The world as seen by space aliens (or: it's all in how you look at it)

Mount Rushmore

I guarantee you these photos won't bore you. They provide two dramatically different perspectives on world-famous landmarks, the second one seen at a tremendous distance. Sometimes the effect is spectacular, sometimes creepy. This is just a TINY taste, and somehow this blog doesn't do them justice - follow the link below to see them all.

http://distractify.com/fun/fails/seeing-these-9-famous-landmarks-from-far-away-might-shatter-your-perception-of-them-forever/

Stonehenge

Hollywood sign

Central Park, New York

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The Innovation of Loneliness

Some interesting thoughts here. I was especially taken by the idea that we now get to tailor and edit the selves we present to other people. This completely kills both spontaneity and genuineness (if that's a word), so that there is no longer any risk we'll "say the wrong thing". We're too busy typing it out with our thumbs and taking out whatever might place us in a bad light.

This is like a giant watering can for the seeds of narcissism we all contain. When will it stop? I guess when the environment falls apart and we're all swept away, in about 50 years or less. No, really, I do not think that with this social erosion and the horrific, unforgiveable way we have befouled the planet that we have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. And it's sad, because if only enough of us would wake up. . . but we're too busy "talking" to each other with our thumbs.

Maybe the survivalists have it right, after all. But what sort of world will they inherit?

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It's here . . . The Glass Character on Amazon and Indigo

This is the second time I've had to do this whole thing - alarmingly, it all disappeared the first time, which I pray is not an omen - so forgive me if I'm not feeling quite as festive as before. I've just found TGC on Amazon, looking a lot more sprightly with an actual picture of the cover, and though he won't be available for a couple of weeks, you can pre-order through the link here. Indigo will have them for sale online, but no word yet as to whether they will actually be in the stores. Link is also provided. I'll get him out there somehow!

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The Glass Character [Paperback]

Margaret Gunning (Author)

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Book Description

Publication Date: March 30 2014

In the heady times of the 1920s Hollywood, a teenager?s crush on the legendary screen idol, comedian Harold Lloyd, changes her life forever.

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Product Description

About the Author

Margaret Gunning?s experience in print journalism includes hundreds of columns and book reviews in such publications as the

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Indigo

The Glass Character

by Margaret Gunning

Thistledown Press | March 30, 2014 | Trade Paperback

In the heady times of the 1920s Hollywood, a teenager?s crush on the legendary screen idol, comedian Harold Lloyd, changes her life forever. The Glass Character is a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. It was a time when people went to the movies almost every day, living vicariously through their heroes: Valentino, Garbo, Fairbanks and Pickford. But comedians were the biggest draw, and broad slapstick the order of the day with one very significant exception. Standing beside Keaton and Chaplin in popularity and prowess was a slight, diffident man named Harold Lloyd ? the silent era?s most influential comedian.

For sixteen year-old Jane he was a living god and though Lloyd had as many female followers as Gilbert or Barrymore, Jane knew no one could adore him more than she did, and no one would be willing to sacrifice more to be part of his life. There is in her story a naïveté in the voice and a wide-eyed innocence in the events, but as guileless as Jane may seem, her unaffected vision reveals much about the politics of the major studios, the power plays of the directors and producers, and the prima donna and egotistical Hollywood stars who ruled the movies. Her story also reveals much about the human heart and our desire to love against all the impossible odds. ?Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity . . .Montreal Gazette

Format: Trade Paperback
Dimensions: 228 Pages, 5.91 × 8.66 × 0.79 in
Published: March 30, 2014
Publisher: Thistledown Press

Language: English

About the Author

Margaret Gunning?s experience in print journalism includes hundreds of columns and book reviews in such publications as the Globe & Mail, Vancouver Sun, Victoria Times-Colonist and Montreal Gazette. Her poems have appeared in Prism International, Room of One's Own, Capilano Review and many others. Margaret?s first novel (Better than Life), described by the Edmonton Journal as ?fiction at its finest?, celebrates the joy and anguish of family in small-town Ontario. Her second novel (Mallory) explores issues of bullying and social ostracism. Gunning currently lives in Coquitlam, BC.

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Blinded by the Light: now, class. . .

Blinded By The Light Lyrics

"Blinded by the Light" is a song written and originally recorded by Bruce Springsteen, although it is mostly known by its 1976 #1 hit version recorded by Manfred Mann's Earth Band. It was released in the United Kingdom in August 1976, where it reached No. 6 in the BMRB charts.

What chart rank did the song debut? What is the song about? Has it won any awards?, etc.

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   Blinded by the light

Wrapped up like a noose another rumor in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Madman drummers bummers,

Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat

In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat

With a boulder on my shoulder,

feelin' kinda older,

I tripped the merry-go-round

With this very unpleasin',

sneezin' and wheezin,

the calliope crashed to the ground

The calliope crashed to the ground

But she was...

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I got what it takes

She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong, play the song with the funky break"

And go-cart Mozart was checkin' out the weather chart to see if it was safe outside

And little Early-Pearly came by in his curly-

wurly and asked me if I needed a ride

Asked me if I needed a ride

But she was...

