There is so much to do when a person is going away. Besides all the obvious, there are things like disguising the multiple trips to the car, so that people think you are doing laundry and not leaving your house empty for a week; adjusting the blinds just so, so as to make it seem as if you are always home; leaving copious buckets of food and water for the cats, and writing down all emergency information for the kind people (Eva and David, and occasionally Susan) who will peek in on them throughout the week; feeding the fish; making the bed beautifully; cleaning the bathroom; tidying up all the garbage; emptying the fridge of any imminent spoilables; watering all the plants, in-house and out-of-doors; making sure the appropriate light switches are off, or on, depending; finding the best t.v. channel that all the animals can agree on (I go through a week's worth and look at the programming on all the movie channels -- the cats are forbidden Oprah and Dr. Phil or any opprobrious talk shows), and making sure the bears' hats are on in such a way that they can see. I also have to clean out all my email, making sure I have answered everyone; check (nine times) to reassure myself I have put my low-sulphite wine in the back seat of the car (the neighbours are probably out there drinking it right now); inhale (but not literally) my armpits for excess smelliness because of all the sweating; anticipate the week ahead, and so on.
There is so much to do while a person is away on vacation. Eat, sleep, swim, eat, canoe, read, eat, do crossword puzzles, eat, paddle-boat, eat, luxuriate, eat, talk, sleep, read, eat. While we were at the cottage I also did something I have only ever found acceptable in movies (see: Hello Dolly!), partly because I am cynical and partly because I am superstitious.
I was hunting through the cottage for the one item I had forgotten -- Skin So Soft, which I use as an insect repellent -- and although I knew I had left it behind because it hadn't occurred to me at any time to pack it, I said in a loud whisper: Don, if you can hear me, if you are anywhere near me, send me a sign that you are close by and find me some Skin So Soft.
I know this was a ludicrous request for many reasons, the least of which is that the product can only be had only by ordering it from Avon (and is therefore not readily accessible), and the largest of which is obvious. I cursed myself the second I made the request, of course, because I knew I was going to be terribly disappointed as well as superstitious about having asked, and even more -- lonely for Don.
I am not sure how much time went by -- maybe an hour -- when I went into the bathroom and there it was: not my exact Skin So Soft (I use the cream version), but an even better sampling of a large-size more-than-half-full bottle of sprayable Skin So Soft, sitting there, waiting for me. As it turned out, I didn't need it for my skin. The mosquitoes were minimal (practically non-existent next to the fruit bats). But I did need it for other reasons, reasons that only Don and I would understand or know about, and reasons that anyone will know when they are walking around in the same-size shoes (9 1/2 to 10, depending).
There is so much to do when a person comes home. Empty the car; talk to the cats; ensure that the fish have survived; turn the light switches off; turn off the t.v.; turn on the computer to briefly check and mentally prepare for answering email; open the blinds; put the wine back in the fridge; sort the laundry; vacuum; dust; water the plants; plan to buy new cat collars and bells as a special treat and reward because they survived one another and the people who came in to feed and water and scoop for them; download the 1,147 photos, 789 of them pictures of the resident beaver doing the backstroke across the lake; find the perfect spots for my two new old glass birds -- one an opaque green, the other a cobalt blue -- purchased for me as a gift at an antique store in Muskoka; shower; fix the bear hats that the cats have tinkered with; reflect on the week that has passed too quickly, and so on. And you can see that the greater energy is dedicated to the going, or else why would I have written that part in the present progressive tense?
But as I sit here a few days later and write this first entry back, I think that if I am lucky enough to go back to the cottage next year, I am going to pack the Skin So Soft and not risk leaving Don behind. Cottages are wonderful things, and comings and goings are special, but there is nothing like that which we have in our own back yards -- the murmuring trees; the purple-blue fat-leafed morning glories; the old wringer washer full of flowers, and the afternoon sunlight reflecting off the bottles of ashes of those we love best.
Archived 2007, 2008
Sunday, August 30
Wednesday, August 19
Cheaper by the Dozen
I shouldn't have done it. I knew I shouldn't have done it. But there they were, at $3.33 a case -- three cases for under ten dollars. I said to myself, "I'll buy them for the cottage. A little treat. Besides, I'm not the only one who drinks them, so where's the harm?"
