Anthony Perkins action figure

The truth about Marilyn Monroe

INT. CLOSET - GASKELL HOUSE 

The dull PURR of a COMBINATION LOCK is HEARD, a DOOR
opens, and a triangle of LIGHT falls on a PHOTOGRAPH of
MARILYN MONROE and JOE DIMAGGIO on their wedding day.

GRADY and James Leer stand in the doorway. Just below the
photograph of Marilyn and Joe--hanging next to a PIN-
STRIPED JERSEY bearing the number 5--is a SHORT BLACK SATIN
JACKET trimmed with an ERMINE COLLAR.

JAMES LEER
Is that really it?

GRADY
That's really it.

JAMES LEER
The one she wore on her wedding day?

GRADY
So I'm told.

James, in the presence of the holy grail of suicide
garments, stands speechless.

GRADY
Go ahead.

JAMES LEER
Really?

GRADY
Really.

James swallows, then goes to the jacket. Carefully, he
reaches out his fingers and touches the yellowed collar,
barely making contact, as though it might crumble to dust.

JAMES LEER
They're glass. The buttons.

GRADY
Like the lady herself.

GRADY says this airily, ironically, riding his buzz a
bit, but James nods solemnly, eyes transfixed on the
jacket, as if Marilyn herself were inside it.

JAMES LEER
She was small. Most people don't know that.
The shoulders are small.
(touching the satin)
It looks so perfect. I bet it's the only time
she wore it. That day. She must've felt so
...happy.

GRADY studies James as he takes the fringe of the jacket,
lifts it lightly.

JAMES LEER
It's feels unreal, like butterfly wings or...
something. It must've cost Dr. Gaskell a lot.

GRADY
I guess. Walter never tells Sara the truth
about how much he pays for these things.

JAMES LEER
You're really good friends with the
Chancellor, aren't you?

Grady's eyes slide, paranoid, but James' face remains
unchanged, consumed with the jacket.

GRADY
(carefully)
Pretty good. I'm friends with Dr. Gaskell,
too.

JAMES LEER
I guess you must be, if you know the
combination to his closet and he doesn't mind
your being here in their bedroom like this.

GRADY
Right.

A DOOR SLAMS downstairs and GRADY and James jump. The
CLICK of a woman's HIGH HEELS sends GRADY to the bedroom
window, where he watches Sara slide into a WHITE CITROEN
DS23, turn on the ignition, and motor away.

GRADY
We, better skedaddle. Close that closet--
James? You all right?

James is slumped on the Gaskell's white linen bed,
knapsack between his knees, head in hands.

JAMES LEER
I'm sorry. Professor Tripp. Maybe it's seeing
that jacket that belonged to her. It just
looks...really lonely. Hanging there. In a
closet. Maybe I'm just a little sad.

GRADY
Maybe. I'm feeling a little sad myself
tonight.

JAMES LEER
You mean, with your wife leaving you and ail?
Hannah mentioned something about it. About a
note.

GRADY
Yes. Well. It's complicated, James. I think we
should go now.

Without thinking, GRADY flicks out the bedroom light,
leaving James Leer in the dark for the second time today.

James just sits there, a shadow in a room of shadows.

The story behind this: I saw the movie Wonder Boys way back in 2000 (though it cannot be possible it was 17 years ago!). Most of it was convoluted and a bit of a mess, but I do remember the “Marilyn Monroe scene”. It was an important subplot of the movie. probably representing something-or-other, some deep symbolism about identity, dishonesty, etc. etc.

Michael Douglas plays a washed-up university professor/blocked writer with a young protégé, a very strange, fey, even creepy student played by (the strange, fey, even creepy) Toby Maguire.

The Marilyn scene involves Michael Douglas sneaking into the Chancellor’s bedroom to show his protégé a valuable collection of Marilyn Monroe memorabilia. Needless to say it doesn’t stop there, as Toby Maguire steals Marilyn’s wedding jacket which ends up in a stolen car, then on someone else’s back. Interestingly enough, we see one of the minor characters wearing it at the end. It looks like an exact replica of the black, fur-collared Monroe jacket with the small shoulders and the chic ¾ sleeves.

