Are we all narcissists? I don't think so

This post resulted from comments I made on YouTube videos about the subject, which somehow evolved into longer chains of thought that I felt might have some value on this blog. It's easy to come up with examples - hundreds of them - of how the narcissist in the family manipulated, damaged and vampirized both friends and enemies, ate their young, and attempted the kind of dominance usually only equalled by totalitarian political leaders.

My sister the narcissist (13 years older than me) did something so inexplicably awful that I still have trouble wrapping my brain around it. She wrote my mother's obituary, imposing her own agenda on it, for my mother was on her deathbed. 

I was not in my mother's obituary. I had been stricken off the record and, according to that document, had never been born at all. 

As cruel and indifferent as my mother could be, I do not think it was her idea. It was my sister's ultimate act of malignant jealousy and hatred of me, an attempt to literally "unmake" me. Of course I was devastated at first, but then I had this thought: no matter what my kids did, even if they were murderers, even if they murdered ME, in no way, shape or form would I ever even think of striking them from the record, because they are MINE, my beloveds, I birthed and raised them, so this malignant hatred was NOT transferred to me. 

It did not happen by itself, as you can imagine, but through years, and years, and years of therapy, falling into addiction, mental illness, suicide attempts, etc. - BUT, somehow, always coming out the other side. I showed the obituary to my adult daughter, who snorted and said, "That says everything about HER, and nothing about YOU." She also said, and I liked this, "Don't give it another thought." In other words, don't let this nasty lie rent any more space in your head! Garbage is garbage and should be thrown out. I couldn't have said it better myself. 

As a P. S.: a high school friend phoned me and said, "I am sorry to read about your mother, but why aren't you in her obituary? Was it some sort of oversight?" I said, "no, it was quite deliberate," and my friend was so horrified she couldn't speak for a while. And people squabble and complain when they are left out of the will! But that attempt to erase my very existence turned out to be pretty laughable, after all. I managed to have two wonderful kids who also turned out to be wonderful parents. That doesn't happen to someone who never existed, does it? I don't think so.

Narcissism has lately been exposed in the popular culture as never before, but suddenly it has become too prevalent and is being rendered meaningless. If everyone is a narcissist, then no one is a narcissist. It's like saying "we're all geniuses" and other absurd generalizations. Human beings are far more complicated than that. Nor is it inevitable for narcissism to beget narcissism down the generations. It CAN be stopped and rooted out, but only if it is recognized and no longer tolerated. 

I know a lot of wonderful, even selfless people, and I married one, even while being exposed to hateful narcissism in my childhood. We gravitate towards who we are ourselves, or perhaps (in my case) who we would like to be. I know people who grumble "there are no good marriages," but inevitably their own relationships are chaotic. People I know with stable marriages are puzzled by this and always say most of their close friends have good marriages.

But the problem now is how easy it is for a narcissist to exert influence over others on a mass scale. A narcissist can very quickly attain world prominence on social media and become an "influencer" (incubus/succubus) and thus wield enormous economic and even political power (Kanye West for President??) on a global level. And you do not even have to spend a cent to do it. Twitter is the great equalizer.

Meghan Markle is a chilling example - she is now called "the most talked-about woman on the planet", and I agree, there are mainstream news items about her every day now, in which she is usually shown in a totally benevolent, humanitarian light. She has cultivated "friends" who are so well-placed (Oprah, Gayle, Ellen, Elton, George and Amal, etc.) that she almost cannot fail. If she rises to political prominence as she seems to want to, God help us all, we will have another Trump on our hands.

When I watch true crime shows like Dateline, it shocks me how often the victims of horrendous violence will say "I forgave him". I do not like the current emphasis on what I call the "forgiveness agenda". Supposedly, you "MUST" forgive the people who have wronged you, even if they have murdered your children, or else you will be filled with anger and rage and bitterness for the rest of your life. 

