A closed-circuit electronic playground

I sort of remember this,  just like I sort of remember our first VCR and not knowing how it could record shows when the TV set wasn't even on.

It was Beta.

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Let's play. . . spot the photo!

I love love LOVE Victorian and Edwardian photos. The black-and-white is crystalline in detail. People really knew how to dress then. They got around by horse. It was wonderful.

I recently found two gorgeous, authentic photos from the era that looked so much like paintings, I had to mix them up with some actual paintings by Victorian artists Tissot and Hassam. I hope their ghosts will forgive me for making their pictures black and white, just for the sake of confusion.

Can YOU tell the difference?

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Do you call that thing a book?

The novel, the novel! Why do I set myself up like this? Why don't I just let it go?


I'm like a person who has had seventeen failed relationships, but keeps trying for more, keeps hoping for that one, elusive, "right" man who will change her life.

For more than a year now I've been trying to get someone in the publishing field interested in my novel about Harold Lloyd, The Glass Character. It occurred to me yesterday that I've been going about it all wrong. Why am I acting as if I've never been published before?

Here is a small sample of the reviews I got for my first two novels. This represents maybe ten per cent of them. Only one was strongly negative.

                            

Reviews of Better than Life (NeWest Press, 2003)

and Mallory (Turnstone Press, 2005)

"Gunning manages to illuminate that which is dark and secret with that which is rich and riotous in colour. She is an author able to open up the world of a fractured but seeking people and bring them into light, healing and hope." - Edmonton Journal

"As Anderson-Dargatz did with her town of Likely and Stephen Leacock did with Mariposa, Gunning has created a fictional place that's recognizable to anyone who ever lived in a small town. This delightful novel looks like a contender for the Leacock Medal." - Vancouver Sun

"Margaret Gunning writes with uncanny grace and unflinching clarity about what it is to be a young girl forgotten by the world. The ominous feeling that underscores much of of the novel is remeniscent of the best work of another Canadian author, Ann-Marie MacDonald, whose girl heroes seem to inhabit this same dark world." - Montreal Gazette

 

"Her expressive turns can spur shivers of pleasure. There is a contagious energy to Gunning's prose which often - and accurately - delineates Mallory's intense emotional improvisation, child-like perspicacity and surprisingly mature realizations." - Globe and Mail

"Better Than Life is fiction at its finest." - Edmonton Journal

                              
One of my editors phoned me after this outpouring and claimed it was "a miracle". She saw all this praise as some sort of supernatural event, not as the result of years of hard work, persistence, trudging along, heartbreak.

I sent out queries this time and did not even get responses, or else the response was no (a form letter, always) without even wanting to see the novel. The larger presses will not even consider submissions from the likes of me: you have to have an agent. The response from agents was even more miserable: nothing, or form letters, or even (the worst one yet) my own query letter back, in my stamped self-addressed envelope, with a rubber stamp on it that said LIST IS FULL.

In no case did anyone actually read my novel. It was dismissed out of hand.

I should have done it differently, but didn't even realize it until yesterday. I have two novels out already, for Christ's sake.  I'm not a novice. I'm not starting at the beginning. Why can't I jump over some of those early, sieve-straining steps?


So I've started to. And nothing definite has happened yet, but the energy seems to have changed.

I will never, NEVER learn how to do this, how to hawk my wares. I love to write - somehow it has survived the wars - but after 30 years of attempts, I still can't seem to figure out the elaborate, paradoxical, ever-changing games I must play to get my writing noticed.


If it weren't for you, Harold, and my love for you, I would have given this up a long time ago.

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Celebrity Wife Swap: it can't be true!

To what lengths will some people go to resurrect their careers?

I mean, careers shattered by their own stupidity, selfishness and horrifically bad judgement?

Here's how far.

(from an entertainment site)

Reality TV will have another proud moment Tuesday night when disgraced pastor Ted Haggard and unstable one-time Oscar nominee Gary Busey trade spouses for ABC's "Celebrity Wife Swap." To promote their appearance on the show, Busey and Haggard appeared via satellite earlier in the day on Fox's "Good Day LA."

"Steve, do you remember the last time we talked?" Busey started the interview, then recalling for host Steve Edwards the interview they had after Busey's Oscar nomination in 1979. "You were very much a gentleman and very nice to me, and I've never forgotten that moment. You inspired me."


