Blogger's note. Why do I spend so much time doing these things? Something to help the video down, I guess. Something to force me to concentrate so I won't sink ever deeper into depression and despair. What? I'm not happy all the time? Of course I am! It's just that I have this bad case of reality. Plus my Kicked post with the Cole Porter lyric (very mysteriously) got something like 400 views!
When I first heard this song in the movie Bowfinger, I was riveted. Then I forgot all about it. Then I saw Bowfinger again, but this time I was actually able to look it up and hear it again. I think it saved my life (at least for now).
You know, I'm always a little intimidated when the first thing I read on an unfamiliar web site is a detailed and very long list of rules. I was particularly astonished when this headspinningly complex list (below) appeared on a fan site about that rascally social rebel, that mascara-eyed Caribbean ne'er-do-well, that stereotype-shattering gender-bending Ed Wood of the modern cinema, Johnny Depp.
Johnny Depp is a fox- let's get that out of the way first - and ever since my then-teenage daughter told me breathlessly about a painfully-gorgeous young hunk on a show called 21 Jump Street, he has taken on interesting parts, the sort of roles that a Gary Oldman might choose (or a Danny DeVito or a whoever-is-a-subversive-character-but-not-especially-good-looking-or-over-the-height-of-four-feet-one-inch-tall). And he has made a go of it for a very long time, decades in fact, an unusual thing for a slightly off-the-wall leading man. And he has attracted female fans everywhere. Especially me. Do I have a favorite? I do. Though the movie Benny and Joon is not especially good in story line, and not much acting ever takes place, I love Depp's nearly-mute amalgam of Chaplin, Keaton and even my beloved Harold Lloyd as he swings from a rope past the window of his girl friend who is incarcerated in a mental institution. He's all in, as they say.
So I was kind of, well, ah, er, taken aback when I investigated the web site I recommended at the end of my post about automatons. When I finally looked at it in detail, I found this, this, this - edifice of rules, this - this boarding school, this itchy crinoline, this Little House on the Prairie bonnet of restriction! Compared to this, my Grade Four grammar teacher was a raving slut. Yes, I appreciate the fact that the comments have to be written in complete sentences. Most of my sentences are complete, and if they aren't, it's
I can see ruling out those lols and rotfl and grmlds and stuff like that. I hate them and fear that the language will become irreversibly eroded if they take over any more than they already have. I can see ruling out abusive language and blatant Depp sexual fantasies, although. . . Although. People can't express feelings about him, share dreams or fantasies, or post fan art or Johnny Depp coloring pages or anything like that. No good steamy gossip or "hearsay" is allowed, nor can you quote those scumbag entertainment sites. It's completely sexless, devoid of the giddy joy these Hollywood gods are meant to provoke in us mortals. This fan site is under such tight control, it only has something like 33 followers, all of whom seem deeply intimidated when they approach the Headmistress with their timid questions. I'm just sayin'. All passion seems to have been squashed down by one of those squashing-down things.
Once you've carefully read through ALL the rules, and don't you dare just skim them like you'd do on a surgical permission form or a divorce settlement or whatever, you discover there is in fact very little that you CAN do on this site. I wonder, then, why even have a Johnny Depp fan site, if indeed that's what it is? And what would Johnny Depp think about it? I don't think he'd read a web site, to tell the truth. I don't think he would read one about himself, in particular. He'd be out there jumping into his next role, which is what real actors do. He'd be out there shattering the dull tradition of good-looking actors mainly functioning as backdrops on wheels. But that's just me.
General Forum Rules and Guidelines (For detailed information, please see next post)
All posts must be written in English.
No chatspeak or text-message abbreviations.
Use proper punctuation, capitalization and spelling.
Do not post chat threads (threads that are not about Johnny Depp). The Morning Thread in the Daily Features forum is the place for off-topic conversation.
No obscene material is allowed on the Zone. No sexual fantasies and/or dreams about Johnny.
When posting material from the Zone onto other websites, please give credit to the Zone and the person who posted the material.
No flaming, spamming or soliciting. This includes, but is not limited to posts on the board, private messages or emails.