People who say they have done this are treated like living saints, and it creates pressure on others because it becomes a "should". I disagree. To survive and ultimately thrive, you've got to get away from malignant narcissists, escape with your life, and concentrate on reclaiming yourself. My therapist said about forgiveness: "Don't make an issue out of it" - in other words, you do not HAVE TO do anything! No other person has the right to dictate how you heal yourself, because it is an absolutely sacred process known only to yourself and whatever the healing agents are in your life.

What actually happened over many years and even decades of struggle is that I went from total disgust and contempt for my abusers to a kind of measured pity. I DO feel sorry for these people, because they are truly pathetic human beings. I cannot imagine anything worse than being that sort of person, even if they are not the ones who suffer most. Nor are there any of those kinds of people in my current circle, nor will there ever be. 

But this hard-won pity is NOT the same as coerced forgiveness, which is NOT necessary to avoid a lifetime of bitter rage. Don't let anyone pressure you into something that feels wrong to you! The "forgiveness agenda" may well be yet another attempt to silence you, because people are profoundly uncomfortable with your pain and anger and don't want to hear about it. Their motives are entirely selfish. People have largely lost the ability to bear witness without judgement, which is what all wounded people/all people need. "You must forgive" can just be another way of saying "don't talk about that any more." It's cowardly, selfish and not what is called for. I am not impressed by it. But pressure to forgive is sanctified and bulwarked by basic Christian principles, which makes it even more potentially powerful and even deadly. 

In my own former so-called-liberal Christian church, we struggled and wrestled with the concept of forgiveness as a "must" in Christian faith. If you can't forgive, the myth went, then you are not a true Christian. You must at least "try", struggle and strain, and reproach yourself continually if you can't do it. It was very important not to feel "comfortable" in our faith. It was work, and I now see it as thankless work and a waste of energy and time. We were even told "God will only forgive you if you forgive everyone else," which is an abomination and the most coercive idea I have ever encountered. It's one of the more insidious forms of religious abuse, and I somehow tolerated it for fifteen years for the sake of "belonging".

If God does not play dice with the Universe, as Einstein claimed, then God doesn't force people into uncomfortable and unhealthy patterns through coercion or "guilt trips". The Christian God no longer makes sense to me, and I feel if there is any benevolence at all in the Universe, it must come from us and travel from heart to heart. God's grace, if you want to call it that, is lived out through those difficult acts of compassion which force us to stretch beyond our own little universe of closed thoughts and wrongheaded ideas.

We cannot wait around for Big Daddy to fix things, or even fix us. Jesus at least tried to get this across, but no one seems to have heard him. The hardest thing in the world is to bear witness to another's pain silently and non-judgementally. Don't say anything, for once! Don't even think anything. Don`t try to fix it. Just sit. It is what 12-step groups attempt to do, usually imperfectly, but they at least try. To bear witness often means to just not bolt out of the room, or make all sorts of frantic attempts to get the person to shut up and follow THEIR hidden agenda. How rare it is, and I believe it is the only key for human beings to truly help each other in a world full of anxiety, stress and daily predictions of doom.

Is it real, or is it. . . ?

And then. . .

Are we being shamed for needing medical help?

I am about to express a very unpopular view which I believe everyone is afraid to talk about.

No one needs reminders of the COVID pandemic and how it has utterly swallowed the energy and attention of the medical industry worldwide. I believe people are being shamed into keeping their medical concerns to themselves and not taking up their doctors' valuable time. I have not spoken to my doctor in four months and am told to "just go to Emergency" if I have a serious problem. My last trip to Emergency yielded me a wildly off-target diagnosis (made on the fly by whoever was on call), prompting my doctor to become very angry with me and accuse me of "trying to diagnose myself" when it turned out to be wrong. 

I am seeking another family doctor, but I realize this very likely won't happen. I am not trying to whine about this, but over the long term, people are going to die from medical neglect and the absence of the kind of preventative care which can intercept relapses and prevent bouts of very serious illness. Elderly people who are already isolated and chronicaly ill are being cut off completely if they have no computer access. 

