Tuesday, May 8, 2012

Fifty Shades of Grey: yearbook photos



I was going to title this post Daydream Believer, because this-here lovely young lady is a Homecoming Queen from that succulent year, 1966.

It's a strange coincidence that my fall-down-and-worship slavish addiction, Mad Men, is right now in the midst of that august (actually it's October) year. A year when the whole world seemed to be balanced on the point of a pin.





And here are the runners-up, complete with poofy hairdos and hopeful expressions. The Marlo Thomas look vies with the '60s beehive and side-flip that will all-too-soon give way to two curtains hanging sullenly on either side of the face.





OK, here's the backstory: it all had to do with painting. When you paint, every century or so, you generally repaint the closets, which means a major purge. Which yielded what seemed like dozens of yearbooks from junior/high school. Most of these belonged to my kids, and we spent a hilarious evening reading the scrawled comments out loud to each other. My son's wife Crystal kept bursting into whoops of laughter so loud it raised the roof (that is, until she saw a spider, jumped straight up in the air and disappeared upstairs for the rest of the evening).

But the choicest cut was this one. Turns out my husband Bill, now 65, kept one yearbook from all his university-hopping days: the Brown and Gold from the University of Manitoba, circa 1966. That year when things were still just barely teetering on the side of innocence.




That skateboarding fiend above is mysteriously captioned ATHLETIC PROGRAM. The skateboard looks to be a handmade job cobbled together using rollerskates and  a piece of plywood.

Here we have an even more enigmatic mystery: the Rifle Club, consisting of two pistol-packin' mamas. No boys in sight (so to speak), but is it any wonder?

Some clubs, we noticed, had only one member, but we could find no pictures. Too excruciating, I guess. But the elections would be fast.




Ah, 1966, when accountancy was still Not Boring!




Hey look, everybody. . . it's Robert Vaughn!




The Rhodes Scholar. No one smiles in these things. Where is he now, I wonder? He might be dead. Dear God! Most of my high school teachers must be dead by now, and all of my grade school teachers. How did that happen?





One of the racier, lovelier photos in the collection, found in "candid shots" which look anything but candid. "C'mon, Peggy Sue. . . lie on your stomach." Come to think of it, that IS pretty racy.




And here he is, MY Rhodes scholar, looking deadly earnest, complete with Big Bang Theory glasses. (When I met him in 1972, they were held together with tape.) I had a thing about science nerds even then, though I have to admit that in 1966 I was only 12 years old.

In 1967, I heard the word "hippie" for the first time, but wasn't sure what it meant. In 1968, I first heard the sound track to the musical Hair and began to get stoned to Donovan records ("First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is. . . ").

By 1969, Woodstock exploded, the unwitting pinnacle of that magical, idealistic time which all too quickly plummeted into the dirty rotten shame of Altamont.




But the kid from Manitoba grew up, and lived through all the rich and rough and bumpy times since then. As did we all.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

I hate Facebook.





This post has been stewing around in my brain for months now, and I still don’t know if I’m ready to write it.  Or, perhaps, to be ostracized for it.

For me, Facebook was a matter of “should”. Hell, I’m a writer, aren’t I? I want to communicate, don’t I? I want to promote (and promote, and promote) my next book, don’t I? What’s the matter with me, anyway?


So I stepped, reluctantly, across the barbed-wire threshhold into an atmosphere that reminded me, most alarmingly, of the playground.




Were you ever bullied? Of course not! You wouldn’t be reading this at all unless you’re already on Facebook (and curious as to why anyone would crucify themselves by daring to say they hate it). And if you’re on Facebook, you have at least 1500 “friends” and have always been popular and have never been bullied and and and (as William Shatner once so eloquently put it) “blah blah blah!”


When I stumbled into this thing I was a stranger in a strange land. Though I had managed over the years to acclimatize myself to basic computer skills like email and blogging and setting up a web site, and all that sort of thing, I didn’t have a clue how to do Facebook and soon found that there were no instructions. It was that same old bitter dynamic that nearly destroyed me in my youth: I had gotten to the party far too late, everyone knew each other already, and they most certainly did not want ME around to clutter up their nice little tight-knit in-group.




