Sunday, October 5, 2014
The hottest kiss in movie history!
YES: it's here in gif form, at long last, after seven years of waiting: my favorite scene from my absolute-favorite Harold Lloyd movie, Why Worry?
It's romantic and sexy enough that this is set on a tropical island where a revolution ferments. But it also has a kind of subconscious romance going on, with (ultimately) explosive results. Harold plays a hopeless hypochondriac, a self-absorbed fussbudget oblivious to the longing glances of his gorgeous nurse, Jobyna Ralston. That is. . . until the very end, when something erupts.
In typical wacky Lloydian fashion, he asks her indignantly, "Why didn't you tell me I love you?" But by this time, Jobyna knows he's in the bag. All she has to do is stand there and wait.
And here it is, one of the hottest, most impetuous kisses I've seen in silent film - or talkie film - or ANY film, for that matter. He doesn't just grab, he SEIZES her while she reacts with a kind of violent spasm, resists him (very weakly), then melts into his arms, even doing a subtle leg-pop that might have been a first in motion pictures. Up to this point, movie kisses were coy, taking place behind screens or during the fadeout, or followed by big happy-happy grins of boyish glee. What makes it even more exciting is the fact that all through the movie there are not-so-subtle hints that Harold is attracted to her, but refuses to let himself know it. She plays him like a fish for an hour and two minutes, then lands him like a pro.
But it gets even better. The camera pans away for a few seconds, as if to let your eyeballs cool off a bit, then comes back to the lovers, who are STILL KISSING. As I researched Harold's life, I came across several references to his affair with Ralson. This was their first movie together, meaning that we have a sort of Bogart and Bacall thing going, with sparks flying that show up onscreen. Her utter confidence in her charms, her adorable boy's clothing, her swivelling hips - well. Harold never was much of one for marital fidelity .We all have our frailties, and in this case resistance was futile.
I had no idea up to now that my gif program could handle an hour-long movie (in fact, it probably couldn't, and must have been upgraded by the site at some point) or that I could set it up "blind" without using the slider, but voila et voici! Now I want to gif the entire movie, and I might just try it, doing it in 10-second installments. There are many great moments in this film, and I still maintain that with its upside-down dynamics and general wackiness, it's the first screwball comedy ever made, the prototype for everything that came after.
And just when I'm tired of Harold Lloyd, or at least tired of the heartbreak of a book that probably isn't going anywhere, something like this comes along.
SPECIAL BONUS PHOTO! Only a few still photos exist of this amazing scene, likely "captures" taken directly from the film. This one is new to me, with Jobyna's right arm registering surprise and her leg-pop at its maximum. The more I look at this, the more eyebrow-raising it is, because it really does look as if their lower bodies are touching. Was Hal Roach asleep that day? Why doesn't anyone say anything about this? I'm sure I don't know.
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Dear sir or madam, will you read my book, take two (or three)
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:
http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001K7NGDA
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Should my books be free? Sure, Bub!
.jpg)
Mr. Smith offers us a snapshot of a continuously evolving process. No one knows what publishing will be like a year from now, or two, or ten. We are making it up as we go along.
I'm what the industry calls a midlist author, neither a bestselling star nor a miserable failure. I'm paid (though not very much) for the sf and crime novels and short stories I write, and my readership occupies a definable niche well away from the middle of the bell curve.
To see what the long tail might mean to me, nine months ago I began self-publishing my backlist -- books that had been trade-published but whose rights had reverted back to me -- as well as collections of short stories that had appeared in mass-market magazines. I found I could sell ten ebooks a day, which didn't make me rich but it did give me an income stream from past work that otherwise had no commercial value.
But then the sales began to trail off, despite all the Facebooking, blogging, and tweeting to which we midlisters are encouraged to devote daily time. So I cast around for another strategy and came across BookBub. It's a service that advertises ebook bargains (free or 99 cents) to more than a million subscribers.
