ALAN: You should've seen that hippie guy last night at Phil's!
BRAD: What a pussy!
ALAN: He was all "Wah, wah, wah," we kicked his ASS.
JOE: I wish I'd gone to Phil's.
BRAD: Remember that dude with the beer?
JOE: Yeah, we're like, "You wanna fight?" BAM!
BRAD: That was great.
JOE: And this morning, that guy yelling at me about his shirt.
BRAD: What a pussy!
JOE: I was like "Yeah, you want your shirt?" BAM!
{Cel phone rings}
JOE: That's my landlord again.
ALAN: Put it on speakerphone.
LANDLORD: Hello, Joe?
JOE: Dude! What's up!
LANDLORD: I've been trying to get ahold of you, Joe.
JOE: Hey! I'm a dude, I don't...like...call up dudes and just say "Howya doin'?"
LANDLORD: You're in big trouble unless you come over here today and give me the money you owe me.
JOE: Don't make me hate you, buddy. We'll talk on Monday or something.
LANDLORD: Hate you? Joe, we're coming AFTER you.
JOE: Ha! You'll have to find me first!
LANDLORD: That won't be any problem. We'll find you, we'll take you to court, we'll f*ck you up for damages, we'll f*ck up your credit rating...it's easy stuff, Joe. We do it all the time.
JOE: You don't have my signature on NOTHIN', bro.
LANDLORD: We've got the lease.
JOE: You ain't got NOTHIN', bro! See ya!
{Hangs up}
ALAN: Dude, you're f*cked.
JOE: Really?
ALAN: You signed a f*ckin' LEASE.
JOE: Yeah...
ALAN: He takes you to court, you're SCREWED.
BRAD: You better go over there right now and pay him.
JOE: Yeah.
{Pause}
JOE: I wish I could just BEAT HIM UP.
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Showing posts with label people. Show all posts
Saturday, September 10, 2011
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Cooverthon: "John's Wife"
Robert Coover's novels tend to come in one of two formats: either they're teeny-tiny books with huge text and wide margins (glorified short stories), or they're larger books with minuscule text, non-existent margins, and the smallest possible space between the lines (deceptively epic tomes). The fact that Coover tends to have a high "bulky paragraph" to "terse dialog" ratio makes the latter type of book particularly long.
"John's Wife" (1996) is ENTIRELY composed of bulky paragraphs. It never settles down and it never lets you rest. Its 420 pages feel like twice that many, and in a more sensibly formatted book they probably would be. But there's so much invention in it that you'll never feel the drag...unless you become hopelessly lost, which is possible, especially the first time through.
First, the structure: "John's Wife" is a book-length string of big paragraphs. Each paragraph focuses on a particular character, and the story flows between paragraphs as the characters encounter each other, think about each other, or when the plot naturally moves in that direction. These paragraphs come in unbroken sections about sixty pages long, but the separations between these sections -- a simple double space -- doesn't seem to serve any purpose. The story is one shifting character focus from page 1 to page 423.
These characters all live in a quaint midwestern American town, and -- as you'd expect in a small town -- they all have some connection with each other: parents, children, spouses, workmates, golfing buddies, drinking partners, and the professionals they deal with (a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, the newspaper editor, the town photographer, etc.)
The town's biggest booster is John, a hedonistic businessman, son of one of the founding fathers, frat boy, continually shaping the town by buying up and then over-developing property for maximum profit. John is the strongest motivating force in the town...
...with the exception of his wife. She's nameless, simply "John's Wife." The center of everything. Beloved by everyone. Half the men in town are hopelessly in love with her, and most of the women admire and respect her. Considering the book has about fifty major characters -- explored serially and organically as the book goes on -- there's a lot of "John's Wife worship" in those pages.
The curious thing is that John's Wife is the only notable character who is -- quite pointedly -- never explored. Everybody talks about her but she never earns a paragraph for herself. We learn about every other character's hopes, dreams, activities, and darkest secrets...but not her. She appears and (literally) disappears, setting things in action and then wandering into another paragraph to motivate somebody else. But she's the only person in town whose head we never get a look inside.*
What's "John's Wife" about? It's about everything that the characters care for: love, sex, power, life, hatred, art, philosophy, and survival. It's about the things that motivate these townie characters: infatuation for John's Wife, lust for revenge, craving for affection, dark regrets which cannot be forgotten. The novel is, in short, about the deep-down things that obsess us.
The first section of the book is an amazing study of how people motivate themselves to get through the day -- the sort of thing Coover wrote so truthfully about in "The Origin of the Brunists" (1966). We learn how all these characters know each other, the common touchstones they share (John's stag party in particular), and their own personal foibles which roar around in their brains: housewife Veronica, for example, is unable to forget the fetus she aborted when she was a teenager, and unable to forgive the man who fathered the child. Marge is driven by her need to finally win a contest -- any contest -- against John. Ellsworth (the newspaper man) is using his unwritten novel to try to understand the relationship between artists, models, and audiences. Poor teenage Jennifer has a hopeless crush on John's business partner and fantasizes about running away with him.
This is fascinating enough, but after 160 pages the town begins to unravel. It begins with the strange behaviour of John's Wife herself: sometimes she disappears when people aren't looking at her, leaving nothing but her car (or her clothes) behind. Latent murderers begin to make all-too-serious designs on the lives of others. Ellsworth is terrified to discover a new character lurking in his book's pages, and Stu's dead wife -- who he killed years ago -- reappears as a ghastly and blazing-eyed ghost. Meanwhile Pauline -- the novel's most tragic character -- is growing to a surprising size in the photographer's studio...
I don't want to tell you any more because part of the book's joy is the shock at every new twist: the way the yearnings and regrets of these otherwise normal characters become hideous reality as the book goes on. Eventually time and geography begin to collapse, and as an all-too-familiar monster finds herself under siege in the middle of Settler's woods, the town goes absolutely bonkers. Events move to their natural end in a way that only Coover could manage. Fire, disaster, storm, accident, death, destruction. And a huge part of the forest soaked with urine.
The book ends with all of the characters newly matured...the town has healed and so have the people who live there. They're not better than they were -- some of them are in a new kind of private hell -- but everybody seems to know a bit more about themselves. John continues to buy and renovate property, John's Wife returns and brings everything back to a state of normality, and the impossible events of the previous (day? week? month?) recede into the legends and tall tales that make a town unique.
"John's Wife" is a non-stop burst of creativity: characters, events, collisions, distortions, it never ends, and -- now that I've read it a second time and I have the characters straight in my head -- I think it's Robert Coover's masterpiece. It has the best of his realistic writing, and also the best of his impossible stuff, with both extremes perfectly meshed in an utterly flawless structure.
That said, it's a damn frustrating book, especially the first time through. It's easy to mix characters up and forget where they've been, dulling the ironic beauty of events seen through dozens of different eyes. It's also easy to lose sight of the subtle and beautiful surprises that are lost in the surrounding bombast: the really complex and unusual stories of Corny and Beans, for example; the former one of the most rich characters in the book, and the latter a strange and significant footnote that the casual reader will miss altogether.
Common Coover touches in the book: the warping of time and geography, lots of different spouses screwing around on each other, toilets referred to as "stools," dense meditations on art and philosophy (though nicely spaced out this time), a comical cowboy character, women with big butts, metaphoric darkness/blindness, lewd puns, and outrageous pantomime.
* With the exclusion of the mysterious "Sassy Buns" who wreaks male havoc during the extended climax of the book, and who may be a sort of "Anti-John's Wife." Or something.
Thursday, August 04, 2011
Three Arrivals, Always in the Morning (Part Two)
The shopping mall is only open because winter shelters require arbitrary schedules. Now, before 9am, it entertains the elderly and the workers themselves. Bored security guards fold their arms over their windbreakers and lean on empty kiosks, talking about hockey. There are beautiful young women everywhere, dressed immaculately, with elaborate hairdos and high-heeled footwear. Their faces are closed and inwardly-turned, they carry bagged breakfasts in as-yet functional hands.
Only the lunch ladies are eternal, always halfway between exhaustion and crisis, constantly patrolling the tables in this cavern which is spotless, sad, echoing, and almost empty.
I barely exist here. The lights serve no purpose but to guide the labour and to keep the elderly from falling down. The lights are not meant for me, they're brilliant point-of-purchase spotlights and soft pink gels that stupidly reach out to the very people who work there. The music sounds strange in a maze of caverns without enough moving bodies, like it's pushing hard to enter the world. No patrons, just the employees, who don't know each other well enough. They walk around, killing time, still wearing their winter jackets, from store to coffee shop and back again.
But for the elderly, this is their adult education center. They are friendly and familiar with each other. At tables they sit side-by-side, their eyelines parallel in the manner of old married couples who know each other so well. They've brought newspapers and they feel safe leaving their belongings behind during their frequent trips to the bathroom. They support each other and they have nothing to steal except porkpie hats and keyrings and pictures of the grandchildren that are too small for blunt fingers to handle.
A painted woman on the window has vibrant betty-bangs and she's promising to reveal a secret. Even at the best of times that secret would be elusive, but now her presence is taunting and irritating, signaling "Come in!" beside a door that's been locked all night.
Only the lunch ladies are eternal, always halfway between exhaustion and crisis, constantly patrolling the tables in this cavern which is spotless, sad, echoing, and almost empty.
I barely exist here. The lights serve no purpose but to guide the labour and to keep the elderly from falling down. The lights are not meant for me, they're brilliant point-of-purchase spotlights and soft pink gels that stupidly reach out to the very people who work there. The music sounds strange in a maze of caverns without enough moving bodies, like it's pushing hard to enter the world. No patrons, just the employees, who don't know each other well enough. They walk around, killing time, still wearing their winter jackets, from store to coffee shop and back again.
But for the elderly, this is their adult education center. They are friendly and familiar with each other. At tables they sit side-by-side, their eyelines parallel in the manner of old married couples who know each other so well. They've brought newspapers and they feel safe leaving their belongings behind during their frequent trips to the bathroom. They support each other and they have nothing to steal except porkpie hats and keyrings and pictures of the grandchildren that are too small for blunt fingers to handle.