We all seem to feel very guilty about asking for help, but this is a situation created by dismissive doctors who do NOT make their regular patients a priority. I even feel bad about posting this, because I will be seen as disloyal to the cause and not praising doctors enough for being so heroic. But I'd have more respect for them if they would so much as attempt to do their jobs.

I know a woman who is afraid she is having cancer symptoms. When she finally got through to the intern filling in for the intern who is filling in for her doctor, she was told, "No, that doesn't sound like cancer to me, but if you're having anxiety about it, just go to Emergency." She did not, because Emergency triggers overwhelming anxiety and panic about past abusive treatment, and (once again) she has been conditioned to feel guilty for taking up the doctors' valuable time. 

The fact that she has a "history" of anxiety and depression seems to negate her credibility entirely. But to even mention this scenario as a possibility only results in more anger and dismissal. It comes across as a completely unfair and even cruel and selfish accusation. "Of course" they "would never" do such an unprofessional thing to the public, their dedication has never wavered, and you are wrong to even think it, let alone express it to anyone.

In any case, the "care" in Emergency is based on diagnoses made in a few minutes, with no medical history. There is a strange silence and a hole in media reporting on this issue that makes me very uneasy. The ONLY article I have ever seen on this taboo subject was about young people in Latin America, the shortage of support for mood disorders, and how young people have newfound medical and emotional/social support through Zoom calls. This is the party line. After fifty years of brick walls, I am getting tired of defending behaviour which is not only arrogant and uncaring, but completely unacceptable in a "first world" country. 

"Man Walking Around a Corner"

Sixteen frames of pure genius: "Man Walking Around a Corner" - which is exactly what it is. This cinematic fragment may be even older and worse quality than the immortal Roundhay Garden Scene, which is often called the "first movie ever made". But this is definitely the first movie ever made of a man walking around a corner. It even has its own Wikipedia entry:

"Man Walking Around a Corner was an early film shot in Paris by Louis Le Prince. According to David Wilkinson's 2015 documentary The First Film it is not film, but a series of photographs, 16 in all, each taken from one of the lens from Le Prince's camera. Le Prince went on to develop the one lens camera and on the 14th October 1888 he finally made the world's first moving image."

A pink car blinks (my animation)

A pink car blinks. An animation I made from three frames.

Harold and the mothball

Some wag or other has planted mothballs in the chocolate box, with hilarious results! This is one of the best examples of a Lloyd reaction scene, which he can carry on for full minutes with great effect. This  reflects the innate acting genius which drove a lot of his comedy. Only Chaplin is comparable. 

KILLER GOLDFISH! Ghastly horrors straight from your nightmares

Beware the Prussian carp, the latest invasive species to terrorize Canada's waterways

The tubby, out-sized goldfish, which can weigh in at up to three kilograms, according to the government, is able to reproduce rapidly without males

Tyler Dawson

Aug 20, 2020

“We’re basically just catching and killing where we’re finding them.” GOVERNMENT OF ALBERTA

EDMONTON — The Alberta government is sending out warnings about Prussian carp, an invasive variety of goldfish, that have been found in ponds in the province.

“Catch it, kill it,” says a notice on the Alberta government website. “If you catch Prussian carp while angling, please kill it and either take it home to eat or properly dispose of it in the garbage.” 

The tubby, out-sized goldfish, which can weigh in at up to three kilograms, according to the government, is a highly invasive species that reproduces rapidly. It’s not known how it first entered Alberta’s waterways, although it has been there since at least 2015.

It is able to survive out of water “for relatively long periods of time” and is also able to outcompete native fish species. 

“Many invasive carp were imported as pond or aquarium species or sold in Asian food markets,” says a government fact sheet from 2015 that was updated in 2018. 

The fish has now spread to Saskatchewan, too, though the two western provinces remain the only jurisdictions in North America with the Prussian variety of carp. 