No troll posts—ones that are written to provoke arguments.
Avoid using profanity. This is not a community that curses. Please use the “censored” board icon instead.
Do not divulge, discuss, or complain about the contents of a private message from a staff member.
Do not post tabloid stories, unfounded rumors or gossip. Nothing from ContactMusic.com. No hearsay—information you “heard somewhere.” No “inside sources” from other websites.
Do not post items for sale or trade on the Zone. In certain cases, items to give away free are allowed to be posted. Please contact a staff member for approval before posting free items.
Don’t advertise other websites or chat rooms. You may use the website button in your profile or post the site in your signature as long as (1) you don’t promote the site in your posts and, (2) the site link you post does not violate any Zone standards.
Include SPOILER warnings if you are writing about an unreleased film. Please use the Spoiler button to hide the details.
(Blogger's note. I only posted the bare bones of these rules! Herein is the expanded, complete version. I note that much of what they post on this forum consists of Johnny Depp jigsaw puzzles. Fan fiction is allowed, but it can't have Johnny Depp in it. Oh dear.)
NOTE. I don't think it's fair to assume a fan site about Johnny Depp is going to have a Depp-like, devil-may-care disregard for social convention. But it just strikes me as strange, is all. It's so careful, careful, careful, and seems at odds with his rebellious and often very sexual persona. Oh, but we CAN allude to sex if it's done in an earthy, oh-so-English way ("Quite the ripper, is Johnny, eh, Honoria dear?" Assuming this site is English.)
Anyway, I didn't write any of this, I'm just using it as an example of internet curiosa. Oh my God, I think that's a run-on sentence!
From Wikipedia, under the entry of Automata: In 1562, the heir to the throne of Spain sustained a serious head wound that caused him fever and blindness. His father, the king, thought all was lost, until the heir was reportedly cured by the miraculous corpse of a Spanish monk that had been dead for 100 years.In his desperation, the king had allowed the monk's mummified body to be placed in bed with his sick son and he was so thankful when this dubious medical treatment actually worked that he commissioned a moving replica of the dead monk. You see? You see how wrong I was about automatons (or automata, if you want to get technical about it - just don't say automaTRON, as too many people on YouTube videos did - collectors!!). I thought they were a Victorian invention, maybe because of that scene in A Christmas Carol where Tiny Tim is staring into the store window as they take away the wooden boat he covets. But soon he is beaming again with his crooked English teeth, because of the jouncing clown that leers and laughs at him, which I just ASSUMED was an automaton.
Which maybe it was, but it was a pretty shitty one. If this monk-on-wheels (currently moldering away in the Smithsonian) is indeed dated back to 1562, there's more going on here than I thought. For one thing, I must have seriously underestimated human technology. (BTW, there's no sound on this video, probably to disguise the creaks, groans, whirrs and thuds these creepy homunculi produce). I can't begin to figure out how these things move, and when I see the inner workings of them they look like giant pocket watches ticking away. I don't see how else they could have stayed in motion, though, like a pocket watch, I assume they would have to be wound at intervals.
My readings about automata are fascinating, if pretty strange. The medieval monk-y business is nothing compared to this far-fetched Biblical tale of automatiana: According to Jewish legend, Solomon used his wisdom to design a throne with mechanical animals which hailed him as king when he ascended it; upon sitting down an eagle would place a crown upon his head, and a dove would bring him a Torah scroll. It's also said that when King Solomon stepped upon the throne, a mechanism was set in motion. As soon as he stepped upon the first step, a golden ox and a golden lion each stretched out one foot to support him and help him rise to the next step. On each side, the animals helped the King up until he was comfortably seated upon the throne.
I don't see how this could have happened, unless a time-traveller (perhaps Dr. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory) went back and built the thing for Solomon. I also wonder about that "legend" bit: legend usually means "something that maybe sort of should be true because we want it to be, but probably isn't". But this one takes the cake, and I am sure was written as a form of satire, perhaps to take a swipe at people's wide-eyed awe when watching these things. I can imagine them exclaiming about how lifelike they were, even if they were about as animated as that monk's mummified corpse.