It's unlikely Busey will have such warm memories of this interview.

What followed was an awkward nine minutes of live TV that featured Haggard engaging in a contentious discussion of gay marriage with Jillian Reynolds, a virtually ignored Busey seemingly amusing himself in the monitor off camera, and a series of pauses caused by some kind of audio lag that seemed to affect only Busey.

Haggard seemed put off by the intro, in which Edwards described Haggard's scandal involving a male prostitute who claimed to have had sex with Haggard (which Haggard denied) and doing drugs with him (which Haggard admitted to). The scandal led to Haggard resigning as pastor at the New Life Church in Colorado Springs and as head of the National Assn. of Evangelicals. Amazingly, he's remained married for the past five years and he's willing to let his wife spend a week with Gary Busey.


Shortly after the introduction, Haggard turned to Busey and commented, "That was a jumbled group of facts they had."

The rest of the interview is worth watching for Busey's facial expressions and occasional asides and for his reaction to Edwards' concluding suggestion that he say, "Amen!"


Chances are that ABC's "Celebrity Wife Swap" episode will be slicker and probably less entertaining than Tuesday morning's chat.


As for the wives who actually did the swapping? Barely discussed.

I don't even know where to start here. With his drippingly oily manner and rectangular smile, Ted Haggard seemed like the natural successor to Jimmy Swaggart, whimpering and slobbering with insincere apology after being exposed (though he denies it) having sex with a male prostitute.

They didn't have sex, Haggard insists. They just did drugs together. Is all.

I watched a rather pathetic documentary about how the disgraced pastor was trying to resurrect his church in what looked like a tool shed in the back yard. A ramshackle group of people showed up, probably spying the camera crew and yearning for a moment of reality TV fame.

Gary Busey, well. . . do we even need to get into it? Where did they dredge him up, and why? I know most reality shows seem to recycle '80s whatever-happened-to's and revolving-door rehab dropouts. But this pairing is particularly bizarre. Why is a so-called Christian evangelist engaging in wife-swapping (even the sanitized version we see on TV), especially with this loser? Why is he callously exploiting the wife who stood by him while he "didn't" have sex with a male hooker, though he admitted to lusting for him in his heart?

If you're truly heterosexual, it doesn't occur to you to hang around using recreational drugs with a gay prostitute. It just doesn't come up. So OK, we've exposed this Haggard guy, but he must be pretty desperate for the spotlight if he's willing to do this.

Maybe he's trying to start a new church: a congregation of evangelical swingers. When they pass around the collection plate, will they throw their keys into the basket?

Or maybe it's just another desperate attempt to convince the world that he's NOT homosexual. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

This weird press conference is enough of a taste of the impending carnage to keep me away, so I probably won't be able to watch.  I was most repelled by the fact that these men's wives weren't even mentioned in the interview. That's because they are nothing but pawns in this disgusting game of opportunistic narcissism.

It's "wife swap", not "couples swap" or "husband swap". That tells us all we need to know about the balance of power here.

Besides, the wives aren't "celebrities", so who who gives a shit about them? Instead, we're supposed to care about a morally bankrupt hypocrite and a mediocre actor with a horrific reputation, so washed-up I had pretty much forgotten who he was.

What was it Saint Paul said in the gospels? "Wives, submit to your husbands." But does this still apply if your husband is a revolting crackpot masquerading as a man of God?

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Stupidest computer problem EVER

Yes, I know I should go to a new layout or format or whatever, but I don't want to. Don't want to! I liked the one I had, but the blog title only showed up properly (in white lettering against the backdrop of the photo) on the home page. If you read an old post or if I emailed a single post or anything like that, the lettering came out BROWN.

Brown on an outdoor photo? It doesn't work. You can't see it.
I tried and tried to get rid of this. Finally I decided it was time for a new photo anyway. This one took a lot of retouching, but I love it.

For a couple of hours, I felt like I was on the verge of bliss! The whole thing had worked out so well. No more brown titles blending into the background. It was all fixed. It looked wonderful!

Then I looked a little more carefully.