When I finally figured out how to post comments, I gingerly reached out for help with the system and got exactly no response. There was this dense, embarrassed silence. It felt like I had just said, “hey, someone help me! I don’t know how to use the bathroom.”


I felt like an incontinent old lady stumbling around in the dark.


Soon, I was alarmed to learn that most of my contacts – feeble in number, at the start – had at least 300 “friends” (300 being the starting point for most people), and some had well over 1000. Some panic light came on in my solar plexus and began to blink, blink, blink.


I was bullied – a lot – in school and outside of it. This was before bullying came out of the shame closet and teen suicide attempts inspired compassion instead of ever-more-elaborate and ruthless forms of ostracism. I still can’t really figure it out: I didn’t have green skin, I didn’t have two heads. Believe it or not, I did have friends, and these friends tended to be loyal and close. In some cases, I call them friends still (though not on Facebook).


So I wasn’t some piece of shit meandering along with a target painted on my forehead (but you’d never know it from the way I was treated). I was persecuted – there’s no other word for it. I was more than unpopular, I wasn’t even on the screen. So trying to find my way on Facebook stirred up some of the worst feelings from the bottom of the sludge barrel. A thousand friends? Would I meet that many people in a lifetime?



Dumb, stupid, incontinent old lady me! These weren’t friends. These were, well, I don’t know what they were. I couldn’t figure it out. When I tried to answer the question (or statement) “what’s on your mind today”, and if my statement had any sense of need or desire for help or any sort of vulnerability in it at all, I was completely ignored. I couldn’t say anything remotely critical  or I was “corrected”. Get back in line, fruitcake!


Gradually this changed as I realized I had to “cultivate” these thousand-or-so friends, that they likely wouldn’t just fly into my nest spontaneously. And a funny thing happened. From that point on, if I ever said anything at all or even commented on some else’s “anything”, I was generally sniped at.


I was made to feel “geez, don’t you even know how things work around here?” – as if I didn’t already feel that way! In one case I tried to explain that I wanted to be careful who I took on as a “friend” and I would “unfriend” anyone who made me uncomfortable for any reason. Someone answered something like “wtf lady give them three tries then they’re out why don’t u lol?” Another said “I just let in anyone. Any old person who comes along, in the parking lot, out in the alley, hehheheheh.” The feeling was, OF COURSE you have to be careful, you fucking idiot, why are you making such a retarded statement anyway? Or else it meant, what? You have discernment? This isn’t about quality. It’s about volume.


You say it isn’t? A thousand friends. Two thousand? That’s volume.


I’m reading more and more articles now about how Facebook is making us all much more lonely in a society where loneliness is already epidemic. Every time I force myself to go on Facebook I feel palpably pushed away. It isn’t fun. Since almost all my contacts are in the writing and publishing field, 95% of what I read is  self-promotion, done in a breezy “oh by the way” style that provides a nice pink floral veneer. Call it the Facebook wallpaper scheme.

Shockingly, this even seems to apply to writers who feel they're renegades and outside the mainstream and standing up to the status quo.





Yes, I’m a writer too and the whole reason I got coerced into this thing is so that I can promote my next novel, which is written but not exactly published yet. Maybe this is my incontinent-old-lady mentality rearing up again, but I was taught NEVER to refer to my accomplishments in the writing field. You’d have to pry it out of me with forceps that I ever won an award, or was shortlisted (that weird sister to success that provides a sort of shadow-gratification for the up-and-coming). You’d have to turn me upside down and shake me to make me admit I had ever had a positive review.  I was a Canadian, and this was the proper thing to do. Anything else was inexcusable arrogance and rudeness and would alienate everyone for sure.