It was kind of like the crackers. The ones I bought last week, at the corner store. I went over for something low-fat, and they -- the crackers -- jumped out and bit me on the arm. "Come on," they said. "Where's the harm? [That must be where I picked up the expression.] A little cracker never hurt anyone." So I bought them -- a big box -- and took them home. I sat them on the counter thinking, well, somebody will eat these. And I can take them to the cottage. They'll be good with soup. Because everybody knows that everyone eats plenty of hot soup on a cottagy summer's day.
I suppose this is even a little something like the cupcakes. Hostess makes them, and they say Cup Cakes on the cellophane. That's the thing that makes them stand out. That, and the fact that they have little stars on the packages, too. Whenever I see them I want to sing Perry Como songs. Well, this week I wanted a tiny evening treat, and there they were, side by side in their small wrapper, sitting on a lonely shelf at the corner store. What else could I do? Two nights in a row.
So now as I sit here typing, I find my new underpants a little bit tight (like my mother used to be, but in a different way), and I feel the rolls of my belly shift under the weight of my tank top. And I wonder -- could it be the four cup cakes I ate in the last two nights, or does it have something to do with waking up in the middle of the night and finding Rebecca on channel six? Which is only another way of saying that crackers with peanut butter make a delicious midnight snack.
Anyway, I know I have to do something to get back on track, and as soon as I finish this can of really cheap Pepsi, I might go find out what that is.
<:^)
It was kind of like the crackers. The ones I bought last week, at the corner store. I went over for something low-fat, and they -- the crackers -- jumped out and bit me on the arm. "Come on," they said. "Where's the harm? [That must be where I picked up the expression.] A little cracker never hurt anyone." So I bought them -- a big box -- and took them home. I sat them on the counter thinking, well, somebody will eat these. And I can take them to the cottage. They'll be good with soup. Because everybody knows that everyone eats plenty of hot soup on a cottagy summer's day.
I suppose this is even a little something like the cupcakes. Hostess makes them, and they say Cup Cakes on the cellophane. That's the thing that makes them stand out. That, and the fact that they have little stars on the packages, too. Whenever I see them I want to sing Perry Como songs. Well, this week I wanted a tiny evening treat, and there they were, side by side in their small wrapper, sitting on a lonely shelf at the corner store. What else could I do? Two nights in a row.
So now as I sit here typing, I find my new underpants a little bit tight (like my mother used to be, but in a different way), and I feel the rolls of my belly shift under the weight of my tank top. And I wonder -- could it be the four cup cakes I ate in the last two nights, or does it have something to do with waking up in the middle of the night and finding Rebecca on channel six? Which is only another way of saying that crackers with peanut butter make a delicious midnight snack.
Anyway, I know I have to do something to get back on track, and as soon as I finish this can of really cheap Pepsi, I might go find out what that is.
<:^)
Monday, August 17
The Loneliness of the Long Distance Underpants
How long do we have to keep old underwear before we are willing to relinquish them? You know -- those yawning, gaping, over-stretched, wrinkled, seam-weak, faded underpants -- the ones you loved so much when you purchased them you wished you had bought two of everything? The purple-striped, the pink ones with the balloons, the elegant black ones with the tiny diamond shapes? What happens to our preferences? Where do they go?
I'm not talking only about tired underwear, but about things we desire one day and dislike the next. For example, last week I spread out, over the dining table, the white lace tablecloth, thinking how beautifully it went with the white picture frames and the bookcase; how summery the room seemed; how clean. But today when I went downstairs the first thing I saw was the stark white tablecloth, granny-looking and a bit prudish, lying on the table as if it had taken the room hostage.
I don't know. Is it me? It used to be that I could put something in its place -- a picture, a chair, a lamp -- and I would love it exactly in that place for decades. The wall colours I chose would be the most perfect colour choices in the history of wall paint, and the alignment of the couch and chair/s was always absolutely exactly perfect. I remember standing on the stairs on my way up to bed and admiring, over my shoulder, the configurement of it all, marvelling at my ability to place things just so.