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light

She got down but she never got tired

She's gonna make it through the night

She's gonna make it through the night

------ guitar solo ------

Mama always told me not to look into the eye of the sun

But mama, that's where the fun is

But mama, that's where the fun is

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun

But mama, that's where the fun is

Some brimstone baritone anticyclone rolling stone preacher from the east

Says, "Dethrone the dictaphone, hit it in its funny bone, that's where they expect it least"

And some new-mown chaperone was standin' in the corner, watching the young girls dance

And some fresh-sown moonstone was messin' with his frozen zone, reminding him of romance

The calliope crashed to the ground

But she was...

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

{the following two sections are sung simultaneously}

1)

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light,

revved up like a deuce,

another runner in the night

Blinded by the light, revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night

~ Blinded by the light

2) ~ Madman drummers bummers, Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat

~ In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat

 With this very unpleasin', sneezin' and wheezin, the 

calliope 

crashed to the ground

~ With a boulder on my shoulder, feelin' kinda older, I 

tripped the merry-go-round~

~ Now Scott with a slingshot finally found a tender spot and throws his lover in the sand

~ And some bloodshot forget-me-not said daddy's within earshot save the buckshot, turn up the band

~ Some silicone sister with a manager mister told me I go what it takes

~ She said "I'll turn you on sonny to something strong"

She got down but she never got tired

She's gonna make it through the night

Strange stirrings

I was enthralled by this song when I was a young girl. Little did I know I wasn't going to be a young girl for much longer. Feelings were surging through me, inexpressible. I knew what they were, and feared them. Those feelings are still with me. I know what they are, and fear them. We have music for this, like a remedy for an illness, a long illness with an inevitable end.

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Am I blue? Not any more!

Oh Lor', I've had another one of my famous sojourns into 1929-land. Turner Classics has started showing a lot of (very) early talkies, most of them fairly unwatchable except for the novelty. It's strange that there are silent films right up to 1927, then an abyss in 1928, then a veritable explosion of cheap entertainment in 1929 which drew crowds like flies because, gee whiz, Mabel, these pictures can really TALK!

I suffered through a good chunk of Street Girl, which is not as racy as it sounds and is just a thinly-disguised attempt to showcase the talents of a passably-good dance band. But it's not the musical numbers (and some of the music was written by Oscar Levant) that intrigued me.

Early talkies are hybrids (see the related phenomenon of "goat glanding", below), most with at least some subtitles, and often major glitches in synchronization that give you an odd disjointed feeling. The static nature of these things, with everyone sitting around a table or on a sofa talking into a potted palm where the microphone is hidden, seems to suggest a badly-transcribed stage play. But that's not the weirdest thing: it's that damned infernal noise you keep hearing. It's as if someone is working heavy machinery outside.  It was worse in Street Girl than in any I've seen, with a whirring, vibrating hum alternating with a low rushing noise, and, sometimes, a grinding sound like a garburator.

I think it was the camera. No, really. I think I read this as a movie-curious child in that big coffee table book we kept in the den (I think it was called "The Movies" or some-such, and yes, it did have a full-page spread of Harold Lloyd hanging off the clock). The noise of the camera was such a problem that they had to stuff the camera and the cameraman in a soundproof booth. Every few shots he'd come lurching out of there dripping wet and ready to pass out. At some point somebody must've said, gee, wouldn't it be better if we just put the CAMERA in the box? Inventing quieter cameras was an even better idea (though nobody had bothered to think about that before). It's a mystery to me why no such noise-dampening method was even attempted in Street Girl, unless it was made on a budget of 49 cents.

The other one I saw, or semi-saw because I can never get through them all, was called On With the Show, and predates even 42nd Street as a hat-check-girl-becomes-a-star vehicle for some nascent starlet. In fact it seems like a sort of prototype for the whole genre. I was nearly halfway through it and getting bogged down in a sort of bizarre fashion show (which didn't seem to fit in with the fox hunt with real horses that preceded it) when I realized I'd seen the whole thing before. I remember because I thought the women all looked like drag queens, and who knows, maybe they were!

But then. 

Seems a shame that she was required to come on with a bale of cotton under her arm, dressed vaguely like Aunt Jemima, but being the fearless artist she was, Ethel Waters overcame every conceivable stereotype the minute she began to sing. All the flailing around without a recognizable theme didn't matter any more: as they say, she owned the stage, or, more accurately, owned the whole show. 

The best singers sing as if they're enjoying the hell out of the song, but the truly great singers somehow bring you on-side so that YOU are enjoying it at least as much as they are. This joy and sunniness and self-possession and the warm earthy quality of her voice almost, well, yes, they DO erase the mediocre acting, bawling sopranos and flailing choreography of a really bad show that probably drew them like flies. Calling Busby Berkeley! We need you! But then, it wouldn't be too many years before he rushed into the void. 

And now, beloved reader, just because you are you, I have a few luscious factoids about this sweaty transition period that might just interest you as much as it interests me. Well then, here it is anyway.

Goat gland (film release)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Goat gland was a term applied c. 1927–1929, during the

period of transition from silent films to sound films. It referred

to an already completed silent film to which one or more talkie

sequences were added in an effort to make the otherwise

redundant film more suitable for release in the radically altered

market conditions.The name was derived by analogy from the

treatment devised by Dr. John R. Brinkley as an alleged cure

for impotence. 

This "goat gland" succeeded mainly in causing previously sympathetic audiences

to abruptly lower their opinions of the characters' personalities

and level of intelligence.