Notably, they can reproduce without males, so they can spawn and spread rapidly. “It’s a little freaky,” says Nicole Kimmel, an invasive species expert with the Alberta government.

“They’re very opportunistic fish,” she says.

“We believe humans are also picking them up and moving them around,” says Kimmel. 

They, like many other species, are hard to control. But the government is urging people to report them as they find them. 

“We’re basically just catching and killing where we’re finding them,” Kimmel says.

It’s just one of multiple invasive species that have made their homes in Canada. Some roam the land. Some grow on it. Others have taken roost in lakes, rivers and streams. Some look fairly anodyne.

Others are ghastly horrors straight from your nightmares. 

The Prairie provinces have wild boar — hard to catch, hard to kill and rather destructive. The Great Lakes have become home to a variety of gruesome-looking invaders, such as the blood-sucking sea lamprey, which lives in Lake Erie, but can thrive just as easily in a puddle of mud.

The Ontario government has pre-emptively sounded the alarm on some species that are known to be in waterways in the vicinity of the province: The Wels Catfish, for example, one of the largest freshwater species of fish, earning it the name The European Maneater, is already on the “prohibited” species list. 

In British Columbia, there are fines of up to $250,000 for releasing snakeheads — the so-called Frankenfish — that can grow up to a metre long and schlep over land to find their next home. One was caught and killed in 2012 Burnaby after officials drained the Central Park Lagoon.

All of which is to say, if you’re going out fishing, invest in a fish bonker. And a phone to report anything unusual.

PLEASE NOTE. This story is total crap (and note: that's an anagram of "carp"!). The "facts" in it are so lunatic that NO ONE could ever believe it. It's a wonder this thing wasn't published on April Fools Day. I've actually highlighted the parts of it that make the least sense. I mean, a killer goldfish? And one which doesn't even live in the water, but crawls around on land? And which is born pregnant, like the tribbles on Star Trek? A goldfish, yes, kids, a GOLDFISH which is described as a "ghastly horror straight from your nightmares"? This is such a howlingly far-fetched item that I am sure it's meant to be tongue-in-cheek - or tongue-in-carp. Or else, it's simply CRAP. (And why is that woman named Kimmel, anyway? Isn't there a comedian by that name?)

IS there a ray of hope?

Most people got soul if they want to try 

Let love be your goal and let it fly 

'Cause it's easy to hate and to draw a line 

But error is human forgiveness is divine 

I know a lot of people who think like me 

That this world can be a place that's filled with harmony 

First there's a lot of things we've got to rearrange 

Put an end to hate and lies 

So peace can come and truth shall reign 

As long as there is a ray of hope 

Lord, I don't mind going out and doin' my work 

Light up the way to brotherhood 

Help us to make His dream understood 

Sometimes the road gets a little bit rough 

Your strength is all gone, you had enough 

But there's people who win without making fists 

Our world won't survive lest we think like this 

I can't imagine any greater need 

To treat each other as we'd like to be 

It's a gas just knowing what is yet to come 

Not unless we get together 

Got to get together one by one 

As long as there is a ray of hope 

Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work 

Light up the way to brotherhood 

I got to keep on searchin, keep on searchin 

'Til I find out 

Keep on searchin, keep on searchin 

'Til I find out 

Keep on searchin, keep on searchin

'Til I find out 

Gonna take a little look way down inside 

Gotta find out Lord, why I'm alive 

We'll pray for a day when all men are free

And people can live like they're meant to be 

Meanwhile it's all up to you and me 

Start working together towards this dream 

As long as there is a ray of hope
Lord, I don't mind goin out and doin my work
Light up the way to brotherhood
Help us to make His dream understood
As long as there is a ray of hope
I got to wait my turn 'til I can vote
As long as there is a ray of hope

Blogger's note. This song popped into my head, but the version I remembered was hard to chase down, because it isn't the original. It ends, strangely, with a couple lines from Battle Hymn of the Republic - but consider the source. To Americans, it's just a wonderful and patriotic hymn with no bad connotations. It's "glory, glory, hallelujah" - which reminds me of THIS:

This isn't a time for "vict'ry" OR defeat, but a time for sanity regained before it is too late and total anarchy descends on the catastrophic mess that is the United States.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

Strange images, late at night

A collection of images from my files, gleaned from many years and many sources. All odd.