ALL the titles of my posts were in white. WHITE, the color my blog title should have been in (except it was in shit-brown). White on light beige isn't legible. So I had to hastily fix that, but as soon as I did, my blog title had flip-flopped back into brown again.

Stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID problem.

I did try to alter this. Supposedly you can place your blog title and description UNDER the photo. It says so. Easy, so I did that. They disappeared. They were just gone.

So what the fxxx am I supposed to do now???
No one is going to have a clue what this thing is even called. It's going to look stupid, unlike the original which I absolutely love (the lettering looks a bit like a chalk board) and which basically took me the whole morning to set up.

I hate changes, hate them so much I try to avoid them because everything goes away. It just does, it goes away and never comes back again, EVER. I don't want that.

I have to fix this, have to, can't, can't even get my son to fix it and he's a computer genius and he doesn't know what it is, some bizarre unwanted default device. But why brown?????

p.s. I diddled around and added a gadget (who knows what that is, maybe something like a gidget, but I added one) which at least provides a backup for the title. Best I can do. It's embarrassing to have so little skill in these machines: I do what I can, but it's like learning Italian when you're 97 years old. The whole world changed right out from under me. My life is speeding along. . . Individual days often seem to drag, but months and years fly by, which is some sort of indication that I'm getting closer to the end.

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Chow, chow, chow!

Let's face it, January 2 isn't a very inspiring date. This ad is so out of date, it's new! Cat food commercials are so dull now: no more cha-chas or meow-meows. When did ad executives decide to dispense with such quirky charm?


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Close encounters of the meowy kind

. . . Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .  Meow!. . .

(bommmmm-bommmmm-bommmmm-bommmmmm)

. . . Meow!. . . Meow!. . . Meow! . . . Meow!. . .

(bommmmmm-bommmmmm-bommmm-bommmmm)


Nothing like those '80s ads!


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My romance with Harold Lloyd

SYNOPSIS: THE GLASS CHARACTER by Margaret Gunning

Author's note. I have written a novel about Harold Lloyd. I know you're not supposed to say this, but I think it's the best thing I've ever done and am likely to do, and I feel it deserves serious notice from an agent and/or a publisher. I believe this story has potential, not just as a novel but a  major motion picture. Does the name Jake Gyllenhaal mean anything to you?

I would like to introduce you to my third novel, The Glass Character, a story of obsessive love and ruthless ambition set in the heady days of the Jazz Age in the 1920s. This 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. He hid his leading man good looks under white makeup and his trademark black-framed spectacles. Nearly 100 years later, an iconic image of Lloyd remains in the popular imagination: a tiny figure holding on for dear life to the hands of a huge clock while the Model Ts chuff away 20 stories below.


With his unique combination of brilliant comedy and shy good looks, Lloyd had as many female followers as Gilbert or Barrymore. Sixteen-year-old Muriel Ashford, desperate to escape a suffocating life under her cruel father's thumb, one day hops a bus into the unknown, the Hollywood of her dreams. Though the underside of her idealistic vision is nasty and fiercely competitive, she quickly lands extra work because of her Pickford-esque ability to smile and cry at the same time.

When her idol Harold Lloyd walks on the set, her life falls into a dizzy whirl of confusion, attraction, and furious pursuit.Muriel tries on and sheds one identity after another: bit actress, waitress in a speakeasy, "girl reporter", script writer - while Lloyd almost literally dances in and out of her desperately lonely world, alternately seducing her and pushing her away.



While researching this book, I repeatedly watched every Lloyd movie I could get my hands on. I was astonished at his subtlety, acting prowess and adeptness at the art of the graceful pratfall. His movies are gaining new popularity on DVD (surprisingly, with women sighing over him on message boards everywhere!). The stories wear well and retain their freshness because of the Glass Character's earnest good nature and valiant, sometimes desperate attempts to surmount impossible challenges.

 

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

    It took me years to write, will you take a look

Order The Glass Character from:

Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA

Barnes & Noble

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-glass-character-margaret-gunning/1117863913?ean=9781927068885

Thistledown Press

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Chapters/Indigo
http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%

Watch these - they'll make you feel better

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/2666/RALSTON-PURINA--WEDDING

http://www.tvspots.tv/video/4556/RALSTON-PURINA--CHARTER-BOAT

These are some of the best ads ever, and you CAN'T find them on YouTube! I got these off an advertising site listed under Ralston Purina.