But the part I couldn’t get out of my mind were the Marilyn-obsessed Maguire's lines: “She was small. Most people don’t know that.” They stuck like a burr, though I couldn’t find them in any of the YouTube clips. I had to hunt it down in a transcript of the screenplay, but it was (surprisingly) not hard to find.

And it’s true. People weren’t talking about it then – they were still saying things like, “Marilyn Monroe was a size 16”, mostly to make themselves feel better about being fat. Though her weight fluctuated, in most of her photo shoots she looks to be around a size 6, though perhaps on the buxom side. Based on her surviving vintage dresses, couturiers have estimated her statistics as 35-22-35, though I have also heard 34-22-34 (which, during thinner periods, she may well have been).

The point is, these are not “fat” proportions. At all. Most women would envy them, particularly their symmetry (which is really more important than being thick or thin). Like the immortal Elizabeth Taylor, she had a very small natural waist, giving her a voluptuous shape which androgynes might call "fat" (but which isn't). Liz famously didn’t need much corseting for her Southern Gothic roles (such as in  Raintree County, one of my all-time favourite movies).

I’m not a man or anything, or at least I don't think so, and not particularly a Monroe fan (though I crush on Liz in some of her movies, big-time, and believe she was nothing short of brilliant as an actress). But I can see that Marilyn had just about the best breasts ever seen on a woman, breasts that would be ruined by a bra.

I also remember a movie – God, my mind is a junk drawer – called Soldier in the Rain, and I think it had Steve McQueen and Jackie Gleason in it. The two of them were fantasizing about women – Polynesian women, or something – and one of them referred to their breasts as “tilting up”. That’s what I’m talking about, a magnificent natural structure with no visible means of support.

I do remember the strangest things.

Cat in the box!

                                   Bentley in the box. 

What kind of bird is that?

"With a golden head, a white patch on black wings, and a call that sounds like a rusty farm gate opening, the Yellow-headed Blackbird demands your attention. Look for them in western and prairie wetlands, where they nest in reeds directly over the water. They’re just as impressive in winter, when huge flocks seem to roll across farm fields. Each bird gleans seeds from the ground, then leapfrogs over its flock mates to the front edge of the ever-advancing troupe." - Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology

http://www.birds.cornell.edu/page.aspx?pid=1478

Pied Beauty: an animation

 

  

 

 

Love or lust on Burnaby Lake

This is some footage of pigeons I took at Piper Spit, Burnaby Lake, our favorite place to bird-watch. The pigeons are at it full-force, and it's quite funny to watch. The video has a little gap in the middle where I forgot to turn the recorder off.

Pigeon Love (Wikipedia)

Courtship rituals can be observed in urban parks at any time of the year. The male on the ground or rooftops puffs up the feathers on his neck to appear larger and thereby impress or attract attention. He approaches the hen at a rapid walking pace while emitting repetitive quiet notes, often bowing and turning as he comes closer.

At first, the female invariably walks or flies a short distance away and the male follows her until she stops. At this point, he continues the bowing motion and very often makes full- or half-pirouettes in front of the female. The male then proceeds to feed the female by regurgitating food, as they do when feeding the young.

The male then mounts the female, rearing backwards to be able to join their cloacae. The mating is very brief with the male flapping his wings to maintain balance on top of the female.

One wonders, given the fact that actual mating takes only a few seconds, why there has to be such a prolonged, elaborate mating ritual. I suppose there's a parallel in human beings, where "love makes the world go 'round", songs are all about "love" (banging, usually), and - aside from industry - sex seems to be not just the main thing, but the only thing. (Come to that, it is also an industry in itself.)

What I have long wondered is this: since birds were directly descended from dinosaurs, did dinosaurs have similar elaborate rituals to attract a mate? Did T-Rex perform pirouettes and coo softtly so he could get it on with a girl T-Rex? How about Tricerotops? Did it throw up in another Tricerotops' mouth to charm and beguile? And how noisy would all this be? I have always thought of the dinosaur-scape as deafeningly loud, as each creature bellows with gigantic vocal cords to communicate. But this. The thuds on the ground! It would be like an earthquake.