I reduced the price of one of my sf titles to zero, and for $80 BookBub sent an email to 240,000 sf ebook readers. In 24 hours, some 15,000 people downloaded the free text off Amazon, Kobo, and Smashwords. Now I wait and see how many of those freebie-takers will come back and buy one of my $2.99 titles.
Even if only one or two per cent do so, I will earn hundreds of dollars from that $80 investment. If ten per cent come back for more, I'll take in thousands.
The thing is, I couldn't have done any of this two years ago, because BookBub didn't exist before January 2012. Now it's a serious player for self-publishers needing marketing support. And next year, or the year after, some bright spark will come up with yet another profitable way to help us authors make money off the long tail.
Because this revolution is just getting started.
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:
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
(WARNING: this is a real book, sold for real money. But not too much. I promise you!)
Visit Margaret's Amazon Author Page!
Friday, October 3, 2014
A horrible transformation
One of the rare intriguing things I've seen on Facebook lately. As usual, there was no credit given anywhere for who did the animation. I've looked all over the place. It's creepy and fascinating and all too true what happens to this pink little figure, ruthlessly mauled by calipers and scalpels and pliers and suction hoses. I just did a post on how "neurotic" women (women who are "reserved", worry about things, get angry, anxious, etc.) are more likely to get Alzheimer's. For some creepy reason, this feels like part of the same thing. Now, girls. Don't have a body like THAT. Have a body like THIS, and maybe your rate of acceptability will fall into line. It's all a way of containing us, because if we're not contained we turn into madwomen. We run amok.
Let's go, then.
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:
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Dementia: don't worry your pretty little head!
Neurotic women 'more likely to get Alzheimer's'
Helen Williams
PUBLISHED 02/10/2014 | 02:30
Anxious, jealous, moody or distressed middle aged women may be putting themselves at risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, according to a 38-year long study.
The claim, which appears in Neurology online, comes after scientists used personality and memory tests to track the health and welfare of 800 women who had an average age of 46. They found that 19pc of those women developed dementia in later life.
The tests also looked at their levels of neuroticism, whether they appeared to be shy and reserved, and if they were outgoing characters.
Neurology online is the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Study author Lena Johannsson of the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, said: "Most Alzheimer's research has been devoted to factors such as education, heart and blood risk factors, head trauma and family history.
"Personality may influence the individual's risk for dementia through its effect on behaviour, lifestyle or reactions to stress."
Neuroticism involves being easily distressed and can be linked to worrying, jealousy or moodiness. People who are neurotic are more likely to express anger, guilt, envy, anxiety or depression. The study also looked at women who appeared to be shy and reserved plus those who seemed to be outgoing.
The women were asked if their work, health or family situation had left them feeling stressed for at least a month. Stress might be spotted by feeling irritable, tense, nervous, fearful, anxious and not being able to sleep properly.
Responses were ranked from zero, where the women never felt stressed, to five, where they had constantly experienced stress in the last five years. Women who chose responses from three and five were considered to have distress.
Those women with the highest scores on the tests for neuroticism had double the risk of developing dementia compared to those who scored lowest on the tests, according to the study.
This foul little report is currently all over the internet, leading me to wonder: whatever happened to all the progress we supposedly made in the last 60 years?
Not only is all this crap completely skewed by the fact that MEN ARE NOT EVEN CONSIDERED (any more than they are ever shown wearing adult diapers on TV), the tone of it is just headspinning in its implications.
It reminds me of those old Miles Nervine ads, with women being encouraged to take sedatives rather than express their discontent, or the Bayer aspirin commercial with the irritable woman snapping, "Mother, please, I'd rather do it myself!" Surely a woman who allows herself to fuss and fret and get her head in a tizzy DESERVES to end up as a drooling idiot. She's bringing it on herself, isn't she? Getting herself all worked up over nothing. The implication is that you'd better put a lid on all that neurotic, needless fulminating, ladies, or guess what. You may just end up in the loony bin, the place of no return.