I miss Baxter! Meow, meow, meow, meow.

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Love from Daddies Toady boy

By age 16, "Toady boy" Harold Lloyd was already getting used to a few things: (a) he was not going to excel at everything, especially not English composition, (b) his father wasn't going to be around very much, and (c) he'd spend most of his life trying hard to be liked.

The fact that he mainly was liked didn't seem to stop him. Being an actor was part of that desperate drive for approval, and he pursued it with the same fever that informed all his major life activities (including the pursuit of women).

Lloyd was a fox. He was a doll. It wasn't just his looks, it was something about him, something unattainable. You never truly touched the core of him. He's generally lumped in with Chaplin and Buster Keaton, the Holy Three of silent comedy, but this inclusion goes a lot farther than the fact that all three had problems with the written word (in Lloyd's case, aggravated by the fact that the family moved every three months or so).

 

His intelligence was uneven, typical of the genius who burns fiercely in some areas, but sputters lamentably in others. I love these letters however, with their boyish, Tom Sawyer-ish syntax, blooming gift for storytelling, and endearing spelling errors which you might see in the writing of a nine-year-old.  I also like his reference to the peach of a girl he's "pretty much stuck on", and the reference to the turkey: "mabe you think he wasn't good". This kind of rural idiom is almost Mark Twain-ish, though Lloyd came from Middle America and had a slight cowboy twang rather than a drawl.

A gift can be a burden. Lloyd didn't drink or even smoke, perhaps afraid of what those habits had done to some of his cohorts (not to mention family members, including his wife, former co-star Mildred Davis). Instead he kept a blur of activity going, pursuing multiple hobbies after his screen career ended in the 30s. He took 3D pictures of naked women (no kidding, tens of thousands of them!). He studied micro-organisms in his basement. He painted abstracts, often staying up until 3 in the morning. He bred and showed dogs: not just any dogs, but Great Danes! And by now you're probably getting the picture.

If a man has a Christmas tree with 20,000 expensive Tiffany ornaments (which he kept up all year: imagine taking all that stuff down), if he regularly orders the entire catalogue of a record company and hooks up stereos in every room of the house (read: mansion), if he. . . well. He had to win every card or golf game, or he could be downright surly. He'd demand a rematch and kept playing until he won. He had to win. If you win every game, it isn't a game any more, or certainly not a competition.

He insisted his staff and friends call him Speedy. Kind of a weird nickname: perhaps Daddie gave it to him (he whom the family named Foxy!). I've seen video of his later years, which absolutely fascinates me for some reason, and he doesn't seem wired or pressed or urgent, except that he is. At one tribute, he stands on the stage at the front while people (Jack Lemmon and Steve Allen among them) fire questions at him. He sort of swaggers back and forth in an odd way, and he gestures openly with the hand that had almost been blown in half in a hideous accident in 1919. I think the swagger is disguised nervousness - all that insistence on winning surely must reveal an awful lot of insecurity - and perhaps a desire to bolt out of there. He also looks something like a naughty little kid, the kind who "only" has to go to the Principal's office three times.

It was said Harold Lloyd never grew up. Not completely. He was a boy in a man's body, a Peter Pan. His youthfulness could be delightful, but I'd guess it could also be a pain.

The quote at the beginning of this post is from a book by Tom Dardis called The Man on the Clock. It's one of the better Lloyd bios - not that there is any overabundance of them, and there's a lot I'd still like to know about his private life. But the end of the biography is disturbing.

This is what happened. His wife's brother, a doctor, paid him a visit in 1970. "Davis hadn't seen his brother-in-law for some time. He was shocked by Harold's altered appearance and immediately placed him in a hospital for further tests. His suspicions were correct. Harold's cancer had spread to his legs and chest. Dr. Davis recalls that the cancer raced through Harold's body with ferocious speed."

Further treatment did no good, and Harold was told that he had something like six months  left to live and that he needed to put his affairs in order. He took the news quietly, went upstairs and shut his bedroom door. Three weeks later he was dead.

Even the disease that claimed his life was accelerated, speedy, but then, that was his nature. He  had to win the game, you see, or else he just wouldn't play.

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