A painted woman on the window has vibrant betty-bangs and she's promising to reveal a secret. Even at the best of times that secret would be elusive, but now her presence is taunting and irritating, signaling "Come in!" beside a door that's been locked all night.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Don't Be a Farty Bugger When You Get Old
I rarely throw down a book in disgust, but after twenty pages of "You Had To Be There" by Robert Collins I feel like tossing it in the trash, and THEN streaking through an old folk's home.
Here's some advice for Mr. Collins, and for you as well, reader: If you're going to complain about the behaviour and beliefs of a younger generation, stop and ask yourself if your parents said exactly the same thing about YOU. If so, shut your farty old bugger mouth and get reacquainted with the world. If not, shut your trap anyway, because nobody likes a smug blog-reader who has nestled into the generation gap like it were a comfy couch or the very vagina of God/Family/Country herself.
First, the younger generation is not fundamentally different from yours, with the possible exception that they generally don't believe the same things you believed, probably because you wouldn't shut up about those things during their formative years.
Second, your generation was not The Best Generation Ever. Disregarding all the selective memory and willful blindness and massive generalizations you make about other people based on your own narrow peer group, don't forget that YOU BROUGHT THE YOUNGER GENERATION INTO BEING. It was YOUR social structures, YOUR upbringing, YOUR revolutions (or lack thereof) that brought us to where we are today. Before you point fingers at "the kids," ask yourself who their ARCHITECTS were. You, goofy!
And finally, your anecdotes about the superiority of your idyllic development are worth nothing whatsoever from a sociological standpoint. They are skewed and selective and personal and do not say anything about the development of the other people around you. Likewise, the snapshot behaviour of some teenager who cut you off in traffic does not a generational trend make...how do you think your grandparents felt when some kid almost ran them off the road during a drag race, Big Bopper tunes all a-blastin'?
I get this increasingly from a baby boomer family member who is CONVINCED that the world is going to hell. I'll grant that the population density is higher than it was (partly because those boomers just couldn't stop making babies), but when this person bemoans urban crime or the latest child-sex scandal, I can only point out the increasing millions of dollars that the Catholic church needs to spend to redress the long-ago crimes of pedophile priests. I can point to books from EVERY generation which describe that decade's Unprecedented Urban Crime. I can point to endless editorials from every year in every age about how Those Damn Kids Have No Respect.
When Robert Collins -- under the guise of teaching the next generation how their grandparents live -- tells me that his own generation was so chaste and patriotic, I say PHOEY. Kids his age were having sex, getting venereal diseases, and going to unlicensed practitioners to abort the children they'd conceived in the stable/carriage/roadster. A sizable proportion of Collins' fellow citizens wanted nothing to do with the second world war and did everything they could to stay out of it. Phoey again!
Collins is the archetypal crotchety senior citizen who wants to boost is own sense of nobility by denigrating others. The first twenty pages of the book are peppered with constant digs at the lazy baby boomers...those same boomers who now berate subsequent generations for their laziness.
Whenever somebody tries to start a conversation with me about "kids today" and the first words out of their mouth (or the first paragraphs in their book) have something to do with the immorality or incomprehensibility of contemporary popular music, I know immediately that there's no hope for them. They are crotchety old fogies already. They have already forgotten KISS, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, and every jazz orchestra that got their start in a Harlem nightclub.
Nobody's generation can claim superiority or wash its hands of today's problems, which is why "You Had To Be There" is going in the garbage can, and then I'm going to run through an Adult Education Center without any pants on, as soon as it's a bit warmer.
Here's some advice for Mr. Collins, and for you as well, reader: If you're going to complain about the behaviour and beliefs of a younger generation, stop and ask yourself if your parents said exactly the same thing about YOU. If so, shut your farty old bugger mouth and get reacquainted with the world. If not, shut your trap anyway, because nobody likes a smug blog-reader who has nestled into the generation gap like it were a comfy couch or the very vagina of God/Family/Country herself.
First, the younger generation is not fundamentally different from yours, with the possible exception that they generally don't believe the same things you believed, probably because you wouldn't shut up about those things during their formative years.
Second, your generation was not The Best Generation Ever. Disregarding all the selective memory and willful blindness and massive generalizations you make about other people based on your own narrow peer group, don't forget that YOU BROUGHT THE YOUNGER GENERATION INTO BEING. It was YOUR social structures, YOUR upbringing, YOUR revolutions (or lack thereof) that brought us to where we are today. Before you point fingers at "the kids," ask yourself who their ARCHITECTS were. You, goofy!
And finally, your anecdotes about the superiority of your idyllic development are worth nothing whatsoever from a sociological standpoint. They are skewed and selective and personal and do not say anything about the development of the other people around you. Likewise, the snapshot behaviour of some teenager who cut you off in traffic does not a generational trend make...how do you think your grandparents felt when some kid almost ran them off the road during a drag race, Big Bopper tunes all a-blastin'?
I get this increasingly from a baby boomer family member who is CONVINCED that the world is going to hell. I'll grant that the population density is higher than it was (partly because those boomers just couldn't stop making babies), but when this person bemoans urban crime or the latest child-sex scandal, I can only point out the increasing millions of dollars that the Catholic church needs to spend to redress the long-ago crimes of pedophile priests. I can point to books from EVERY generation which describe that decade's Unprecedented Urban Crime. I can point to endless editorials from every year in every age about how Those Damn Kids Have No Respect.
When Robert Collins -- under the guise of teaching the next generation how their grandparents live -- tells me that his own generation was so chaste and patriotic, I say PHOEY. Kids his age were having sex, getting venereal diseases, and going to unlicensed practitioners to abort the children they'd conceived in the stable/carriage/roadster. A sizable proportion of Collins' fellow citizens wanted nothing to do with the second world war and did everything they could to stay out of it. Phoey again!
Collins is the archetypal crotchety senior citizen who wants to boost is own sense of nobility by denigrating others. The first twenty pages of the book are peppered with constant digs at the lazy baby boomers...those same boomers who now berate subsequent generations for their laziness.
Whenever somebody tries to start a conversation with me about "kids today" and the first words out of their mouth (or the first paragraphs in their book) have something to do with the immorality or incomprehensibility of contemporary popular music, I know immediately that there's no hope for them. They are crotchety old fogies already. They have already forgotten KISS, Jimi Hendrix, Elvis, and every jazz orchestra that got their start in a Harlem nightclub.
Nobody's generation can claim superiority or wash its hands of today's problems, which is why "You Had To Be There" is going in the garbage can, and then I'm going to run through an Adult Education Center without any pants on, as soon as it's a bit warmer.
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Bonus Wisdom of the Taxi Drivers
I love talking to taxi drivers, and I think they sense this because whenever I get into a taxi they take note of where I've been and then they ask me personal questions.
They also dispense wisdom from distant lands. Yesterday, when I caught a taxi outside the Belmont Medical Centre, the taxi driver instantly asked me if I was sick.
We started talking about pain and he said "When you have pain in some part, all of your soul is in that part! Everything is important where there is soul!" He then told me exactly what's wrong with North Americans: "Mortgages!"
He has a good point. He says that instead of spending twenty years saving enough money to make a huge payment on a house -- the way they do it in Turkey, apparently -- we put ourselves into immediate debt by buying a house that we can't afford. Our mortgages are so big that we live in perpetual fear of losing our jobs, and the threat of joblessness is held over our heads by our employees and our government. We don't dare step out of line lest we lose our earning power and therefore our beloved houses.
I don't totally agree. Some of us (most of us?) don't step out of line because we don't see a big enough reason to; we are not convinced that things are so bad and the alternatives are so good. He also admitted that other parts of the world are beginning to embrace the idea of big mortgages for early houses, as advertised by America-own companies on television...on television even in Turkey.
But I do see his point. The problem probably has more to do with us not SAVING money as opposed to going into extravagant debt. Even before I had a mortgage I was afraid of losing my earning power, entirely because I didn't have a financial safety net to land in (and I still don't).
To all Turkish taxi drivers: stick to your principles. Speak truth to power. Remember that Park Street is closed and you will waste my money by trying to drive through it.
They also dispense wisdom from distant lands. Yesterday, when I caught a taxi outside the Belmont Medical Centre, the taxi driver instantly asked me if I was sick.
We started talking about pain and he said "When you have pain in some part, all of your soul is in that part! Everything is important where there is soul!" He then told me exactly what's wrong with North Americans: "Mortgages!"
He has a good point. He says that instead of spending twenty years saving enough money to make a huge payment on a house -- the way they do it in Turkey, apparently -- we put ourselves into immediate debt by buying a house that we can't afford. Our mortgages are so big that we live in perpetual fear of losing our jobs, and the threat of joblessness is held over our heads by our employees and our government. We don't dare step out of line lest we lose our earning power and therefore our beloved houses.
I don't totally agree. Some of us (most of us?) don't step out of line because we don't see a big enough reason to; we are not convinced that things are so bad and the alternatives are so good. He also admitted that other parts of the world are beginning to embrace the idea of big mortgages for early houses, as advertised by America-own companies on television...on television even in Turkey.
But I do see his point. The problem probably has more to do with us not SAVING money as opposed to going into extravagant debt. Even before I had a mortgage I was afraid of losing my earning power, entirely because I didn't have a financial safety net to land in (and I still don't).
To all Turkish taxi drivers: stick to your principles. Speak truth to power. Remember that Park Street is closed and you will waste my money by trying to drive through it.
Recently...
Many things have prevented me from blogging recently, not least my own laziness and ennui. My computer's hard drive totally died after my post about the importance of backups, requiring a trip to the repair shop (and then a total update of everything to Snow Leopard which does kick ass).