In ancient China, a curious account of automata is found in the Lie Zi text, written in the 3rd century BC. Within it there is a description of a much earlier encounter between King Mu of Zhou (1023-957 BC) and a mechanical engineer known as Yan Shi, an 'artificer'. The latter proudly presented the king with a life-size, human-shaped figure of his mechanical handiwork (Wade-Giles spelling):
The king stared at the figure in astonishment. It walked with rapid strides, moving its head up and down, so that anyone would have taken it for a live human being. The artificer touched its chin, and it began singing, perfectly in tune. He touched its hand, and it began posturing, keeping perfect time...As the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies in attendance, whereupon the king became incensed and would have had Yen Shih [Yan Shi] executed on the spot had not the latter, in mortal fear, instantly taken the robot to pieces to let him see what it really was. And, indeed, it turned out to be only a construction of leather, wood, glue and lacquer, variously coloured white, black, red and blue. Examining it closely, the king found all the internal organs complete—liver, gall, heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys, stomach and intestines; and over these again, muscles, bones and limbs with their joints, skin, teeth and hair, all of them artificial...The king tried the effect of taking away the heart, and found that the mouth could no longer speak; he took away the liver and the eyes could no longer see; he took away the kidneys and the legs lost their power of locomotion. The king was delighted.
(I've barely looked at this site, but it looks promising, though I have no idea what it has to do with Johnny Depp. Except that maybe he's an automaton.)
This strange embalmed-looking automaton was once a form of Victorian entertainment, a technological marvel of its time. The sounds she makes are the best part.
What makes these hideously fascinating figures even more fascinating is that you just keep finding them. One YouTube video leads to twenty more. These were marvels of high technology during the Victorian-Edwardian era and were driven by a hand-cranked clockwork mechanism. I tried to find a quite long video shot by a tourist which featured a fascinating museum in Switzerland, mostly a collection of self-playing musical instruments. Can't find it now, but maybe it lingers somewhere in a backwash of YouTube-opia. I suppose people must collect these at great price, or else they appear only in museums and are seldom - what, played? Cranked? What ARE these things, anyway, and why do I have nightmares about them? The sounds they make are the worst, the creakings and bangings and muffled thuds. I mean, clowns are bad enough, aren't they, but half a clown made out of wires, rolling some sort of ball and sticking his tongue out at us, is the stuff of Tim Burton movies.
Quite a while ago I went through a doll phase - all right, an obsessive doll phase - all right, a completely obsessive doll phase that took me down some very dark corridors in my mind. I think the first significant genre I found was on a web site called Enchanted Doll (http://www.enchanteddoll.com/) which features a collection of exquisite and disturbing dolls by Russian-Canadian artist Marina Bychkova. Barely 30 years old (and living in my hometown of Vancouver), she has been creating these shockingly original alabaster dream-figures since her early 20s. It has certainly paid off: one of her dolls commanded the headspinning price of $27,000.00 on eBay, and the waiting list for purchase is now several years long.
What exactly is happening here? How to analyze this strange and spooky magic? You can't, and I won't try or I'll be here all morning. Most of Bychkova's dolls are in a category called BJD (and it doesn't mean what you think it does, so shut up or I'll smack your filthy mouth). It means ball-jointed dolls, whose arms and legs have the capability of moving in practically any direction. (Please don't count those Monster High monstrosities, whose arms, legs and hands have an alarming habit of falling off.)
The bodies seem identical, slim and virginal, sometimes elaborately tattooed, with realistic genitalia that freak a lot of people out. Some even have pubic hair and a visible clitoris, which is strange because the average woman's clitoris isn't visible. The slender figures and spookily lifelike skin of these dolls contrasts startlingly with their blatantly visible, marionette-like joints. The nudes pose innocently or provocatively, faces sad and sometimes frightened, eyes brimming with tears. Costumes can be incredibly intricate, and there is even some furniture, velvet sofas and the like. But this is hardly Barbie's House of Dreams (from which the name of this blog is derived, by the way. Some people don't get the satire at all and just think I'm stupid.)