COVID spikes: don't blame the kids!

I decided to copy and paste the text of this article from Global News, so they can sue me if they like. But this article makes some very valid points from the standpoint of young people who are now being blamed and even scapegoated for spiking numbers of COVID-19. The problem is much more complex than the media and the public claim. I have four teenaged grandkids who are experiencing tremendous frustration and have protested the confusing muddle of misininformation and conflicting advice from health care experts, rules that seem to shift and change every day.

These are KIDS, people. Like all of us, they're tired of this shit and don't see an end in sight. But they haven't yet gained the maturity to take the long view, and neither have many adults, who have no excuse and should be setting a better example. These young people are missing the milestones of their coming of age, a situation that could affect them for the rest of their lives. What they are experiencing is real grief, not just youthful rebellion. And yes, bar owners should not stand there smoking a cigarette and ringing up the cash register. If they see COVID violations, it is their responsibility to close up shop IMMEDIATELY and stay that way until it's truly safe to re-open.

HEALTH
Here’s what B.C. youth have to say about the province’s coronavirus spike

By Simon Little Global News

Posted August 15, 2020 4:01 pm

A public health expert says telling younger survivor stories is much more effective in flattening B.C.'s curve.

As British Columbia faces a second wave of the coronavirus, youth in the province are speaking out about how they’re being affected by the pandemic.

It comes as new modelling shows that the recent surge in new COVID-19 cases is being driven largely by young adults, aged 20-39 years old.

READ MORE: Why one expert says B.C. fumbled its coronavirus message to young people

The issue has prompted the province to redouble its efforts to communicate with youth, including recruiting social media influencers, and calling on celebrities to add their voices to the campaign.

CKNW Radio’s Lynda Steele Show spoke to some of B.C.’s youth, who say their voices aren’t being heard in the debate.

Life on pause

Olivia Barbieri of Surrey says youth are being bombarded with “exhausting” messages about staying safe during the pandemic.

The 20-year-old understands the concern, but argues that older adults also need to recognize that her demographic is being uniquely impacted by the virus.

“There are some events in certain stages of life — like weddings, graduation, like having different study plans — that are very unique to these times of our lives,” she said.

“It’s really hard, especially as young people, to be like — okay, well our parents and everyone else have had these opportunities, so it’s hard to be like, okay, this isn’t happening for us.”

Barbieri, a third-year university student, was supposed to go to the Netherlands for a semester abroad this September. That has now been scrapped.

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She’ll now be studying online instead.

But she says many of those cases don’t involve giving up once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

“I’ve been struggling,” she said. “You know, I would be packing up, I would be getting on a plane.”

Barbieri says she understands that all age groups have had to make sacrifices during the pandemic.

Back to school fears

Burnaby’s Ervin Cadiz, 16, is slated to head back to school next month, and says he doesn’t want to go back unless he can do it online.

“It’s upsetting to be forced back into school when the government has told us to keep our bubbles and contacts small,” he said.

“I followed all the precautions and guidelines set by health care officials ever since quarantine happened. So why is it now that we’re being put in groups larger than 50?”

Protesting B.C’s back-to-school plan

Cadiz said he’s worried he’ll be regularly exposed to large groups of people at school who may or may not have been following precautions, and will have to rely on transit daily to get there.

He worries he could come in contact with the virus, and bring it home to his family.

“It’s like we’re being given this ultimatum. Risk getting your parents sick, risk getting your relatives sick, or don’t go to school and get the education that you need,” he said.

Mixed messages

Tanysha Klassen, 24, of New Westminster says the province’s youth aren’t getting a consistent message from officials.