This misfortune was immediately followed by a five-day heatwave. Despite my perverse resistance to installing my window air conditioner -- and therefore many nights spent sweating buckets into my sodden bedding -- I learned two things about humans and heat:
Anyway, I'm also living with a cat who is a bit like the Tazmanian Devil, only more hyperactive and noisy. She is a fearless destroyer of bookshelves. She has learned that the best way to send me leaping out of bed in the morning is to sharpen her claws on my mattress, which I imagine her doing with a big grin on her face.
As of this morning, Muffet is forbidden from entering my bedroom. This is difficult because I haven't lived with closed doors for over ten years, and also because I don't think she'll adapt quickly or quietly to this change. Her favourite window is in my bedroom, and so is the sock drawer. I foresee many challenging nights ahead.
Third obstacle: constant pain in my shoulders. Sometimes it's barely there, and other times it feels like my biceps and shoulders are being held together by old rusty rivets made out of bubbling lava.
When I told my family doctor that I was on a three-year waiting list to see a shoulder specialist, he had a fit of furious Irish passion and booked me for a series of examinations. Yesterday a delicate lady held an ultrasound paddle to my shoulders and we viewed the inside of my pathology: wavy lines of bone and fat surrounding ominous black holes of encysted fluid.
Then I crossed the hall to get some X-rays done. It was a much more respectable operation than the last place I went to, though it ALSO had a cupboard which emitted terrifying scrabbling sounds.
Most interesting was the woman who took the X-rays. She was brusque and businesslike, but every time she prepared to take another picture she'd say "Hold your breath!" in an incongruous sing-song way, like the way you'd speak to a mischievous child. I felt weird, standing there in my lead girdle, with this extremely professional lady buzzing around who would suddenly disappear into a booth and sing out -- as though she were offering me a popsicle -- "Hold your breath!"
In other news, I have joined the board for the condo corporation, which is a story I'll tell someday. I also joined the board for the Open Ears festival. I have added "The Toronto G-20" to the list of topics which must not be discussed in friendly company. I walked past my old apartment and saw that the vegetation grew back but the junker cars remain. I read "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis, "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, and a beautiful book about undeciphered ancient scripts by Andrew Robinson. If I go on any sort of vacation this year it will hopefully be to Easter Island, because I want to see what their discos are like.
This misfortune was immediately followed by a five-day heatwave. Despite my perverse resistance to installing my window air conditioner -- and therefore many nights spent sweating buckets into my sodden bedding -- I learned two things about humans and heat:
- When people who live in an extremely HUMID area -- like those of us in Southern Ontario -- complain about 35-degree temperatures that feel like 42-degrees due to the humidity, people who live in DRY areas say -- repeatedly and disdainfully -- "Ha! It's that hot here ALL SUMMER!" To which I can only say: try going out in that heat with a wet towel wrapped around your nose and mouth.
- When people complain about the devastating heat, a subset of other people say "Ha! In the winter you complain about the cold, now you complain about the heat! You just like complaining!" This is like saying "You complained that you were thirsty, so you'd better not complain when I throw you in the pool and drown you!" However illogical it is to complain about the weather -- since nobody you complain to can actually change it -- it is NOT illogical to complain about temperature extremes.
Anyway, I'm also living with a cat who is a bit like the Tazmanian Devil, only more hyperactive and noisy. She is a fearless destroyer of bookshelves. She has learned that the best way to send me leaping out of bed in the morning is to sharpen her claws on my mattress, which I imagine her doing with a big grin on her face.
As of this morning, Muffet is forbidden from entering my bedroom. This is difficult because I haven't lived with closed doors for over ten years, and also because I don't think she'll adapt quickly or quietly to this change. Her favourite window is in my bedroom, and so is the sock drawer. I foresee many challenging nights ahead.
Third obstacle: constant pain in my shoulders. Sometimes it's barely there, and other times it feels like my biceps and shoulders are being held together by old rusty rivets made out of bubbling lava.
When I told my family doctor that I was on a three-year waiting list to see a shoulder specialist, he had a fit of furious Irish passion and booked me for a series of examinations. Yesterday a delicate lady held an ultrasound paddle to my shoulders and we viewed the inside of my pathology: wavy lines of bone and fat surrounding ominous black holes of encysted fluid.
Then I crossed the hall to get some X-rays done. It was a much more respectable operation than the last place I went to, though it ALSO had a cupboard which emitted terrifying scrabbling sounds.
Most interesting was the woman who took the X-rays. She was brusque and businesslike, but every time she prepared to take another picture she'd say "Hold your breath!" in an incongruous sing-song way, like the way you'd speak to a mischievous child. I felt weird, standing there in my lead girdle, with this extremely professional lady buzzing around who would suddenly disappear into a booth and sing out -- as though she were offering me a popsicle -- "Hold your breath!"
In other news, I have joined the board for the condo corporation, which is a story I'll tell someday. I also joined the board for the Open Ears festival. I have added "The Toronto G-20" to the list of topics which must not be discussed in friendly company. I walked past my old apartment and saw that the vegetation grew back but the junker cars remain. I read "Babbitt" by Sinclair Lewis, "Day of the Triffids" by John Wyndham, and a beautiful book about undeciphered ancient scripts by Andrew Robinson. If I go on any sort of vacation this year it will hopefully be to Easter Island, because I want to see what their discos are like.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Goat-Goo in Roman Plays
I've never had a sense of human history; other than Geography, History was the class I was LEAST interested in during school. But now I'm learning everything for the first time from scratch, and what fascinates me most about human history is how little we have changed.
It's for this reason that I'm thoroughly enjoying "Five Roman Comedies," a collection of Plautus and Terence plays translated into "modern verse" (eg., "the modern verse of Classical Studies professors in 1970").
It is really, really wonderful to know that we find the same things funny today that we did 2200 years ago: the irony of confused identities, the bumblings of a cocky idiot, the old routine of "Go quickly! And wait, don't forget what I told you to do! Now go, hurry! Wait, remember to be careful! Now hurry up and go! Wait a second, don't forget to be as quick as you can!"
Isn't this touching? Obviously our brains have changed little (if any) since Roman times, but neither have our joys and fears. And there is something ESPECIALLY touching that -- so long ago -- we had a theatrical system to entertain each other with, and that -- against all odds -- so many of these works have survived for us to read today.
Anyway, while reading these plays I'm torn between enjoying the "modern verse" translations and wishing they were a bit more literal. Like, I know instantly what "knucklehead" means to us today, but I sort wonder how the ROMANS had expressed such a thing. I'm currently reading the hilarious "Mostellaria," and the translator (Palmer Bovie) has really gone to town with the idioms. Here's my favourite section, which I hereby decree to be the best part of any play, anywhere:
It's for this reason that I'm thoroughly enjoying "Five Roman Comedies," a collection of Plautus and Terence plays translated into "modern verse" (eg., "the modern verse of Classical Studies professors in 1970").
It is really, really wonderful to know that we find the same things funny today that we did 2200 years ago: the irony of confused identities, the bumblings of a cocky idiot, the old routine of "Go quickly! And wait, don't forget what I told you to do! Now go, hurry! Wait, remember to be careful! Now hurry up and go! Wait a second, don't forget to be as quick as you can!"
Isn't this touching? Obviously our brains have changed little (if any) since Roman times, but neither have our joys and fears. And there is something ESPECIALLY touching that -- so long ago -- we had a theatrical system to entertain each other with, and that -- against all odds -- so many of these works have survived for us to read today.
Anyway, while reading these plays I'm torn between enjoying the "modern verse" translations and wishing they were a bit more literal. Like, I know instantly what "knucklehead" means to us today, but I sort wonder how the ROMANS had expressed such a thing. I'm currently reading the hilarious "Mostellaria," and the translator (Palmer Bovie) has really gone to town with the idioms. Here's my favourite section, which I hereby decree to be the best part of any play, anywhere:
TRANIO:That's great stuff! Then, as now, we've always found it enormously funny when two unlikeable people insult each other.
Why don't you go up in smoke? I'll see you inhale first,
you halitosis garlic-green rotten excuse for a rustic
retreat, with goat-goo on your feet. I repeat:
You whiff of damp air, what's it like down there in your pig-sty?
Whew! What a combination of nanny goat and mongrel bitch!
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Jobs: Drama Teacher
After I finished high school, I had an entire summer to figure out what I wanted to do in University. Little did I know that it would take another ten years for me to decide on a career, but at the time I was kicking around lots of ideas, and one of them was "something to do with drama."
I'd taken drama classes throughout high school, but I think the only lessons I ever learned were "How to enunciate strangely" and "How to feel mortified." These classes culminated in an absolute trainwreck of a show that I dare not mention for fear of litigation.
But drama WAS still on my mind in 1991, and when a job came up in New Hamburg -- where I was still living with my parents -- I blindly snatched it up.
I still can't believe I ever did this: I was hired as a sort of "summer workshop drama teacher" for children aged six to twelve. During the interview I confessed that I had absolutely no experience with children that age, and they promised me: "There will only be ten of them, and we're also hiring a person with babysitting experience to help you out."
Guess what. When I showed up at the big gymnasium to greet the children there were TWENTY-FIVE of them. And no babysitter in sight. For the rest of the summer it was just me and them.
I only remember brief snatches of the job itself. Every week we'd meet in my junior high's gymnasium -- and sometimes in the musty back room of the old New Hamburg auditorium, where a little Brownie mushroom always got in the way -- and we'd spend a few hours trying to get our show together.
My employers -- Wilmot Township, like, the ENTIRE township -- had suggested a book of age-appropriate plays, and we decided on one that was a pastiche of fairytales and scary stories: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Frankenstein.
Let me emphasize that I have no natural leadership ability. The children instantly recognized this and they ran amok, but they had a real desire to perform and they seemed to genuinely like me, maybe because I didn't talk down to them or sell them short.
One of my memories is of worrying about the single physically challenged boy in the class, who used a pair of arm braces to get around. There was a role in the play for a lurching "Egor" character, and I was afraid the other children would nominate him for the part. I learned a crucial lesson when he himself said he WANTED to be Egor, and he threw himself completely in the role, apparently relishing a task that allowed him to turn his disability into a performance. That kid stole the show.