Now it has been turned inside-out and upside-down, and EVERY occasion, every launch, every luncheon, every book-signing-where-one-person-shows-up-because-they-think-it’s-a-different-book, probably about fishing, is now a chance to turn clownish cartwheels and wag your stumpy little Wheaten Terrier tail for attention.


I’m sorry, folks, but I am just so sick of this.


Yes! I see that this is the information age. Yes! I see that selling a book (nobody knows this better than me, believe me) is now so difficult that one must become a shameless self-promoter to get anywhere at all.



Yes. I get it.


But I have yet to see ANYONE on Facebook really express any feelings about anything except a sort of blandified, self-involved glee. If someone is feeling devastating grief, they stick a happy face over it. Though it was probably designed for it, it is NOT a forum for any sort of meaningful communication between human beings.


But there are people who spend many hours a day “on” Facebook. Lonely?  Why would we be that?


I haven’t cancelled my account just yet, and I don’t know why except I still have a thread of hope that my book will find a home. I believe it is now a requirement, unless you want to be viewed as a crackpot or a Luddite. And I am aware that Facebook is so popular now that you do not dare criticize it unless you work for the New York Times or something. Or the Atlantic Monthly. So what will I do if something does happen? Must I treat Facebook like the vast garbled bulletin board (or billboard, or flashing neon sign) of ego that it truly is, get in line, and say my say? Will I have to learn to cartwheel?




My immediate concern is that I will be crucified for daring to say what I really think about all this. It’s deeply taboo to say you hate Facebook. We. All. Love. It. Don’t we? You don’t? Just get off it, then. Shut up and go away. There goes freedom of speech – yet another casuality of the blandly conformist “we-think” that would make George Orwell turn over in his grave.






 


Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book
    It took me years to write, will you take a look


Thursday, May 3, 2012

The first time I died

Epitaph




The first time I died, I walked my ways;
I followed the file of limping days.





I held me tall, with my head flung up,
But I dared not look on the new moon's cup.




I dared not look on the sweet young rain,
And between my ribs was a gleaming pain.




















The next time I died, they laid me deep.
They spoke worn words to hallow my sleep.









They tossed me petals, they wreathed me fern,
They weighted me down with a marble urn.









And I lie here warm, and I lie here dry,
And watch the worms slip by, slip by.




Sunday, April 29, 2012

Housewife porn: sluts in the city!




The other day I'd had enough - just had enough - just had ENOUGH of that crappy new trilogy called Fifty Shades of Grey that is burning up the bestseller list. I don't need to read it to know that it is sleaze, soft-core porn, and dangerously sick in its attitude toward exploiting women through male violence and female masochism (which doesn't exactly help the cause of battered women, does it?). Hey, don't worry about tying up women and beating them: they like it, they like it! They're even forming clubs to re-enact some of the slimiest scenes because - no, not because it turns them on but because "everyone else is doing it".

I was also incensed - still am - that a book like that (excuse me, a trilogy like that - some publisher somewhere saw the first volume and said, "More, more, more!", so she squeezed out more like some sort of awful polluted Dairy Queen soft-serve) could tear up the charts when "real" writing either languishes at the bottom of a very wide pyramid, or just isn't published at all.




Mine fits into the last category, and there are times I feel almost suicidal about it. But never mind all that. It's all over, you see. Because then I found this video!

I LOVE this video. It is totally lame and does not pretend to be anything else. People have called it the worst music video ever made, but that's debatable because I've seen that other one, Hot Problems, which is merely bad.

But there is a cleverness in Friday's imagery, a very funny and inspired riffing on the banal stereotypes of REAL music videos. There's also an innocence there, something like an Archie comic, with her friends leaping around in the background. It looks like everybody had a blast making this thing, and their joy is contagious.




And much needed. I had just about run out of joy.


I don't know much about this Rebecca Black except that she had a lot of moxie to do this, and it has brought her considerable fame. Not only that, in spite of everyone calling it the worst video ever, it isn't at all: Friday was made quite professionally and doesn't meander around like something two girlfriends might throw together after a pot party. It was well thought out in advance using some very funny images that everyone will recognize. She obviously had some funding to do this, which means someone must have believed in her.