Klassen says she’s been working from home during the pandemic, wearing a mask and limiting her trips out for essentials, such as groceries.

But she says the way the province has reopened has suggested to young people that going out is fine.

READ MORE: Coronavirus exposure reported on 2 nights at Vancouver nightclub

“Things like restaurants and bars and nightclubs have been given the go-ahead to open up by the provincial health officer,” she said.

“Then we’re getting these announcements every day with the cases going up, saying that these are often coming from bars and nightclubs. And then we hear the media blaming it on young people because young people are the ones that go to these places.”

Klassen said it’s unfair to pin those new cases on youth when it’s the responsibility of bar operators to ensure safety protocols are in place and being followed.

She said if those establishments aren’t doing enough, it’s up to the province to crack down on them for breaking the rules.

“It seems like young people are just following the rules,” she said. “If people shouldn’t be going to bars and nightclubs, then they shouldn’t be open.”

Getting tougher?

Shumail Javed, a 29-year-old from Burnaby, says the province should have taken a clearer and tougher line in its messaging from Day 1.

He says he’s seen crowding at “party places” such as the beach and few people wearing masks.

“Maybe all people from different segments of society should have come together, form a digital campaign that could have helped people understand this,” he said.

“Make sure that it was simple, strictly like wearing face masks. Or enforcing fines in the party places like Kelowna or Tofino.”

Javed said the messaging around masks, in particular, has been too casual, leaving many people to feel like the pandemic had eased back to business as usual.

He said the province has also failed to open up more outdoor spaces and activities where people could congregate and have fun safely, prompting people to head back to bars and clubs.

Harold Lloyd: EEK! ACK! OOK! owwwwwww

The many faces of Harold, who does panic better than anyone else in film history. 

"Kinda Wild and Free": the Good Little Bad Girl in '60s pop music

This is one of those posts that has been kicking around in my mind forever. There is a certain genre of vintage pop that can only be described as "class distinction morality tales". Songs like Down in the Boondocks and Dawn ("go away, I'm no good for you")  are nothing but self-pitying screams from "poor boys" who can never be good enough (economically? Socially?) for the wispy, likely virginal maidens they yearn for.

Then there's that other kind of girl.

Not on a pedestal. She don't have no money, her clothes are kind of funny, her hair is kind of wild and free. . . You know the kind. 

Windy. Eleanor. Rosemary. Sloopy. And those others, literally nameless, the "rag doll" and the "brown-eyed girl", immortalized in song and trapped forever in the fiery amber of 1960s youth.

There's something sweetly loose about these girls, the swingin' hair and slightly raggy, thrift-shoppy clothes, a free spirit who might be a little more than free with her sexual favors. It's there, not spelled out, but implied. In some ways this is only a celebration of non-conformity and breaking free from the dreadful shackles of convention. It's as if these guys (whoever they are - there must have been a lot of them) can only find personal freedom through these barefoot waifs who wade right into the public fountain and don't mind getting their (long, swingin') hair wet.

I can't possibly get into all the lyrics of these things - you can play them if you want! But there are themes which can be gleaned from taking a closer look at them.

Windy (The Association)

Who's trippin' down the streets of the city, smilin' at everybody she sees? Everyone knows it's Windy. It's a strange name, and I wonder if she was actually called Wendy in the first draft. This is the quintessential free-spirited-girl anthem, and it's fairly unremarkable except for a couple of truly memorable lines: "And Windy has stormy eyes/That flash at the sound of lies." This is startling, and reveals the core of morality in this raggedy girl who cannot stand phoniness and posing. Windy is going to be a bit of a challenge to anyone who can't see past her out-at-the-knees jeans and split ends. She'll find you out, catch you out, even as she reaches out to capture the moment. 

