over into the quicksand.

And it doesn't matter how long we've been sober or clean. Hoffman reportedly spent ten days in rehab (ten days, because everyone around him was telling him that that was long enough to detox so he could get back to the movie set in time). Barely time to 
cleanse the body, and no time at all to heal the soul.

The ironic thing is, I didn't even like Hoffman all that much, except for his acting, as he seemed somehow offputting, but now I "get it". And hardly anyone else seems to. Oh, he decided to indulge in a hedonistic pleasure! That needle pointed inward as surely as the barrel of a suicide-aimed gun.

Will we ever learn? No. The human condition makes me sick half the time, but I guess I am part of it. Think of Pete Seeger, people say to me. Think of Mandela, Pope Francis. Yes, and the billions of idiots and assholes who are raping and destroying the earth, pulling its green majesty right out from under us.

When one addict dies, especially an addict like this one, we all die a little. But when, when, when, when, when do we LEARN?

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If you knew Suzy, you might be sick

I just didn't know where to begin. All of these clips have something to offer. Nausea, mostly. None of them combine ALL the awfulness, the boredom, the missed high notes, the flat voices and fluffed lyrics. So I just had to pick one.

This one's as good as any, but do try some of the others. I just keep finding new ones. I wonder who KEPT these things?

That's it, I'm changing the name of this blog

That's it, I've had it. I've had it with trying to be profound, or even to publicize my upcoming novel (it's called The Glass Character, folks, and it'll be out in April!). From now on, this will be an ALL Stairway to Stardom blog. I don't know where this treasure has been hiding all these years (most of the couple dozen or so videos were uploaded in 2010). I don't know why none of them have gone viral like Mr. Trololo. Maybe Jimmy Kimmel needs to give them a boost. How about having some of the alumni on the show? What a great idea! It'll never happen unless someone scoops me, because my great ideas always fail. Sorry, they just do, and there is not a thing I can do about it.

Every singer on this show sings horribly flat. They never go sharp and are never on pitch. Even a quasi-opera-singer who did O Solo Mio, lipsynching to a recording of himself, sang the last note horrendously flat, just jaw-droppingly awful.

It really begins to look like a satire, like something from SCTV (which was in its heyday at the time), but the earnestness of the performers tells us that, incredibly, this is on the level. The sleazebag host and his brain-dead wife add a nice touch of tackiness, along with the dead plants and rickety wood-thingammies (what ARE they, anyway?) used as backdrops. The best part of all are the camera effects, the squiggles and bad-acid-trip flashes. It distracts a little bit from the awfulness of the performances.

Singers dominate, but there are also awful standup comics and a magician who fumbles around while sitting at a table. The host comes on and says, "Hey, I bet I can do a better trick than that," and he's right. A puppet show reveals most of the arm and head of the puppeteer. One poor kid is told, "Well, it's not that I'm telling  you to pursue anuddah area. . . ", with his wife chiming in, "I could tell you were nervous. Were you a little nervous?" Yet this kid wasn't any worse than the rest of them. Why they picked on him, we'll never know.

These people all have nasal "Brahhnx" accents, and many are Jewish. It's definitely a regional/religious thing. But these acts would not even go over at Bernie's bar mitzvah. There are obviously no auditions, anyone can come on the show and do anything they want so long as it isn't obscene (though some of the dancers are borderline). There are no rehearsals either, or a loud GONGGGG sound would issue out of the heavens. Needless to say, there are no prizes either, because they're "all winners".

Look them up sometime, it's surreal, and after a while you will stop laughing as you listen to the sound of broken dreams.

Every day, a new discovery: Stairway to Stardom!

Yes! Every day, and in every way, I'm getting better and better. I don't know how I've lived so long without Stairway to Stardom, which actually appeared in a short Wikipedia entry:

Stairway to Stardom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Stairway to Stardom was a public-access television series aired in New York City from 1979 to the early 1990s. It was described by NPR as "an amateur talent show many see as a low-rent precursor to American Idol."^[1] Filmed "in what appeared to be a freshly carpeted Staten Island basement,"^[2] the host Frank Masi would bring on amateur singers, dancers, actresses, and comedians to show off their questionable talents. Describing the show, The A.V. Club claimed that "without exaggeration, it was one of the greatest shows ever to be on television."^[3]
Clips of the show have appeared on the web and gained a cult following.^[4] The opening theme song was performed by Steve Luisi and All The King's Men.

I wouldn't have found these gorgeous and  gif-ready YouTube clips (God, just think of the gifs. . .stand back, I hope you like gifs, because this is about to become an all-gif blog) without the guidance of a wonderful Facebook page called Kitsch Bitsch. When I first started watching them, I thought someone had mislabelled old SCTV variety show broadcasts from Melonville. But no! This was a real show that went on and on for years, though by now most of the slightly-chubby and/or crazed contestants are either middle-aged or dead.

Aieeee. This could be the start of something big, or something awful, however you want to look at it. It seems to me these choice bits from Stairway to Stardom are being uploaded by the dozen now. Having watched a few, the cheesy camera effects are perhaps my favorite touch. But oh, I just don't know where to start!

Here, maybe?

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

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

Prehistoric Skype and other artifacts from the dark ages of the internet

Don't ask me where I find these things. My wonderful Gifsforum site has given me options I never had before, including dicking around with size, color intensity, and "frames" per second, yielding a sort of Charlie Chaplin effect. Add this to a bizarre snippet from an early '90s (or late '80s - it looks too old for '90s) preview of The Internet, and you have some mighty strange things going on. I think this was some sort of magical preview of a primitive proto-Skype. 

Compressed gifs have a sense of surrealism about them, and also upload much more easily because they have fewer whatchamacallits. Which is about the summit of my technical knowledge. It's only because these things are now ridiculously easy to make that I am able to do this at all. The only real challenge comes in isolating exactly the few xeconds you want, and adding effects.

More to come! I should try to do some Year of the Horse ones, because today is the actual day. And wouldn't you know it, now I find out that being a Wood Horse isn't lucky at all this year. But it was ever thus! Next week I get my galleys! Another step towards horsedom in my personal quest to get back on that mythical horse, which has taken me years and years.

SPECIAL BONUS GIFS! These are taken from a YouTube video of a 1981 news report, describing how those lunatic subversives at the San Franciso Examiner want to put their newspaper on "home computer".

This sad-looking guy is identified as someone who Owns Home Computer, as if he used to work in the circus or something, or has six heads.

 This piece practically claims you have to pry the top off your monitor to get your paper and uses some gorgeous affects such as a red dial-up phone that has to be crammed with great force into some strange thingammy. My favorite is the techie who has to duck down to see the rapidly-moving, Flintstonesque type on his monitor, which looks like Diver Dan's helmet on a bad day.

 In the background is an office that resembles The Daily Planet in the 1940s. I'll bet you any money those guys are going to the coffee room for a smoke. Great Caesar's Ghost!

Ah! Your morning newspaper, no longer delivered to your door all soggy and dog-drooled-on, and without having to pay some punk paperboy who probably has a Ponzi scheme going on the side! No, we're high-tech here, and we get our newspapers on our HOME COMPUTER! That is, if you can read a monitor that's six inches square!

An ad for your Electronic Examiner - on your HOME COMPUTER! Isn't that a little hard to pull off? Steve Jobs was probably in kindergarten then. Like that first primordial creature who bravely crawled up out of the ooze and eventually became human, he ascended from the mud of primitive technology and saved the world. Or something. Or just messed it up in a different way, but at least now there's Kijiji.

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

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