Under the medicalise in this probably-completely-meaningless study I smell the faint stink of punishment, the price for for deviating from certain expected norms. Good little women, cheerful little women, women who don't fuss, who "accept", who don't rock the boat by becoming pointlessly angry about things (rape, child abuse, the destruction of the planet) are far more likely to make good, cheerful little grandmothers! They'll keep their marbles, in other words. None of that awful drooling, incontinence, brain rot and puzzling resistence to artificial restraints.
Or could it be this way? Good little women are so conditioned to be bright and cheery and outgoing, to be happy all the day, to always smile, smile, smile (as so many women are rigidly trained to do) that when those pesky lines and wrinkles begin to show, there won't be any DIFFERENCE between the frozen zombie state of their emotional and spiritual submission to societal norms (smile!) and the frozen zombie state of Alzheimer's.
What an advantage! No one will even NOTICE they have dementia because they were Stepford Wives for an entire lifetime! The advantages of this can't be stressed enough. The transition will be ultra-smooth, from spotless kitchen to bright, sparkling ward.
Meantime, women who allow their feelings to show, who dare take time for themselves instead of constantly pleasing and hostessing the world, who aren't always cheerful but express anger and indignation and fear and lust and exultation and anxiety and depression and all the things human beings are known to feel BECAUSE THEY ARE HUMAN, will at least KNOW when they are being pursued by the forces of sexist medical oppression. They can put on their neurotic little running shoes and RUN RUN RUN from the suffocating norms that would keep them safely corralled in cheery 1950s-style servitude.
Don't be nice, girls. Don't smile unless you mean it. And when the threat comes, run. Run for your lives. Even if you do go barmy, at least you'll have the satisfaction of being who you really are.
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:
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Thursday, October 2, 2014
Time travel: theory or fact? Here's the proof
Could it be? Or have I been watching too much of the Big Bang Theory and Sheldon's endless theorizing about the possibility of time travel?
I have - maybe you've noticed - this little habit of making gifs out of YouTube videos - the shorter the better (which is why some of the gorgeous ones I made tonight wouldn't post - they were probably way too long). I found some stunning footage taken in London around 1900, in an era where the horse was the main mode of transportation, women wore corsets and skirts to the ground, and men were always properly attired in dark suits, overcoats and bowler hats (top hats for more formal occasions).
The uniformity of dress is one of the more remarkable aspects of these tiny visual time machines (along with the eerie three-dimensional quality of the ancient film: how did they ever achieve such an effect, or was it somehow pulled out of the depths of the antique silver nitrate by digital restoration and HD?). The aspect of the people, their facial expressions and formal bodily postures, reveal how very different these times were. Again and again I see women wearing a sort of uniform: a white blouse, often with puffy sleeves,which they called a shirtwaist, and a long dark skirt. The waist is so small that it's plain it didn't get that way on its own. Hair is piled atop the head with pins, and going without a hat is simply unthinkable.
Men are similarly hatted. Even poor blokes could afford an old battered one. A straw boater didn't cost you much, did it? To go about hatless - well, it was simply disrespectful, almost criminal. At the very least, it was suspicious.
As this three-second snippet of time on Blackfriars Bridge (first gif) endlessly repeats itself, we see carriages going by in a kind of dreamy haze, and people walking along the bridge - a woman all in black, a widow perhaps, walking in that stiff-spined way corseted women were forced to walk. Behind her is a couple so properly attired that they could have been cut out of a magazine.
But who's this out front? Who's this bloke, not very visible at first because he's walking beside the carriage (wagon?) - the one pulling his left hand out of his pocket and looking right at the camera (bloody sauce!)? He's wearing a fine enough coat, and he walks as if he owns the bridge, with a sort of swaggering stride.
Where's he going, then, that he should be walking (hatless!) with such an important air? Who does he think he is?
I'll tell you who *I* think he is.
He is not of his time.