Eleanor (The Turtles)

This is kind of a strange one: "Eleanor, gee I think you're swell, and you really do me well, you're my pride and joy, ET CETERA". This is the ultimate blow-off of someone you care about: "I love you, etc. etc." - but it's also uniquely '60s, that offhandedness which is a thin disguise for a profound yearning to be captivated and captured by a free-spirited girl. The title of the movie Love, Actually seems to borrow from this sentiment. 

Love Grows (Where my Rosemary Goes)

"She ain't got no money, her clothes are kinda funny, her hair is kinda wild and free. . . " Oh yeah. You might not take this girl home to meet your mother, but you'd take her to the park, maybe even in the dark, smoke up, and get down to basics. "She talks kinda lazy, people say she's crazy, and her life's a mystery" - a common element among these characters, later immortalized in John Lennon's magnificent line: "It's a love that has no past." Like a lot of these girls (and by the way, they ARE girls, not women), there is an element of magic power and even mysticism about them: Rosemary  "really has a magical spell/And it's workin' so well" - that he can't get away.

Hang On Sloopy (The McCoys)

This is the true nitty-gritty, a real wrong-side-of-the-tracks scenario in which Sloopy lives in a very bad part of town, and "everybody, yeah, tries to put my Sloopy down". Sloopy reminds me a bit of "sloppy", of course, but a sloop is also a boat, and thus a symbol of freedom (remember the Beach Boys' sublime Sloop John B?). For some reason, in picturing Sloopy, I think of a girl in a torn grey sweatshirt hanging off one shoulder, and jeans so tight they look painted on. Long black hair and thick Cleopatra eyeliner, like very early Cher. 

The most provocative line, "Sloopy, I don't care what your Daddy do" makes you wonder: just how bad IS he, anyway? A thief, a pimp, a drug dealer, or just the local rag-and-bone man doing a dirty low-status job because somebody has to do it? The repeated chorus of "hang on, Sloopy/Sloopy, hang on" is a strange one - does he mean "hang on to your self-worth", or what? A loose girl hanging on - to what, we can never be sure. 

Along Comes Mary (The Association)

This one has a VERY interesting lyric, which I will actually reproduce here because to me, it has elements of Mariology (the study of apparitions of the Virgin Mary). The tune is basically one note, which is intriguing as the lyrics tumble over each other in one long blurt. But the words are unusually complex, a long skein of poetry with a subtext that is almost disturbing. This song was quoted in one of Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts as an example of the Dorian Mode, though I doubt if The Association was thinking in those terms when they wrote it. You know you are NOT in typical pop-music-land when you hear lines like these: 

And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains she left the night before

Or will their waking eyes reflect the lies, and make them
Realize their urgent cry for sight no more

Every time I think that I'm the only one who's lonely
Someone calls on me
And every now and then I spend my time in rhyme and verse
And curse those faults in me

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to give me kicks, and be my steady chick
And give me pick of memories
Or maybe rather gather tales of all the fails and tribulations
No one ever sees

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

When vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks
Whose sickness is the games they play
And when the masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes
As who is most to blame today

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality
From where she got her name
And will they struggle much when told that such a tender touch as hers
Will make them not the same

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch

And when the morning of the warning's passed, the gassed
And flaccid kids are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars

And then along comes Mary
And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains
She left the night before
Or will their waking eyes reflect the lies, and make them
Realize their urgent cry for sight no more

When we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch 

Brown-eyed Girl (Van Morrison)

This one is literally about "makin' love in the green grass/Behind the stadium," which doesn't get much more nitty-gritty than that. It's all about having sex on the ground, outdoors, in public. The brown-eyed girl automatically has connotations of a girl who ISN'T blue-eyed/blonde (Aryan? Just kidding) - in fact, this may even be a way to racialize her in a subtle way, or paint her as a little exotic. Hey where did we go, days when the rains came? Down in the hollow, playin' a new game. Laughin' and a-runnin', skippin' and a-jumpin'. . . You know the rest. 