Another memory is of playing music during lunch breaks. We had a tape recorder -- the same one we'd used for physical exercises when I went to that school -- and everybody was allowed to bring in tapes of music they wanted to hear during lunch. One day -- either because they asked, or I demanded, I can't remember which -- I played them MY favourite song at the time: "Over the Shoulder" by Ministry. The children declared unanimously that it wasn't music and it sucked.
We finally performed the play at a local nursing home, and all I remember are the children blanking out and forgetting their lines. I stood in the wings thinking "Holy cow, I've totally failed, this is an absolute embarrassment and it's all my fault." At the end, when the audience of parents and grandparents applauded, I seem to remember coming out and pretending to collapse on stage as though to apologize for what had happened, and all the kids ran out and dragged me off.
What I hadn't realized all along was that the play wasn't supposed to be GOOD. The play wasn't important AT ALL. This was really a CAMP where children learned confidence and socialized with other children with the same interests. None of this made sense to me until afterwards, when the parents told me how much their children had enjoyed the summer. I wish I'd understood this at the time.
Anyway, I finished the job and got paid, and though I'd never do it again it was still a fun time and a valuable experience for me (and hopefully some of the others too).
Plus I could put it on my resume.
I'd taken drama classes throughout high school, but I think the only lessons I ever learned were "How to enunciate strangely" and "How to feel mortified." These classes culminated in an absolute trainwreck of a show that I dare not mention for fear of litigation.
But drama WAS still on my mind in 1991, and when a job came up in New Hamburg -- where I was still living with my parents -- I blindly snatched it up.
I still can't believe I ever did this: I was hired as a sort of "summer workshop drama teacher" for children aged six to twelve. During the interview I confessed that I had absolutely no experience with children that age, and they promised me: "There will only be ten of them, and we're also hiring a person with babysitting experience to help you out."
Guess what. When I showed up at the big gymnasium to greet the children there were TWENTY-FIVE of them. And no babysitter in sight. For the rest of the summer it was just me and them.
I only remember brief snatches of the job itself. Every week we'd meet in my junior high's gymnasium -- and sometimes in the musty back room of the old New Hamburg auditorium, where a little Brownie mushroom always got in the way -- and we'd spend a few hours trying to get our show together.
My employers -- Wilmot Township, like, the ENTIRE township -- had suggested a book of age-appropriate plays, and we decided on one that was a pastiche of fairytales and scary stories: Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, Frankenstein.
Let me emphasize that I have no natural leadership ability. The children instantly recognized this and they ran amok, but they had a real desire to perform and they seemed to genuinely like me, maybe because I didn't talk down to them or sell them short.
One of my memories is of worrying about the single physically challenged boy in the class, who used a pair of arm braces to get around. There was a role in the play for a lurching "Egor" character, and I was afraid the other children would nominate him for the part. I learned a crucial lesson when he himself said he WANTED to be Egor, and he threw himself completely in the role, apparently relishing a task that allowed him to turn his disability into a performance. That kid stole the show.
Another memory is of playing music during lunch breaks. We had a tape recorder -- the same one we'd used for physical exercises when I went to that school -- and everybody was allowed to bring in tapes of music they wanted to hear during lunch. One day -- either because they asked, or I demanded, I can't remember which -- I played them MY favourite song at the time: "Over the Shoulder" by Ministry. The children declared unanimously that it wasn't music and it sucked.
We finally performed the play at a local nursing home, and all I remember are the children blanking out and forgetting their lines. I stood in the wings thinking "Holy cow, I've totally failed, this is an absolute embarrassment and it's all my fault." At the end, when the audience of parents and grandparents applauded, I seem to remember coming out and pretending to collapse on stage as though to apologize for what had happened, and all the kids ran out and dragged me off.
What I hadn't realized all along was that the play wasn't supposed to be GOOD. The play wasn't important AT ALL. This was really a CAMP where children learned confidence and socialized with other children with the same interests. None of this made sense to me until afterwards, when the parents told me how much their children had enjoyed the summer. I wish I'd understood this at the time.
Anyway, I finished the job and got paid, and though I'd never do it again it was still a fun time and a valuable experience for me (and hopefully some of the others too).
Plus I could put it on my resume.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
Saturday, May 22, 2010
1968 Emmanuel Bible College Yearbook
I was thrilled with the idea of posting choice moments from the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks, but after the 1966 expose things became pretty crazy over here. I'd even gone through the 1968 edition and I had some big plans for it, but I'm afraid I've forgotten my "angles" and all I have on record are the pictures I chose.
So this one will be a quickie without any deep insight. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 1968 Emmanuel Bible College yearbook.
Students! The people in this yearbook are my mother's contemporaries, and she has confirmed that the EBC students were wearing appropriate, up-to-date clothing. It's interesting to note that she found the clothes in the 1966 yearbook to be stodgy and geriatric...what a difference a few years in the '60s made!
Another interesting thing to note is that the woman in the picture -- Donna Barnell of Indiana -- is my nomination for "Queen of Prom!" This is partly because she's got wicked style, but also because she was on every brainy committee that year: Publications (which kept churches in the area notified about the latest EBC events), literary president, student's council (secretary AND treasurer), and school secretary in general. Donna from Indiana, you've earned this honour!
As for KING of the Prom...well, you remember Harry Habel from 1966? He graduated in '68 with a degree in "Special," which I assume meant that they were anxious to just get rid of him. It pleases me to pair a youthful over-achiever with an annoying old farmer. What must it have been like to be Jewish in an evangelical bible college during the '60s? I don't know, but maybe we can glean something from his graduation picture.
Poor Harry. A little older, a little wiser, entirely special.
Anyway, one thing that set EBC apart from other schools was its emphasis on "Practical Work." This usually meant "perfecting the skills which send non-believers screaming in the other direction."
You in West Rouge and Elmira may have kicked Wayne and Tim off your porch.
These last two pictures are my favourites, and they show the "wacky side" of EBC campus life. First, here's Dixie Dean presenting "music from the four corners of the world" at the Christmas Banquet.
Who's "Dixie Dean," you ask? For shame! He started the "Canadian Accordion Club," and was a bright light in Canadian music during the first half of the century. His star appears to have fallen during the '60s but he worked for the Ontario Conservatory of Music here in good old Waterloo, so his appearance at the banquet must have been a real coup. For those who liked accordions.
Finally, here's one of those yearbook pictures that only makes sense to those who were there. EBC students from '68 are invited to explain not only how good Dixie Dean's performance was, but also why a man in rubber SCUBA gear is molesting this woman in her bed.
So this one will be a quickie without any deep insight. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the 1968 Emmanuel Bible College yearbook.
Students! The people in this yearbook are my mother's contemporaries, and she has confirmed that the EBC students were wearing appropriate, up-to-date clothing. It's interesting to note that she found the clothes in the 1966 yearbook to be stodgy and geriatric...what a difference a few years in the '60s made!
Another interesting thing to note is that the woman in the picture -- Donna Barnell of Indiana -- is my nomination for "Queen of Prom!" This is partly because she's got wicked style, but also because she was on every brainy committee that year: Publications (which kept churches in the area notified about the latest EBC events), literary president, student's council (secretary AND treasurer), and school secretary in general. Donna from Indiana, you've earned this honour!
As for KING of the Prom...well, you remember Harry Habel from 1966? He graduated in '68 with a degree in "Special," which I assume meant that they were anxious to just get rid of him. It pleases me to pair a youthful over-achiever with an annoying old farmer. What must it have been like to be Jewish in an evangelical bible college during the '60s? I don't know, but maybe we can glean something from his graduation picture.
Poor Harry. A little older, a little wiser, entirely special.Anyway, one thing that set EBC apart from other schools was its emphasis on "Practical Work." This usually meant "perfecting the skills which send non-believers screaming in the other direction."
You in West Rouge and Elmira may have kicked Wayne and Tim off your porch.
These last two pictures are my favourites, and they show the "wacky side" of EBC campus life. First, here's Dixie Dean presenting "music from the four corners of the world" at the Christmas Banquet.
Who's "Dixie Dean," you ask? For shame! He started the "Canadian Accordion Club," and was a bright light in Canadian music during the first half of the century. His star appears to have fallen during the '60s but he worked for the Ontario Conservatory of Music here in good old Waterloo, so his appearance at the banquet must have been a real coup. For those who liked accordions.
Finally, here's one of those yearbook pictures that only makes sense to those who were there. EBC students from '68 are invited to explain not only how good Dixie Dean's performance was, but also why a man in rubber SCUBA gear is molesting this woman in her bed.
Friday, May 07, 2010
It Is Doubly Difficult to Get Out
I am reading William T. Vollmann's second-latest enormous book -- "Imperial" -- and I came across this apt, wonderful, and terrible paragraph which addresses why the New River (in Mexico and California) remains so terribly polluted.
Maybe the New River wasn't anybody's fault, either. People need to defecate, and if they are poor, they cannot afford to process their sewage. People need to eat, and so they work in the maquiladoras--factories owned by foreign polluters. The polluters pollute to save money; then we buy their inexpensive and perhaps well-made tractor parts, fertilizers, pesticides. It is doubly difficult to get out. And it's all ghastly.Sigh.
Monday, May 03, 2010
1966 Emmanuel Bible College Yearbook
"You" said you wanted more pictures from the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks...who am I to refuse! I just wish I had a working scanner, instead of a small Hewlett-Packard device that makes a terrible grinding noise and whispers "Need more ink cartridges" when I turn it on.
As I've said previously, yearbooks are fascinating and funny things in so many ways. The EBC yearbooks, however, have an additional interest for the secular reader because they're so totally focused on God, but without the "Christianity is COOL!" element that would no doubt be there if they were external, proselytizing documents.