He's from Somewhere Else. More specifically, he's from Now. Whether he projected himself into the past (meaning he's in two places at once: hey, quantum physics tells us it's a cinch, and the saints have been managing it for centuries) or just jumped, bodily, with his whole being, I KNOW this guy did not belong in Edwardian England striding, bareheaded and insouciant, across Blackfriars bloody Bridge back in 1896.
Looking more closely - and it's too bad I can't get a tight closeup of such a grainy figure - it may be that he isn't even wearing a tie. No one went without a tie unless they were in hospital - in a lunatic asylum, I mean. He just sort of flaps along without a care, so informal as to alarm the passersby.
If you plucked out any of the other figures and plunked them down in modern society, we'd think, oh, how lovely, there must be an Edwardian exhibition at the museum. Or something. If you plunked HIM down, no one would pay him any notice.
BECAUSE HE IS NOT OF HIS TIME.
He is not of 1896, he is of "now", which means that he knows things. Why do you think progress accelerated so wildly in the 20th century? Was it seeded by these blokes from the future (their future, I mean - this time shit is full of slippery concepts and paradox).
What shall we call him? Roger? How did he get back there? Is he from OUR future, when time travel really does exist? Why don't we see time travellers walking around in the here and now? The only ones I've ever met believe in conspiracy theories and wear hats made of tin foil.
Roger will ever remain a mystery, breezing along the bridge 117 years ago. Not one atom of him would remain - not in a normal time-line, I mean. In truth, Roger may be walking around right now. The other Roger, the parallel one? My brain aches - a drowsy numbness pains my sense - and it's definitely time to go to bed.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
It took me years to write, will you take a look
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Perez Hilton in the 16th century?
I've always loved Faure's Pavane, hadn't heard it in a long time, maybe even years. I knew there were two versions, the original orchestral setting and another with chorus. The first time I heard the less-often-performed choral version, I was shocked. Here were these two groups of singers, men and women, alternating lines, obviously singing of aching, longing, yearning, thwarted desire, mortality, grief, loss, and - well, that's what I thought for the longest time. It laid the piece bare, gave it a stunningly human voice and changed it for me forever.
There's something a little heavy and sad about the beauty of that chorus and the call-and-response structure of the song, reminding me of wilting roses and lilies in a hot room in which a pale dead girl lies in state. In her waterfall of black hair is a gardenia placed there by her lover, who sneaked into her bier at midnight in a last act of tender devotion before stabbing himself through the heart and (etc., etc., etc.).
Every once in a while I wondered what the words meant - but no I didn't, because I thought I knew already. "Observez la misere!" could only be "See, see what misery we are in!" "Mon coeur" was repeated and repeated: o, my heart! The way the sad elongated phrases were looped and draped upon the sombre, pensive melody was elegiac and even a bit funereal. Wasn't the meaning pretty obvious?
I also thought I knew the meaning of "pavane": surely it meant a threnody, a song of mourning. Ravel's Pavane for a Dead Princess seemed to be a potent example.
I have no idea why TODAY, when I was busy, when I had to make a milk-run trip in to Vancouver, when I spent the day kind of turning in circles and eating too much, why TODAY was the day I actively began to wonder what the lyrics meant. I wanted to do a particularly poetic post on it, illustrating those shining, tear-dripping, grief-stricken lines.
When I finally found a YouTube version I could live with, on perhaps the 19th or 20th try, I thought Wikipedia might give me some help on the meaning of the words. I was a little disappointed, nay, taken aback, to find out that the choral version was just an add-on to impress a girl:
Fauré composed the orchestral version at Le Vésinet in the summer of 1887.[5] He envisaged a purely orchestral composition, using modest forces, to be played at a series of light summer concerts conducted by Jules Danbé.[5] After Fauré opted to dedicate the work to his patron, Elisabeth, comtesse Greffulhe,[6] he felt compelled to stage a grander affair and at her recommendation he added an invisible chorus to accompany the orchestra (with additional allowance for dancers). The choral lyrics were based on some inconsequential verses, à la Verlaine, on the romantic helplessness of man, which had been contributed by the Countess's cousin, Robert de Montesquiou.[7]
Wiki was good enough to provide the French version of the lyrics, which looked so peculiar that at first I thought they must have made a mistake:
C'est Lindor, c'est Tircis et c'est tous nos vainqueurs!