Rag Doll (Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons)

We're not even pretending that this girl is respectable. She's nicknamed "Hand-me-down" by the mean, judgemental folks in town, and is likely called much worse things. "Such a pretty face," Frankie Valli croons in that supernatural falsetto voice of his, "should be dressed in lace". This song has elements of fairy tale about it, portraying a sort of hidden worth that transcends rags and tatters, an inner purity and nobility which. . . well, maybe not. Cinderella this girl ain't, in fact she sounds kind of iffy to me. 


The rest of the town sees her as "easy", but Frankie insists she's so much more than that, and does not even want to change anything about her: "I love you just the way you are." But the last verse takes a pretty dark turn: "I'd change her sad rags into glad rags if I could/My folks won't let me 'cause they say that she's no good." It doesn't get much more graphic than that.

Baby Don't Go (Sonny and Cher)

This is one of my all-time-favorite songs by a vastly underrated pop duo, Sonny and Cher. Sonny wrote most of their hits, including Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Little Man, Bang-Bang, and A Cowboy's Work is Never Done - all sharply witty, even edgy songs with smarter lyrics than people seem to realize. He's just dumb old Sonny Bono, isn't he? But without Sonny, there never would have been a Cher. 

He created her, Pygmalion-like, and she even acknowledged the fact long after they parted. She practically climbed up on his funeral pyre when he died skiing into a tree, and completely hijacked the funeral with her sobbing histrionics, embarrassing his widow who was sitting right there watching the production. At any rate, this time there's a twist to it and the song is from the girl's perspective, a teenage girl who has been traumatized by unspoken abuse. She comes across as an orphaned waif who "never had a mother" and hardly knew her Dad, and (of course) buys her rags and tatters at the second-hand store. 

The plaintive chorus "baby, don't go" seems to come from a phantom lover in response to her truly poignant and soul-baring soliloquy. It's as if she must spell out or even insist that "you're the only boy I've had" to try to defend her tattered reputation. The tight chords in the chorus with their astringent dissonance have the plaintive pull of a train whistle in the distance, the train she's about to catch as she leaves that intolerable place, that town without pity (to quote another classic). "When I get to the city/My tears will all be dried/My eyes will look so pretty/No one's gonna know I cried." Those are great lines, along with her promise to "be a lady some day". 

So what IS the scenario here? She has to go away - where, and why? To have an abortion? To evade a vagrancy charge? To get away from an abusive stepdad, or maybe just to prove that the town is wrong about her? It's never spelled out, but like Sloopy and Rag Doll, she has been surrounded by judgement and disapproval all her life just for being who she is, and must escape, must run for her life.

But the melancholy half-promise to that phantom lover adds another level of poignancy: "Maybe I'll be back some day." The implication is that she can't return until she has made herself worthy. I love this particular video from a '60s pop music show in which the dancers, all doing the jerk and the shing-a-ling, are photographed in a kind of kaleidoscope effect, while Cher, eyes rimmed in black Cleopatra kohl, sings this knockout song with a kind of expressionless deadpan. But my oh my, how Cher could sing back then, before she ruined her voice with that godawful forced-sounding vibrato. She sang with warmth, clarity and passion. As with the best poetry, so much is left unsaid, and we must fill in the blanks with our own yearnings. 

SPECIAL BONUS VIDEO! This is the clip with Leonard Bernstein playing an excerpt from Along Comes Mary, a song he was said to have admired for its dynamic chord structure and complex lyrics. Sweet as the punch!

Princess Charlotte of Prussia (1880s)

Princess Charlotte of Prussia, Duchess of Saxe Meiningen

"It's Baxter!" The Meow Mix cat crashes the wedding

I believe this is ALL the Baxter commercials for Meow Mix. If you know of any others, PLEASE let me know! Surely Baxter was the ultimate in feline advertisement, outmeowing Morris (though he had more staying power, I think). The other two are also Meow Mix ads at their finest: the infamous Close Encounters of the Meow Kind, and the even-more-infamous Disco Kitties. I can never get enough of these, and it's the first time I've had them all in one place!