Ready to see the bible students in their natural habitat, like rabbits in a glass-walled hutch? Without further ado, here are some choice moments from the 1966 edition of the EBC yearbook, "The Pilot."
First off, the prayer/bomb drill/corporal punishment picture that will soon be the subject of its own fetish.
Now that we've got that over with, a few words about the degrees. It seems like the ultimate goal at EBC was to be a "Bachelor of Theology," but I find it interesting that the only B.Th graduates were males, at least for the first several yearbooks that I have. The "Missionary Course" and "Christian Education" degrees, however, were granted to both sexes.
Here's the president of the college at the time, Reverend H. B. Wideman, on a day that I charitably assume was windy.
Some sleuthing has revealed that the other man is Reverend Kenneth Geiger, and the book he's presenting -- "The Word and the Doctrine" -- is a collection of papers from a conference about Wesleyanism. What's Wesleyanism? Damned if I can figure it out! That's why Wideman was the president of EBC and the Bachelor of Divinity, not me.
A few thoughts about the teachers that year: none of the women were pretty and most of the men were schlubs, except for Mr. Wilson T. Wiley (English & Guidance Instructor), who wore a small fedora and looked like he wrapped his secret gat in a copy of "Catcher in the Rye." You'll be comforted to know that the "Social Dean of Women" and the "Social Dean of Men" were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Warner Spyker.
Here's some insight into student demographics:
My favourite 1966 EBC students -- my votes for "king and queen of the prom," so to speak -- are paino-playing Fern Densmore and plump squirrel David Hills. The latter's graduation poem is a good example of the beloved artform of BAD YEARBOOK POETRY:
Here's another good poem, for Mervin ("Merv") Richardson, notable for its vague attempt at being personal:
To wrap up the 1966 year, here's my favourite picture of them all. I'm not sure if it's supposed to mean what I think it means but I sure hope so!
As I've said previously, yearbooks are fascinating and funny things in so many ways. The EBC yearbooks, however, have an additional interest for the secular reader because they're so totally focused on God, but without the "Christianity is COOL!" element that would no doubt be there if they were external, proselytizing documents.
Ready to see the bible students in their natural habitat, like rabbits in a glass-walled hutch? Without further ado, here are some choice moments from the 1966 edition of the EBC yearbook, "The Pilot."
First off, the prayer/bomb drill/corporal punishment picture that will soon be the subject of its own fetish.
Now that we've got that over with, a few words about the degrees. It seems like the ultimate goal at EBC was to be a "Bachelor of Theology," but I find it interesting that the only B.Th graduates were males, at least for the first several yearbooks that I have. The "Missionary Course" and "Christian Education" degrees, however, were granted to both sexes.
Here's the president of the college at the time, Reverend H. B. Wideman, on a day that I charitably assume was windy.
Some sleuthing has revealed that the other man is Reverend Kenneth Geiger, and the book he's presenting -- "The Word and the Doctrine" -- is a collection of papers from a conference about Wesleyanism. What's Wesleyanism? Damned if I can figure it out! That's why Wideman was the president of EBC and the Bachelor of Divinity, not me.
A few thoughts about the teachers that year: none of the women were pretty and most of the men were schlubs, except for Mr. Wilson T. Wiley (English & Guidance Instructor), who wore a small fedora and looked like he wrapped his secret gat in a copy of "Catcher in the Rye." You'll be comforted to know that the "Social Dean of Women" and the "Social Dean of Men" were a married couple, Mr. and Mrs. Warner Spyker.
Here's some insight into student demographics:
The afternoons are times of service, study, and wage earning.Here are some girls harassing an old lady to score Bible Points.
Many students work with Child Evangelism, teaching Bible Clubs for boys and girls. Other students find opportunities to witness while working at a part-time job. At Emmanuel, we have a barber, an auctioneer, carry-out boys, salesmen, office workers, nurses, teachers, farmers, waitresses, and construction labourers.
My favourite 1966 EBC students -- my votes for "king and queen of the prom," so to speak -- are paino-playing Fern Densmore and plump squirrel David Hills. The latter's graduation poem is a good example of the beloved artform of BAD YEARBOOK POETRY:From working in a paint factory he came,What makes this a bad poem? The ungainly swapping of sentence fragments, sacrificing style (and clarity) to the altar of Thee Almighty Rhyme.
So that he might better uphold God's name
By studying the Word with hope that he
One day, in the service of the Lord may be.
Here's another good poem, for Mervin ("Merv") Richardson, notable for its vague attempt at being personal:
A goal, a goal in hockeyI think the yearbook staff got that one in just before the deadline.
(Even when the road is rocky)
Leading music at Lincoln Heights
Keeps him busy various nights.
To wrap up the 1966 year, here's my favourite picture of them all. I'm not sure if it's supposed to mean what I think it means but I sure hope so!
Saturday, May 01, 2010
Dogs: The Neighbourhood Icebreakers
Today my mother came by to help me fix up my foliage. I've kept it all wet and I've even done some weeding, but there's no substitute for a green-thumb matriarch with a bag full of mulch.
On a beautiful day and under a beautiful sky we worked at separate tasks, drinking and not really speaking. She did the heavy lifting, being only about five feet tall but actually having a functional shoulder. I did the first REAL weeding I've ever done in my life, digging out the grass that's sapping the life from my burgeoning maple trees and my bleeding hearts. It's amazing how tenacious grass can be, it spreads a thick network of tiny roots through the soil. It's almost a shame to pull up such a capable weed.
After my mother left and I was standing on my patio admiring her work, the dog arrived, a huge bouncy orange creature who barked playfully at the children next door. It had come running into their back yard, followed closely by Pearl, a neighbour I'd only previously seen dancing during an impromptu long weekend celebration on our mutual fire route.
Pearl was talking to the small children, and I found myself drawn to the dog. "Can I pet him?" I asked, and suddenly I realized that dogs are "people bridges" who entice reserved people into talking with each other.
Through this dog I met not just Pearl, but also the kids next door and their mother...I don't think their mother is my biggest fan as of yet, but I'm convinced that it's 99% due to the usual problems with neighbours: we haven't spoken yet. I waved at her across the yard and she smiled genuinely and waved back, and wished I hadn't had that second drink with my mom.
Sensing that the children wanted to talk to me a bit, I turned to one of them and said "When I first saw this dog I thought it was yours."
"No," he sighed sadly. "We don't have anything...except for a baby named Jackson."
So I think that people who move into a new neighbourhood should be able to RENT dogs, so we can stand around and wait for somebody to say "How old is he? Can I pet him? What's his name? How big will he get?" followed shortly by "Hi, my name is..."
On a beautiful day and under a beautiful sky we worked at separate tasks, drinking and not really speaking. She did the heavy lifting, being only about five feet tall but actually having a functional shoulder. I did the first REAL weeding I've ever done in my life, digging out the grass that's sapping the life from my burgeoning maple trees and my bleeding hearts. It's amazing how tenacious grass can be, it spreads a thick network of tiny roots through the soil. It's almost a shame to pull up such a capable weed.
After my mother left and I was standing on my patio admiring her work, the dog arrived, a huge bouncy orange creature who barked playfully at the children next door. It had come running into their back yard, followed closely by Pearl, a neighbour I'd only previously seen dancing during an impromptu long weekend celebration on our mutual fire route.
Pearl was talking to the small children, and I found myself drawn to the dog. "Can I pet him?" I asked, and suddenly I realized that dogs are "people bridges" who entice reserved people into talking with each other.
Through this dog I met not just Pearl, but also the kids next door and their mother...I don't think their mother is my biggest fan as of yet, but I'm convinced that it's 99% due to the usual problems with neighbours: we haven't spoken yet. I waved at her across the yard and she smiled genuinely and waved back, and wished I hadn't had that second drink with my mom.
Sensing that the children wanted to talk to me a bit, I turned to one of them and said "When I first saw this dog I thought it was yours."
"No," he sighed sadly. "We don't have anything...except for a baby named Jackson."
So I think that people who move into a new neighbourhood should be able to RENT dogs, so we can stand around and wait for somebody to say "How old is he? Can I pet him? What's his name? How big will he get?" followed shortly by "Hi, my name is..."
Friday, April 30, 2010
The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen
In January I read an extremely positive review of Elizabeth Bowen's short fiction in a 1930s New Yorker magazine. Unable to find any of her short stories at the time, I instead read "The Heat of the Day," which I found tedious in its obsessive examination of people's thought processes. In short, I was impressed by her approach and her zeal but I found the book extremely annoying.
Now, after a long slog, I'm finishing off "The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen," which apparently contains all of the short fiction she ever wrote...and let me tell you, she wrote a lot. Many of these stories were ones that the New Yorker reviewer raved about. How has it been?
Complete collections of a prolific writer's short fiction should come with a big warning, which unfortunately I know I'd disregard anyway: "Do not read all these stories in a row. They were not meant to be read this way. They previously appeared in diverse periodicals and smaller collections. You have been warned."
So I'm warning you: just as the complete short fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges can drive you insane, so can the complete short fiction of Elizabeth Bowen. Not because it's BAD -- it's brilliant, in fact -- but just because there's too much of it.
And like the complete works of ANY writer I found myself noticing the trends in her work, most particularly:
And the hearts of these stories are devastating, especially the ones written during the '20s and '30s. Most of them are about the slow, mundane grind of everyday relationships and the hidden compulsions that modernists so loved to write about. Bowen has a particular ability for troubled children who are so lifelike that you almost want to turn away. The precocious Maria (in the story of the same name) the crying little boy with his ducks (in "Tears, Idle Tears") and the absolutely doomed Hermione (in "The Easter Egg Party") are permanently stuck with me.
Bowen's style isn't one that relies on an all-encompassing statement to make its point; instead, the drama builds and builds through successive examples, leaving you squirming with the terrible, truthful awkwardness of it all. Here's a description of Hermione, viewed through the eyes of a pair of aunts who are trying a last-ditch attempt to integrate her with other children.
Elizabeth Bowen writes almost all of her stories about these situations.