C'est Myrtille, c'est Lydé! Les reines de nos coeurs!
Comme ils sont provocants! Comme ils sont fiers toujours!
Comme on ose régner sur nos sorts et nos jours!
Faites attention! Observez la mesure!
Ô la mortelle injure! La cadence est moins lente!
Et la chute plus sûre! Nous rabattrons bien leur caquets!
Nous serons bientôt leurs laquais!
Qu'ils sont laids! Chers minois!
Qu'ils sont fols! (Airs coquets!)
Et c'est toujours de même, et c'est ainsi toujours!
On s'adore! On se hait! On maudit ses amours!
Adieu Myrtille, Eglé, Chloé, démons moqueurs!
Adieu donc et bons jours aux tyrans de nos coeurs!
Et bons jours!
So where was all that grief, l'angoisse, wilting flowers, etc.? This just sounded like a bunch of people babbling, even gossiping. "Observez la mesure" merely meant "keep time", as in following an elaborate dance step. The pavane, far from being a song of mourning, turned out to be a formal, courtly dance from the 1500s:
The pavane, pavan, paven, pavin, pavian, pavine, or pavyn
(It. pavana, padovana; Ger. Paduana) is a slow processional dance common in Europe during the 16th century (Renaissance).
They couldn't even figure out how to spell it!
But it got even worse than that when I found the English translation.
- It’s Lindor! it’s Tircis!
It’s Myrtil! it’s Lydé! the queens of our hearts!
How provocative they are,
how forever proud!
How they dare reign over our destinies
and our lives!
Watch out! Keep to the measure!
O the mortal injury!
The cadence is not so slow!
And the fall more certain!
We’ll tone down their chatter!
Soon we’ll be their lackeys!
How ugly they are! Sweet faces!
How madcap they are! Coquettish airs!
And it’s always the same! And will be so
always!
They adore one another! They hate one another!
They curse their loves!
Farewell, Myrtil! Eglé! Chloe! Mocking demons!
Farewell and good days
to the tyrants of our hearts!
—Robert de Montesquiou-Fezensac
(1855–1921)
Who's Lindor? Who's Tircis? Why this list of meaningless-sounding names? It begins to resemble some Perez Hilton screed about the latest tits-and-ass starlet, But it sounded so wonderful! It sighs, it even seethes a little. Bosoms heave, the men and women sing as across a huge gulf, the vast abyss separating male and female, etc. etc. But it's nothing like that at all.
Faure had a great tune and just needed a few verses; this Montesq-whatever knocked them out for a price. All calculated to please his "patron" the Countess, and if he wasn't boinking her I don't know who was, because this is just going to too much trouble for someone you're NOT boinking. And Faure was no fool - he knew full well that no one listens to the words anyway.
Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
Thistledown Press
Who's Lindor? Who's Tircis? Why this list of meaningless-sounding names? It begins to resemble some Perez Hilton screed about the latest tits-and-ass starlet, But it sounded so wonderful! It sighs, it even seethes a little. Bosoms heave, the men and women sing as across a huge gulf, the vast abyss separating male and female, etc. etc. But it's nothing like that at all.
Faure had a great tune and just needed a few verses; this Montesq-whatever knocked them out for a price. All calculated to please his "patron" the Countess, and if he wasn't boinking her I don't know who was, because this is just going to too much trouble for someone you're NOT boinking. And Faure was no fool - he knew full well that no one listens to the words anyway.
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:
Barnes & Noble
Thistledown Press
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)