Ten things I hate!

Attributed to Johnny Cash, though in this day and age of internet skepticism, I wonder if it's genuine. I tried to find a few other examples of amusing to-dos and only found this:

Yikes. I am supposed to fill in all those little lines in a DAY? Plus I hate being told what to do, so I'd likely never fill in any of them at all. Or if I did, they'd never get checked off.

I find that I either do things, or I don't. The things I do, I either wanted to do, or needed to do. The things I don't do are not very important, things that are on somebody else's agenda, or else just boring and a waste of time.

I KNOW! Let's not.

These aren't to-do lists (or "ta-dah!" lists, as I prefer to call them), but somehow they're in the ballpark. Or at least they're a little bit entertaining.

This last one isn't a list at all, but I love how the cat's paw is so firmly planted on the mouse. From what I've heard of internet lonely hearts, Polly will be over there in a wing-flap.

Rave!

The Love Parade disaster

Love Parade disaster

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Date 24 July 2010
Location Duisburg, Germany
Deaths 21
Non-fatal injuries 500

On 24 July 2010, a crowd disaster at the 2010 Love Parade electronic dance music festival in Duisburg, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, caused the death of 21 people from suffocation. At least 500 more were injured.

The Love Parade was a popular and free-access music festival and parade that originated in 1989 in Berlin. The parade featured stages, but had floats with music, DJs and dancers moving through the audience. The Love Parade in Duisburg was the first time that the festival had been held in a closed-off area. Between 200,000 and 1.4 million people were reported to be attending the event and 3,200 police were on hand.

With the slogan "The Art of Love", the event was one of the program elements of RUHR.2010, an effort to highlight cultural events in the Ruhr area, one of 2010's European Capitals of Culture.

The festival was staged on the area of a former freight station. The capacity of the enclosed location was limited to 250,000 people,[9] but more than one million visitors were expected, based on the experience of previous years.[citation needed]

There was some debate as to how the deaths occurred. Some reports suggested they were caused by people falling off a staircase as they tried to escape the tunnel. However, autopsies showed that all of the fatalities were due to crushed rib cages. A 2012 scientific analysis of the causes of the disaster dismissed the earlier descriptions of the incident as stampede or crowd panic, and instead found evidence for a phenomenon called "crowd turbulence".

The atmosphere was explosive. Many in the crowd seemed to be intoxicated. When people started falling off the stairs and pulling others with them, it became just chaotic. They just couldn't be stopped. It was a living hell.

— Eyewitness police officer

I will never forget the sight. There were all these twisted-up bodies of those who had been crushed. They were lying at the tunnel exit. Their faces had all turned blue.

— Eyewitness woman trapped in tunnel

Bruce Cullen of Parker, Colorado and founder of Trance Elements, a LoveParade artist/performer on float number 7 - "The Ship of Fools", mentioned that he and other performers were concerned before the event that there would be problems, stating "we all said it seems like this is not going to work". Although Cullen did not witness the actual event, he stated: "These guys didn't have this planned out right", "They didn't have enough police at the entrances in that tunnel. I am just really upset because people died. Everybody was there to have fun".

As a consequence of the disaster, the organizer of the festival announced that no further Love Parades would be held and that the festival was permanently cancelled. Criminal charges were brought against ten employees of the city of Duisburg and of the company that organized the event, but eventually rejected by the court due to the prosecutors' failure to establish evidence for the alleged acts of negligence and their causal connection to the deaths. 

Assigning the blame

None of the involved organizations or officials took the blame for the disaster by 29 July. Instead, the involved parties issued several statements accusing each other in a circular manner:

On 26 July, Rainer Schaller, organiser of the festival, accused the police of mistakes in crowd control, which he claims led to the disaster.

On 28 July, the interior minister of North Rhine-Westphalia rejected this and assigned all the blame to Schaller, his company Lopavent, their security concept and the festival personnel.