Then there's the other, somewhat less satisfying trend, the one that the New Yorker reviewer had particularly liked: the ghost stories. These appear from out of nowhere in the collection and they disappear just as quickly and bafflingly. Why did Bowen write about ghosts as often as she did?
Well, most of the ghosts are catalysts for the emotional outpourings of her characters, and likewise the reader is uncertain as to whether they're REAL ghosts or not...except in two stories, one of which (Green Holly) is surprisingly gruesome.
Unfortunately Bowen had an occasional tendency to doddle, in which case her longer stories end up in the same vein as "The Heat of the Day," seeming directionless, obsessive, and far too inward-looking. Her writing was at its best at ten pages or less. I found every story that was longer than 15 pages to be virtually unreadable (and believe me, I have a high threshold for this sort of thing).
Rather than tell you to go out and read the whole book (which I don't recommend) or tell you NOT to read her work (which would be a disservice), I suggest you pick up her Collected Stories and only read the ones from the '20s and '30s, and only the shorter ones. If you have a personal interest in the London Blitz then you should read the War-Time stories as well (and at least give "Mysterious Kôr" a try, which harkens back to her best creepy character studies).
If any Elizabeth Bowen fans read this, please let me know which novels YOU would suggest. I have another one lying around someplace but I don't think I can handle it right at the moment.
Now, after a long slog, I'm finishing off "The Collected Stories of Elizabeth Bowen," which apparently contains all of the short fiction she ever wrote...and let me tell you, she wrote a lot. Many of these stories were ones that the New Yorker reviewer raved about. How has it been?
Complete collections of a prolific writer's short fiction should come with a big warning, which unfortunately I know I'd disregard anyway: "Do not read all these stories in a row. They were not meant to be read this way. They previously appeared in diverse periodicals and smaller collections. You have been warned."
So I'm warning you: just as the complete short fiction of Vladimir Nabokov and Jorge Luis Borges can drive you insane, so can the complete short fiction of Elizabeth Bowen. Not because it's BAD -- it's brilliant, in fact -- but just because there's too much of it.
And like the complete works of ANY writer I found myself noticing the trends in her work, most particularly:
- The trauma of moving to different houses, particularly among the upper classes. Her characters suffer the sale of the ancestral homes and the purchasing of newer, awkward, unpleasant homes which turn out of have sweaty plaster.
- The trauma of living off another person's charity, especially when the other person isn't charitable and -- in reality -- just keeps people around to traumatize them.
- The strange boredom of off-season luxury resorts.
- The thought processes of alienated, troublesome children.
- Aunts. Everybody's got an aunt who is the most significant secondary character.
And the hearts of these stories are devastating, especially the ones written during the '20s and '30s. Most of them are about the slow, mundane grind of everyday relationships and the hidden compulsions that modernists so loved to write about. Bowen has a particular ability for troubled children who are so lifelike that you almost want to turn away. The precocious Maria (in the story of the same name) the crying little boy with his ducks (in "Tears, Idle Tears") and the absolutely doomed Hermione (in "The Easter Egg Party") are permanently stuck with me.
Bowen's style isn't one that relies on an all-encompassing statement to make its point; instead, the drama builds and builds through successive examples, leaving you squirming with the terrible, truthful awkwardness of it all. Here's a description of Hermione, viewed through the eyes of a pair of aunts who are trying a last-ditch attempt to integrate her with other children.
She shook hands with a rigid arm, on which all the bracelets jumped. She looked straight at everyone, but from a moody height: what was evident was not just fear or shyness but a desperate, cut-off haughtiness. In her eyes existed a world of alien experience. The jolly, tallish girls with their chubbed hair, the straddling little boys with their bare knees, apt to frown at the grass between their sandshoes, rebounded from that imperious stare. Either she cared too much or she did not care a fig for them -- and in either case they did not know how to meet her.And that's before things get bad. You see, it's both normal and abnormal, expected and unexpected: it's the odd part of people and everyday life that you try not to look closely at.
Elizabeth Bowen writes almost all of her stories about these situations.
Then there's the other, somewhat less satisfying trend, the one that the New Yorker reviewer had particularly liked: the ghost stories. These appear from out of nowhere in the collection and they disappear just as quickly and bafflingly. Why did Bowen write about ghosts as often as she did?
Well, most of the ghosts are catalysts for the emotional outpourings of her characters, and likewise the reader is uncertain as to whether they're REAL ghosts or not...except in two stories, one of which (Green Holly) is surprisingly gruesome.
Unfortunately Bowen had an occasional tendency to doddle, in which case her longer stories end up in the same vein as "The Heat of the Day," seeming directionless, obsessive, and far too inward-looking. Her writing was at its best at ten pages or less. I found every story that was longer than 15 pages to be virtually unreadable (and believe me, I have a high threshold for this sort of thing).
Rather than tell you to go out and read the whole book (which I don't recommend) or tell you NOT to read her work (which would be a disservice), I suggest you pick up her Collected Stories and only read the ones from the '20s and '30s, and only the shorter ones. If you have a personal interest in the London Blitz then you should read the War-Time stories as well (and at least give "Mysterious Kôr" a try, which harkens back to her best creepy character studies).
If any Elizabeth Bowen fans read this, please let me know which novels YOU would suggest. I have another one lying around someplace but I don't think I can handle it right at the moment.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
The Hallowed Halls Emmanuel
I love reading yearbooks. They're curious anthropological documents that capture certain elements of a subculture, allowing some degree of "backstage" information to seep through, while simultaneously being constrained by the idea of what a "yearbook" should be: that is, a collection of memories that everybody can supposedly relate to, giving tribute to the institution and its people, and also usually some really terrible poetry.
Imagine my joy when I discovered a heap of yearbooks that a nearby church was throwing out! But these weren't just run-of-the-mill highschool yearbooks...these were for the Emmanuel Bible College.
Oh bliss.
I had no idea that our twin cities contain a thriving, long-standing bible college, and I'm anxious to take a bus out there just to look at it. Other than looking at the slick website and fantasizing about what the dorms must be like, how could us secular folk ever know what a bible college is really like?
By reading the yearbooks, spanning the years 1966 to 1991, and finding all the little gems of culture: the things that you'd find in ANY yearbook, and the things you'd ONLY find in the yearbook from a bible college.
First off, the similarities. The usual tributes to the institution's president, the pictures of the students with special attention given to the graduates, the pages given over to clubs and teams (and the egotistical editorial by the yearbook editor), the myopic cafeteria ladies, followed by a dry list of advertisers. And don't forget the candid pictures of goofy campus life! Yes, even in the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks you will find men in drag with balloon breasts.
But what's different? First, lots of pictures like this.
That's not a bomb drill, it's a time to make personal contact with your multi-denominational saviour. Myself, already breaking the commandments, I covet that girl's leopard jacket.
Next, many of the students are quite old. Ex-farmers from a myriad of itty-bitty Ontario towns seem to come to Emmanuel when they get the calling. Here's Harry Habel from the graduating class of '66, and one of the little poems that the yearbook staff banged out for the graduates that year.
As somebody who was once a member of my highschool's yearbook staff, I vividly remember the torture of having to write upbeat and personal blurbs about people I disliked and barely knew. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Habel -- in between doing a spot-on Jimmy Durante impersonation -- got on everybody's nerves in the cafeteria. Inka dinka doo!
What's disappointing about the books is the constant focus on God's authority. It's to be expected, obviously, but simply EVERY piece of text must lead into a parable or a scriptual quote of some kind, which reduces all of the activities -- even badminton -- into a Thin Tasteless Gruel of God. I can't help wondering if these students -- who so happily write "God is GREAT!" on their dorm murals -- secretly wish the message was toned down a little bit. It's not like everybody who goes to bible college is exactly the same as everybody else.
But besides the emphasis on two aspects of evangelicalism that I find particularly horrible -- missionary work and the Crisis pregnancy center -- there's very little in these books to offend or to cast the college in a bad light. These folks seem intelligent, diverse, passionate, and fun. Granted I'm getting that impression through the rosy-coloured yearbook lens, but even so I find myself wishing I could spend a day or two there, just to experience the comfort and solidarity of a bunch of people who believe very strongly in what each other are doing.
Hey, is there any chance I can get a scholarship? And if so do I REALLY have to learn Greek, and why?
Imagine my joy when I discovered a heap of yearbooks that a nearby church was throwing out! But these weren't just run-of-the-mill highschool yearbooks...these were for the Emmanuel Bible College.
Oh bliss.
I had no idea that our twin cities contain a thriving, long-standing bible college, and I'm anxious to take a bus out there just to look at it. Other than looking at the slick website and fantasizing about what the dorms must be like, how could us secular folk ever know what a bible college is really like?
By reading the yearbooks, spanning the years 1966 to 1991, and finding all the little gems of culture: the things that you'd find in ANY yearbook, and the things you'd ONLY find in the yearbook from a bible college.
First off, the similarities. The usual tributes to the institution's president, the pictures of the students with special attention given to the graduates, the pages given over to clubs and teams (and the egotistical editorial by the yearbook editor), the myopic cafeteria ladies, followed by a dry list of advertisers. And don't forget the candid pictures of goofy campus life! Yes, even in the Emmanuel Bible College yearbooks you will find men in drag with balloon breasts.
But what's different? First, lots of pictures like this.
That's not a bomb drill, it's a time to make personal contact with your multi-denominational saviour. Myself, already breaking the commandments, I covet that girl's leopard jacket.
Next, many of the students are quite old. Ex-farmers from a myriad of itty-bitty Ontario towns seem to come to Emmanuel when they get the calling. Here's Harry Habel from the graduating class of '66, and one of the little poems that the yearbook staff banged out for the graduates that year.
As somebody who was once a member of my highschool's yearbook staff, I vividly remember the torture of having to write upbeat and personal blurbs about people I disliked and barely knew. I'm pretty sure that Mr. Habel -- in between doing a spot-on Jimmy Durante impersonation -- got on everybody's nerves in the cafeteria. Inka dinka doo!