There are recurring themes in the world of the Enchanted Doll. One seems to be subjugation and even a kind of captivity. Many of the dolls wear costumes that would feel something like a suit of armor, with enormous headgear (one even has a cathedral on top of her head!). Even the Scheherezade-like figures look like creatures kept under glass (which, during the many exhibits that draw wildly enthusiastic crowds, they actually are). I had a Bychkova fit a year or so ago - or was it two? - then decided I had had enough and had better leave it alone before I crossed some sort of disturbing threshhold. Enchanted doesn't mean what people think it does. It means living under a powerful and often unbreakable spell, a spell cast through words or even song (the "chant" part). Abricadabra, bibbidy-bobbidy-boo, and you're captivated (captured?) for life.
But when I got triggered off again recently, God knows how, I found a trove of a couple hundred images I had previously hoarded (most of which I ruthlessly weeded down to just 66 or so - not 666! - figuring the rest of them are already accessible on the internet, and will be for the forseeable future). I found only a few that were really new to me, including the heartbreaking one at the start of this post. If you really want to freak yourself out, pretend you can hear what this doll is saying. And there is the really disturbing one, the battered doll, which seems to cross the line even for a dollmaker who likes to push the envelope.
So do these dolls "make a statement" about female subjugation? I doubt if it's done consciously. If they do, it's in the sense of holding up a mirror, both to society and to ourselves. We prize the waxen beauty of girls kept under glass, and even find them sexually irresistable.
SOOOOOOOOO. . . we come to my Daily Special. Those few years back when I first became obsessed, I produced a bit of fan art. There is fan art on Bychkova's Enchanted Doll site, but it's done by actual amateur artists, not people like me who can't paint or draw. I play with my Enchanted Doll images like Colorforms, that primitive form of magnetic paper dolls from the '60s, which I was startled to see my granddaughters playing with the other day.
This is photoshop art, placing the dolls in settings that worked for me, stolen from the internet. The backgrounds are meant to be standard wallpaper, but there is nothing standard about these dolls. They call up disturbing feelings in people, from "Ewwwwwwww! Cree-py!", to "Who made these?" to "Where can I get one?"
In case you think these dolls represent harmless social satire, just look on Bychkova's site and watch some of her videos. They feature "playing with" the various nude dolls, placing them in postures that often seem frankly lesbian. In one, a doll has died and is being buried.
It all makes the mummified Barbie in the shoebox sarcophagus of my childhood seem much less strange.
CODA. I kept getting a funny feeling when I looked at this one:
It was perhaps the simplest one to compose, with only one figure in the extreme foreground. But it looked funny, kept changing somehow. It was like one of those "can you see two faces in this picture?" things that I can never figure out.
With a few magical photoshop changes, I was seeing a giant goose or duck or some other strange bird, a malevolent-looking one that seemed to be dominating the entire picture. It's what fairy tale enchantment can do to you.
The other night in bed, as I was trying to get through a book called - what WAS it called anyway? - The Sealed Letter or something like that, I began to realize how many weirdo words there were in it: words, in fact, that made me run to the dictionary or whatever-it-is I use now when I don't know a word.
These included:
rodomontade
calenture
spiantati
Ask me, and I'd say these aren't even English, nor do I remember what they mean. I have this theory - if you look up a word that is really unfamiliar, particularly from another language, the definition won't "stick". Whenever you see that word again, you won't remember what it means. It doesn't matter how many times you look it up.
Same with names, particularly names you can't pronounce.
I won't tell you what these 20 words mean because I have forgotten. PLEASE NOTE: they are all REAL words! Just wacked, cuz no one would ever really use them unless they were Dr. Sheldon Cooper of The Big Bang Theory. I will attempt to invent meanings that you might buy, or not. They aren't mixed in with real definitions because that's too much freaking work. Just tell me if my definitions sound at all convincing.
1. Erinaceous
You know that actress Erin Moran, from Happy Days? The one that played Tze-Tze or whatever, Richie's little sister? I saw a horrifyihng story on Inside Edition about how she is now living in a trailer park, or maybe her car. She looks a mess, like she's been out on the street for several decades. So I'd say erinacous describes someone who used to be on Happy Days but is no longer happy.