This kind of notoriety and fame I don't resent, because, like old guys picking up pop cans and cashing them in, she is actually DOING something rather than sitting on the street corner showing her tits.







People think this is stupid? Then how stupid are they not to "get" it? Plenty stupid. I saw a so-called prank video the other day where someone's "boy friend" dressed up like a burglar and ambushed three or four girls as they came in the door of their dorm or whatever. They all "eeeeeeeek"-ed, jumped up and down rapidly flapping their hands, then ran out the door waving their arms back and forth, eeeeeeek-ing all the way down the sidewalk until the guy said something like "Hey! It's only me!" "Ohhhhhhhh."


Staged, staged, staged, staged, staged: yet people unanimously said, "Oh, what a devil he is to upset his girl friend like that! Will she ever forgive him?" I suppose her "forgiveness" statement will go viral now. Jesus God, why are people so goddamn STUPID???


Why is intelligence never rewarded any more? What has happened to us? Now more than ever, mediocrity is the norm. Sadomasochistic novels are nothing but a form of literary prostitution. So there. But they are as wildly popular today as ever (smut has always been with us), except it's right out in the open now and celebrated as "cool" (and if it's popular, hey, it must be good for us, eh? Like the Third Reich.)

Anyway. I like Rebecca Black because she is smart and funny and has her finger on the pulse. She may say this video is straight and not a satire, but it works on several levels. She too is an example of "going viral", a bizarre new phenomenon. If I could, I'd go viral even if I had to ingest some sort of virus to do it.


That's because my stuff is good, and nobody gives a good goddamn.








Friday, Friday! I remember Friday. I STILL like Friday, even though my husband is retired now and every day seems to blend into every other day. As a kid I had a secret name for it: "free, frosty Friday". Don't know where I got it, but as Rebecca Black will tell you, Friday is frosty. . . and it's free.




(By the way, I deleted yesterday's furious post. I felt like I was giving that horrible so-called trilogy too much space, and probably even promoting it, inspiring even more people to rush out and buy or download it. Dirt sells, every time. I was also letting it rent space in my head, so I evicted it to the best of my ability, and there it will stay, out on the street corner showing its tits.)







Friday, April 27, 2012

Pennies on a track



This was the only video of this song that was remotely tolerable: most of them matched each line with Readers Digest/Ideals Magazine exactitude. "I love little baby ducks" (show the little baby ducks!), "old pickup trucks" (show the old pickup trucks!), etc. etc. to the point of agony.

I think this version maybe dicks around with the lyrics a little - Tom T. Hall, incredibly, was not allowed to say he loved grass on certain Southern radio stations, though he could love hay with impugnity. Make sense to you? So he changed it to "old TV shows, and snow." Ye gods.

Anyway, not to go line-by-line because I can't take it, I've scared up a few images that
"I. . . love. . .", and which seem to suit.

I Love

I love little baby ducks, old pick-up trucks, slow-moving trains, and rain
I love little country streams, sleep without dreams, Sunday school in May,
And hay
And I love you too

I love leaves in the wind, pictures of my friends, birds of the world, and squirrels
I love coffee in a cup, little fuzzy pups, bourbon in a glass, and grass
And I love you too

I love honest open smiles, kisses from a child, tomatoes on the vine, and onions
I love winners when they cry, losers when they try, music when it’s good, and life
And I love you too   



I love. . .little water babies when they swim like ducks




'n little boys 'n trucks. . .


 (And this truck too, it's cool.)



I love pennies on a track




and trains movin' slow when
 you have noplace to go.



I love guys laughing in bars, looking up at the stars




(. . . but I wish a squirrel'd do this to me.)




I love chickens when they squawk, people when they walk





(like this?)




and toke up and laugh and talk.




I love. . . bears in a stream




weird owls




and anything green.




I love gigantic black pups. Paper Starbucks cups.




Grimm's fairy tales





And life.







AND

I

LOVE

YOU

TOO.