What's disappointing about the books is the constant focus on God's authority. It's to be expected, obviously, but simply EVERY piece of text must lead into a parable or a scriptual quote of some kind, which reduces all of the activities -- even badminton -- into a Thin Tasteless Gruel of God. I can't help wondering if these students -- who so happily write "God is GREAT!" on their dorm murals -- secretly wish the message was toned down a little bit. It's not like everybody who goes to bible college is exactly the same as everybody else.
But besides the emphasis on two aspects of evangelicalism that I find particularly horrible -- missionary work and the Crisis pregnancy center -- there's very little in these books to offend or to cast the college in a bad light. These folks seem intelligent, diverse, passionate, and fun. Granted I'm getting that impression through the rosy-coloured yearbook lens, but even so I find myself wishing I could spend a day or two there, just to experience the comfort and solidarity of a bunch of people who believe very strongly in what each other are doing.
Hey, is there any chance I can get a scholarship? And if so do I REALLY have to learn Greek, and why?
The Littlest Scammer
Some people seem like they're born to scam, even if they don't have to. It's like there's some part of the human brain devoted to "getting something for nothing," and in some people that brain-part has gotten cancerous and absorbed everything else in their skulls except for the little reptile nub that controls breathing.
For the last year I've been noticing a girl at the local Tim Horton's coffee shop. She's short and chubby and unpretty, and every time I see her she is trying to get something for free. Whether it's asking me endlessly if I have a spare cigarette, or concocting some ridiculous story about how she got the wrong order that morning and now she'd like a replacement coffee, or walking from table to table and canvassing for change...I never see this girl have an interaction that does not involve a scam.
Her performance on Friday took the cake. She walked into the store just as two university students were walking out, and she yelled "Hey, you're Judy, right? Hey Judy, wait!" as the students kept saying "What? No, we're not Judy, no..." and frantically trying to escape the girl's clutches. I can only assume this was the prelude to a scam that didn't work.
Anyway, she walked in and -- as usual -- started asking the patrons for cigarettes. Then she made a big show of counting her change and going "Oh no! Damn! I hate that!" When nobody responded, she got into line -- pushing in front of the last person -- and kept counting her change. "Oh no! Damn!"
As she got closer to the front of the line she became more and more demonstrative, trying to engage the people around her in The Scam. "Damn! I hate this, you know? Hey, you know?" Finally, with nobody biting, she actually yelled across the store at two men who were about to leave.
"Hey guys! You know how when you only have $1.50, and you want to get a coffee AND a Coke, you know how annoying that is?"
"No," said one of the men, baffled.
"I hate that!" she shouted. "I've only got $1.50 and I need $3.00 to get a coffee AND a Coke! I hate when this happens!"
"Yeah," said the men, and they scurried out the door.
The scammer eventually just bought the coffee, presumably because the rest of us are accustomed to her performances. It must be hard to carry on a racket -- even one so small -- in the same store over and over again. It must be PARTICULARLY hard when you have an unpleasant demeanor, as she does. Successful scammers need more than brute persistence, they also need charm.
Yes, The Littlest Scammer annoys me.
For the last year I've been noticing a girl at the local Tim Horton's coffee shop. She's short and chubby and unpretty, and every time I see her she is trying to get something for free. Whether it's asking me endlessly if I have a spare cigarette, or concocting some ridiculous story about how she got the wrong order that morning and now she'd like a replacement coffee, or walking from table to table and canvassing for change...I never see this girl have an interaction that does not involve a scam.
Her performance on Friday took the cake. She walked into the store just as two university students were walking out, and she yelled "Hey, you're Judy, right? Hey Judy, wait!" as the students kept saying "What? No, we're not Judy, no..." and frantically trying to escape the girl's clutches. I can only assume this was the prelude to a scam that didn't work.
Anyway, she walked in and -- as usual -- started asking the patrons for cigarettes. Then she made a big show of counting her change and going "Oh no! Damn! I hate that!" When nobody responded, she got into line -- pushing in front of the last person -- and kept counting her change. "Oh no! Damn!"
As she got closer to the front of the line she became more and more demonstrative, trying to engage the people around her in The Scam. "Damn! I hate this, you know? Hey, you know?" Finally, with nobody biting, she actually yelled across the store at two men who were about to leave.
"Hey guys! You know how when you only have $1.50, and you want to get a coffee AND a Coke, you know how annoying that is?"
"No," said one of the men, baffled.
"I hate that!" she shouted. "I've only got $1.50 and I need $3.00 to get a coffee AND a Coke! I hate when this happens!"
"Yeah," said the men, and they scurried out the door.
The scammer eventually just bought the coffee, presumably because the rest of us are accustomed to her performances. It must be hard to carry on a racket -- even one so small -- in the same store over and over again. It must be PARTICULARLY hard when you have an unpleasant demeanor, as she does. Successful scammers need more than brute persistence, they also need charm.
Yes, The Littlest Scammer annoys me.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Four Strangers in the Park
On Wednesday I suddenly snapped: I was overtired, confused, and frustrated. I was making too many mistakes. When I asked my manager if I could have the rest of the week off she said "Sure!" and the world suddenly became a better place.
One thing I wanted to accomplish during my long weekend was to get my taxes done, so today I sorted all my papers and started the long walk to Conestoga Mall. I could either take a ridiculous detour along impersonal major streets I already knew...or I could finally explore Hillside Park., whose network of trails goes there almost directly. Thank goodness I decided to do the latter.
Ever since I've moved here I've known the park was on my doorstep, and I'd seen aerial views of it on Google, but I'd never actually been inside until today. Its unspoiled lushness (complete with marshes, branching trails, crumbling 19th century foundations, and -- apparently -- foxes) makes it appear much larger than it is...I assume the illusion of total wilderness will be complete once the summer leaves grow.
It was while walking one of the trails at 11:30 this morning that I spotted a plaque of some sort located about 40 feet down a small secondary path. Wanting to read it, I started down the path when I noticed a woman sitting further down, mostly obscured by the bushes. "Hello!" she shouted to me.
You don't spend long exploring these trails in Kitchener/Waterloo before you discover the makeshift camps of homeless people. I've never had any problems, but I'm understandably wary about stepping into a home where people have been drinking all day, and probably pooping in the corner.
But this woman sounded sober so I shouted "Hello!" back, and walked down the path towards her, thinking I was just going to be briefly trapped by a gregarious person who wanted to chat.
As I got closer she said, "You know that saying, 'I've fallen and I can't get up?' Well, it's just happened to me." She was sitting on the ground next to an electric scooter. She'd driven down the path to pick up a blanket that somebody had left there -- she's a great lover of the trails and doesn't like to see them used as a junkyard -- and her scooter had hit a muddy pothole, throwing her down. She'd been sitting there in the dirt for a long time, without a cel phone, invisible to the people on the main trail, listening to the birds and totally unable to get up.
We tried a few things but I simply wasn't strong enough; she was quite heavy and had almost no lifting power in her legs. After a bit she got exhausted, so we sat back down and chatted and tried to come up with a plan.
Since *I* could look over the bushes I was able to see the main trail, and when an old man walked by I ran after him and asked him to please help. He came back and we both tried to lift her...no chance.
I saw a hiker and brought her back as well. So there we were in the bushes, four people trying to accomplish a heavy-lifting task, and us lifters were hilariously ill-suited to the job: I've got a torn-up right shoulder, the old man was wiry and somewhat frail, and the hiker was small and couldn't even lift half of what I could.
We jostled and pushed and pulled, rested, chatted, and jostled and pulled some more. Eventually the woman got discouraged and said we'd simply have to call the police...but not only were we unable to LIFT anything, none of us even had a PHONE.
Meanwhile I'd been toying with a big log, and I reasoned that the woman's problem was that she couldn't expend the strength necessary to BOTH stand AND position her legs. We couldn't raise her up to a standing position while she was sitting on the ground...but maybe we could divide the job in half by getting her to sit on the log first, THEN -- with her weight already off the ground -- pull her into a position where she could get her legs in gear.
It was worth a try! The old man and I rolled the log over, and with some pushing and pulling we got her onto it, squashing a large number of beetles that I thought it best not to mention. Then we found some broken wooden planks and wedged them under the log to keep it from moving, and the old man pushed from behind while the hiker and I pulled from the front. Amazing! Within minutes she was back in her cart and we were almost as dirty as she was.
What was particularly strange about this is that we had to spend so much time with each other -- twenty minutes, I'd say -- but we were almost a random sample of people. To add to the social barrier we'd been intimately grabbing a perfect stranger, meanwhile trying to figure out exactly what she was capable of in terms of movement and strength. By some fluke the four of us were so darn POLITE: there wasn't a take-charge, natural leader among us, so it was like "Well, I was thinking that maybe this would work--" "Oh, you think? Would that help?" "I'm not sure, here, we can try..." "Oh, excuse me, sorry..."
In terms of social rewards, I think we were all happy in our own ways: the woman was thrilled that she didn't need to call the police, and the rest of us -- none of whom had been in any sort of hurry -- felt awfully good about saving the damsel in distress. I was also happy that I'd seemed nice and genuine enough to convince total strangers to follow me into the bushes.
The old man went his own way, and because the hiker and I were both going in the same direction but had never been in the park before, the suddenly-mobile woman gave us a guided tour of her favourite spots. Gradually we split off until it was just me in a gorgeous forest, under a warm and cloudy sky, in no particular hurry and walking on my own again. So nice!
---
Oh, yeah, my taxes: "It's busy," said the tax people. "Come back on Sunday."
One thing I wanted to accomplish during my long weekend was to get my taxes done, so today I sorted all my papers and started the long walk to Conestoga Mall. I could either take a ridiculous detour along impersonal major streets I already knew...or I could finally explore Hillside Park., whose network of trails goes there almost directly. Thank goodness I decided to do the latter.