 

 

 

 

Related Disasters/Phenomena

Hillsborough Disaster
Heysel Stadium disaster
1971 Ibrox disaster
Luzhniki disaster
Burnden Park disaster
Lan Kwai Fong disaster
Roskilde Festival accident
1979 The Who concert disaster
Big Day Out mosh pit death
Herd behaviour
Crowd control
Asphyxia

BLOGGER'S LAMENT: I decided to make this into a sort of gif -based essay, with a little help from Wikipedia. It stuns me how many times people have been trampled to death and even asphyxiated in a standing position from the horrific result of gross overcrowding: a phenomenon known as "crowd crush". This term has largely replaced "stampede" as a more accurate way of describing the horrors that ensue when a densely-packed crowd of human beings implodes.

For decades, this sort of fatal collapse of order was blamed on "hooliganism", particularly at British soccer matches where the outcome of games matters more than life - but also at huge rock concert events where all the spectators are assumed to be drunk, stoned and rowdy. But mere rowdyness is rarely the central, fatal issue. Again and again as I researched this, I read about tremendous numbers of people, even more than a million, being crammed into a venue designed for only 200,000. I heard of exits blocked for police convenience, fences erected in the wrong place for crowd control, tens of thousands being directed into small pedestrian tunnels, and gates carelessly opened to relieve crowd pressure which then allow thousands and thousands more people to flood in. With this sort of atrocious non-planning going on, disaster is nearly inevitable. 

A crowd crush is like cement blocks pressing in full-force on every side. Personal space is non-existent, and violent jostling uncontrollable. If the crowd pushes forward, so do you. You have no choice. The mass of humanity becomes a single living organism, an alive thing with a hive mind. 

But what makes me quail - what makes my guts creep with squeamishness - are the shock waves that surge through hundreds of thousands of crammed-together human beings. These do not look anything like the innocuous, cheerful "crowd wave" which we used to see across rows of bleachers. It's more like a climate-change-driven monster relentlessly gathering force, a human tsunami which the individual is powerless to resist. 

The five gifs above, which I made from a video of an  Australian rock concert (though I cannot find any information about it) are an especially hair-raising example. We see huge, stomach-dropping crowd surges, seething motion in every direction, wild arm- flails, and the entire crowd jumping up and down in unison. There is even a chilling "sieg heil" salute that shoots up as if by some secret signal. 

This utter uniformity (which reminds me of some other culture/regime, for some reason) makes a kind of sense. Everyone HAS to do what everyone else is doing, or die as a result. It's some sort of definition of fascism.

So what would happen if one - only one person tripped and fell in this scenario? Almost certain death, as the people behind him or her would not be able to stop themselves from falling into the hole. This would lead to ever more tripping and falling until crushed and asphyxiated bodies are stacked up in a deadly pile.

When I look at these gifs and the seasick feeling they give me, and the ineffectual row of security guards standing still at the edge of the stage, I think: what on earth would they do if something went wrong? What if there were a mass panic and a true stampede, with people unable to see or find their way out? You don't need a fire breaking out for the worst to happen.

Some attempts have been made to redesign stadiums and concert halls to prevent these horrors, but many sports officials and impresarios seem to think they're just a necessary risk, collateral damage for important events. The underlying feeling is that the possibility of disaster just adds to the excitement. 

The most horrific crowd crush incidents have been in the Third World, usually in massive religious processions involving millions of people, where rickety bridges have collapsed and inadequately small tunnels caved in. Over 800 people died in one of these. I can't even let my mind go there.

Humans are clever enough - aren't they? - to prevent this shit, or at least make it less and less likely. Yet it keeps on happening, being dismissed as the result of "drunken hooligans out of control". I cannot think of anything worse than being crushed to death, because death often comes very slowly. It's worse even than drowning, which many describe as "the worst way to die". Some even end up brain-damaged and vegetative for the rest of their lives. It is too much even to contemplate.

Sponge hacks!

WHO ATE MY BOOK?