2. Lamprophony
Some lamprey are totally affected. I mean, they pretend they aren't eels at all! They'll never get away with it, so this term was invented to socially unmask them. Either that, or it means you go into the lighting section of Ikea and pick up the wrong box: Gardo rather than Blonkfiss.
3. Depone
Couple of variations on this. Say you've been watching Turner Classics for too long, and this movie comes on called Scarface. You just can't get this movie out of your head - Jimmy Cagney pushing that grapefruit into Mae Clarke's face, etc. After a disturbing movie such as this, you may need to "depone". Taking a shower helps.
This might also be the answer if someone asks somebody with no teeth, "I hear ringing. What could it be?"
4. Finnimbrun
OK, this is a Star Trek question. There's this episode called Shore Leave, one of my favorites in fact, in which everyone goes down to this planet for shore leave, but every thought they have turns real. So there's a Bengal tiger and a Don Juan and a Samurai sword and etc., etc., but then all of a sudden Kirk is thinking about his days at the Academy, and voila - Finnegan appears! Finnegan is this asshole who used to hassle Kirk big-time, and Kirk has always had a revenge fantasy which he now can carry out. Once he has thrashed the living daylights out of Finnegan, he sort of changes color from all that rolling on the ground. Spock, who has a mouthful of Vulcan pomegranate pate that he has dreamed about for years, comes upon the scene and observes, "Finnimbrun."
5. floccinaucinihilipilification
A very long sneeze after breathing up the entire contents of a feather pillow.
6. Inaniloquent
A description of someone who does NOT give birth to quintuplets through their anus.
7. Limerance
What happens when you're trying to get the juice to come out of one of those plastic limes, and you keep squeezing and squeezing, and then all of a sudden the juice spurts out and squirts you in the eye.
8. Mesonoxian
You know mesomorphs? What are they, anyway - nobody ever uses that term any more. Plus wouldn't an ox already be a mesomorph, rendering this term redundent? Or is this an Oxonian - you know, from one of those men's clubs, only he's so old he was born in the Mesozoic era. Or else somebody who used to go to Oxford, but kept a very messy room. Or a Mason - using the early spelling Meson that predominated during the Jeffersonian era - who is really obnoxious. Or is it a contraction, such as Tarzan might make, informing us, "Me son Oxian"? (And who is Oxian anyway? Tarzan's son, or his father?) Is this the man who invented Oxyclean? One can only conjecture.
9. Mungo
A fungo.
10. Nihilarian
Oh too easy!
11. Nudiustertian
A variety of nasturtium (again, spelling was fluid in the days when words were first invented) which somewhat resembles the form of those nude women in Roman statuary. Much prized by a man named Nudius Maximus, later hanged for being a Stertian.
12. Phenakism
Phenakism you, too!
13. Pronk
A bottle-opener made from the antlers of a pronghorn antelope.
14. Pulveratricious
Ensign Pulver in that movie, you know that one with Jack Lemmon - The Wackiest Ship in the Army or whatever - got into a lot of trouble and was sometimes described as meretricious. Or else atrocious, depending on the movie critic.
15. Rastaquouere One of those rasta guys, with the hair that looks like something you'd find in a kitty litter box, standing in a queue, but nobody knows how to spell queue anyway.
16. Scopperloit
"What's the name of that metal, you know, the metal they make the bottoms of pots with?"
"I'm not sure, Loit. Let me think. Wait, I think I have it. . . "
17. Selcouth
Uh, I'm really tired of this but there are twenty and I'm almost at the end of it, so. . .
18. Tyrotoxism
A guy in a Tyrolean hat who's just toxic.
19. Widdiful
I used to know this girl named Janet Widdifield. Theoretically, everything she
did was widdiful.
20. Zabernism
The precepts of a demented Hungarian Omo-endoblianostic named Yusef
Paprikash ("Uncle Adolf") Zabern. Later jailed for being a distant cousin of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee.