Ever since I've moved here I've known the park was on my doorstep, and I'd seen aerial views of it on Google, but I'd never actually been inside until today. Its unspoiled lushness (complete with marshes, branching trails, crumbling 19th century foundations, and -- apparently -- foxes) makes it appear much larger than it is...I assume the illusion of total wilderness will be complete once the summer leaves grow.
It was while walking one of the trails at 11:30 this morning that I spotted a plaque of some sort located about 40 feet down a small secondary path. Wanting to read it, I started down the path when I noticed a woman sitting further down, mostly obscured by the bushes. "Hello!" she shouted to me.
You don't spend long exploring these trails in Kitchener/Waterloo before you discover the makeshift camps of homeless people. I've never had any problems, but I'm understandably wary about stepping into a home where people have been drinking all day, and probably pooping in the corner.
But this woman sounded sober so I shouted "Hello!" back, and walked down the path towards her, thinking I was just going to be briefly trapped by a gregarious person who wanted to chat.
As I got closer she said, "You know that saying, 'I've fallen and I can't get up?' Well, it's just happened to me." She was sitting on the ground next to an electric scooter. She'd driven down the path to pick up a blanket that somebody had left there -- she's a great lover of the trails and doesn't like to see them used as a junkyard -- and her scooter had hit a muddy pothole, throwing her down. She'd been sitting there in the dirt for a long time, without a cel phone, invisible to the people on the main trail, listening to the birds and totally unable to get up.
We tried a few things but I simply wasn't strong enough; she was quite heavy and had almost no lifting power in her legs. After a bit she got exhausted, so we sat back down and chatted and tried to come up with a plan.
Since *I* could look over the bushes I was able to see the main trail, and when an old man walked by I ran after him and asked him to please help. He came back and we both tried to lift her...no chance.
I saw a hiker and brought her back as well. So there we were in the bushes, four people trying to accomplish a heavy-lifting task, and us lifters were hilariously ill-suited to the job: I've got a torn-up right shoulder, the old man was wiry and somewhat frail, and the hiker was small and couldn't even lift half of what I could.
We jostled and pushed and pulled, rested, chatted, and jostled and pulled some more. Eventually the woman got discouraged and said we'd simply have to call the police...but not only were we unable to LIFT anything, none of us even had a PHONE.
Meanwhile I'd been toying with a big log, and I reasoned that the woman's problem was that she couldn't expend the strength necessary to BOTH stand AND position her legs. We couldn't raise her up to a standing position while she was sitting on the ground...but maybe we could divide the job in half by getting her to sit on the log first, THEN -- with her weight already off the ground -- pull her into a position where she could get her legs in gear.
It was worth a try! The old man and I rolled the log over, and with some pushing and pulling we got her onto it, squashing a large number of beetles that I thought it best not to mention. Then we found some broken wooden planks and wedged them under the log to keep it from moving, and the old man pushed from behind while the hiker and I pulled from the front. Amazing! Within minutes she was back in her cart and we were almost as dirty as she was.
What was particularly strange about this is that we had to spend so much time with each other -- twenty minutes, I'd say -- but we were almost a random sample of people. To add to the social barrier we'd been intimately grabbing a perfect stranger, meanwhile trying to figure out exactly what she was capable of in terms of movement and strength. By some fluke the four of us were so darn POLITE: there wasn't a take-charge, natural leader among us, so it was like "Well, I was thinking that maybe this would work--" "Oh, you think? Would that help?" "I'm not sure, here, we can try..." "Oh, excuse me, sorry..."
In terms of social rewards, I think we were all happy in our own ways: the woman was thrilled that she didn't need to call the police, and the rest of us -- none of whom had been in any sort of hurry -- felt awfully good about saving the damsel in distress. I was also happy that I'd seemed nice and genuine enough to convince total strangers to follow me into the bushes.
The old man went his own way, and because the hiker and I were both going in the same direction but had never been in the park before, the suddenly-mobile woman gave us a guided tour of her favourite spots. Gradually we split off until it was just me in a gorgeous forest, under a warm and cloudy sky, in no particular hurry and walking on my own again. So nice!
---
Oh, yeah, my taxes: "It's busy," said the tax people. "Come back on Sunday."
Sunday, April 04, 2010
Subverted Expectations in My Old Hometown
I posted earlier today about the somewhat noisy environment I'm living in. At the time I found myself looking forward to visiting my parents in New Hamburg, so I could experience some of that good old fashioned solitude I remember so well.
Instead of solitude, I found out that my parent's house -- the one I grew up in -- is surrounded by a ring of six barking beagles. The house next door sports exactly SEVEN children. An angry father kept yelling at his dog "SHUT UP! DON'T BACKTALK ME! YOU SHUT UP!!!"
And then, amidst the cacophony, somebody began driving their team of snowmobiles up and down the gravel road. You know what a snowmobile sounds like when it's skidding over a mountain of snow? Imagine it instead grinding its way through dirt and rocks at 5kph. It's like a dumptruck, a leafblower, and an oil drill all at once, complete with swearing.
I can't believe it. My house is quieter than such tranquility. I count my blessings, over and over and over again.
Instead of solitude, I found out that my parent's house -- the one I grew up in -- is surrounded by a ring of six barking beagles. The house next door sports exactly SEVEN children. An angry father kept yelling at his dog "SHUT UP! DON'T BACKTALK ME! YOU SHUT UP!!!"
And then, amidst the cacophony, somebody began driving their team of snowmobiles up and down the gravel road. You know what a snowmobile sounds like when it's skidding over a mountain of snow? Imagine it instead grinding its way through dirt and rocks at 5kph. It's like a dumptruck, a leafblower, and an oil drill all at once, complete with swearing.
I can't believe it. My house is quieter than such tranquility. I count my blessings, over and over and over again.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Creepy Pedro Reviews "District 9"
It should not surprise you that, when I accidentally touched the grease of a Hollywood Scriptwriter's typewriter, I began to transform into a Hollywood Scriptwriter myself.
This first manifested as a paunchy sadness. My doctor, instead of giving me Milk of Magnesia and a poultice for my bedsores, hit me on the head and wrapped me in a bag, and the next thing I knew I was in Peter Jackson's torture chamber, screaming.
"I have an idea for a blockbuster movie, but I'm unable to to nail it down, you see," said Mr. Jackson, reclining on a settee with his hairy feet sticking out. "I have stolen a disused Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter from George Lucas' secret museum, but neither my Faceless Spouse nor I can make it operate." And there I saw the Faceless Spouse herself, gnashing and twisting.
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME?" I cried. "WHERE IS MY WIFE?"
Mr. Jackson applauded. "That's excellent! Your transformation into a Hollywood Scriptwriter is almost complete! We need you to operate the Hollywood Scriptwriter's Typewriter in order to ensure the success of our new movie. We want it to be about rampaging aliens that get all shot up. Other than this we do not know."
"I WILL NOT COOPERATE!" I shouted, but when Peter Jackson shocked me with an energy weapon attached to his belly, I told him that he needed to write a socially-relevant story with a strong character arc.
"Social commentary can be complicated and taxing to the audience," said Peter Jackson.
"Not if there are enough guns," I explained patiently, and both Peter and his Faceless Spouse applauded.
"We'll say it's all very maverick and visionary, and not a Hollywood action film at all!" said Peter, laughing. "If anybody gets bored, we'll say it's simply entertainment and not a social commentary!" His Faceless Spouse seemed to enjoy Peter's joke, and as a reward she shambled forth to push gruel into his wet, questing maw. This, I saw, was the source of their twisted bond: the gruel with flecks of meat, the laughing faces, the cynical horror.
Suddenly contemplative, Mr. Jackson stopped eating and pushed his Faceless Spouse aside. "But wait. I can't think of a single socially-relevant topic that hasn't been explored ad-nauseum."
"Xenophobic discrimination," I said.
"Is that good or bad?" asked Peter, and after a few additional shocks due to my predictable non-compliance, I typed out the first draft of a movie which would explain to viewers that xenophobic discrimination is both bad and pervasive. After reading it, Peter put down the script and said "That's really enlightening," and his Faceless Spouse gibbered mindlessly as though hungry for sex.
"But..." said Peter, turning over slightly like a sleek and largely immobile seal, revealing the engorged suckers which hung from his buttocks. "But...if we're going to convince the audience of such an audacious moral idea, we need to make them CARE about the goopy aliens. They must feel EMPATHY. Here's my guy from Weta Digital," and for the next three hours I endured a featurette about the design and implementation of the alien creatures. "After we film the man in the green suit, we digitally erase the wires and begin the sound design," said the guy from Weta Digital.
"STOP IT!" I screamed. "DETACH ME FROM THIS MACHINE! SHUT HIM UP!"
"Not until you give us a hook to hang the audience's sympathy on."
"LET ME GO! YOU CANNOT DO THIS! THERE ARE LAWS!"
"Not in Middle Earth," he snarled, and he barraged me with electrical zaps from his bellygun. "Give us what we want or I'll blast your stinking willawalla to the billabong!"
"DESIGN A CUTE ALIEN BABY WITH WET EYES!" I screamed, and then everybody exploded, and now Peter Jackson is rich, and I'm just sitting around and folding these fucking flowers.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Overheard Over Breakfast: God's Plan Revealed
One great thing about Sunday breakfasts is that I hear all sorts of religious conversations, but since there's no invitation for argument I can just listen in baffled amazement. Here's this morning's treat:
I don't even know where to start with this, so I won't, except to say that when I told Jay about this afterward he said "So the lesson here is that God's a JERK."
"I just realized that Doris' situation was all part of God's plan. She and Ted divorced and had all that trouble with custody, and then she messed around and married the other guy and they had two kids but it was nothing but problems, and now she's realized that Ted really was the right one after all, so she's getting another divorce. It's like God was guiding her to Ted all along!"!!!
I don't even know where to start with this, so I won't, except to say that when I told Jay about this afterward he said "So the lesson here is that God's a JERK."
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