Well, not any more. What I love Tuesday is not what I'll want by Thursday, and I have no idea why. My only saving grace, my only hope, is that as I sit here typing I can see, in my peripheral vision, the straw garbage container that holds three pair of my old panties -- one purple, one yellow, one white. And as I take a sideways glance, I can at least remember, somewhat vividly, the excitement with which I bought them; the sweetness of their touch; the surety that I would love them always, no matter how faded, torn or undesirable they might become. And here, for a little minute at least, I miss them.
<:^)
I'm not talking only about tired underwear, but about things we desire one day and dislike the next. For example, last week I spread out, over the dining table, the white lace tablecloth, thinking how beautifully it went with the white picture frames and the bookcase; how summery the room seemed; how clean. But today when I went downstairs the first thing I saw was the stark white tablecloth, granny-looking and a bit prudish, lying on the table as if it had taken the room hostage.
I don't know. Is it me? It used to be that I could put something in its place -- a picture, a chair, a lamp -- and I would love it exactly in that place for decades. The wall colours I chose would be the most perfect colour choices in the history of wall paint, and the alignment of the couch and chair/s was always absolutely exactly perfect. I remember standing on the stairs on my way up to bed and admiring, over my shoulder, the configurement of it all, marvelling at my ability to place things just so.
Well, not any more. What I love Tuesday is not what I'll want by Thursday, and I have no idea why. My only saving grace, my only hope, is that as I sit here typing I can see, in my peripheral vision, the straw garbage container that holds three pair of my old panties -- one purple, one yellow, one white. And as I take a sideways glance, I can at least remember, somewhat vividly, the excitement with which I bought them; the sweetness of their touch; the surety that I would love them always, no matter how faded, torn or undesirable they might become. And here, for a little minute at least, I miss them.
<:^)
Sunday, August 16
~ Bi Lines ~
It's funny. I don't know why I feel neglectful if I haven't written anything in this blog for a few days, except that I know it has something to do with my sense of uber responsibility. I also don't know why I feel compelled to add today a half-finished poem I began in the 90s (1990s) for my father, a man with whom I had almost entirely no relationship. Maybe it's because last night I saw the beautifully made film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others), and one of the actors reminded me of a landlord we had in Ottawa (right down to the 1980's butterscotch-hued London Fog all-weather coat), and I have always made a connection between this man and my father. Anyway, the day is too beautiful and Lake Simcoe is waiting, and Oedipus is far from my thoughts at the moment.
Travelogue
You looked like a sea captain’s son
Sitting in the corner with your cap on
Next to the hi-fi
Listening to
Just what makes that little old ant?
Hardly a boy your scotch glass
Tilted ice melting eyes
Filmy from early glaucoma
Hiding tears for your dead friend
Asking for a smoke
You muttered something about
Your golf game and
A holiday in the Bahamas
Where women with big breasts you said
Served tropical drinks with tall straws.
You mumbled that he had died
On his boat alone bravely
And with humour while the smoke
Rose up around your silver hair
Let’s dance you said to me
So dance we did around in circles
Saying nothing singing songs with
Frank Sinatra as if sadness never touched you
Like poison to your system
Grieving fatal to your will
You would have died there
In the corner the record skipping
Your scotch bleeding into the carpet
High hopes springing up around you
A schoolboy in a sea captain’s hat.
Jennifer Coffey
Archived Saturday, August 4, 2007
Travelogue
You looked like a sea captain’s son
Sitting in the corner with your cap on
Next to the hi-fi
Listening to
Just what makes that little old ant?
Hardly a boy your scotch glass
Tilted ice melting eyes
Filmy from early glaucoma
Hiding tears for your dead friend
Asking for a smoke
You muttered something about
Your golf game and
A holiday in the Bahamas
Where women with big breasts you said
Served tropical drinks with tall straws.
You mumbled that he had died
On his boat alone bravely
And with humour while the smoke
Rose up around your silver hair
Let’s dance you said to me
So dance we did around in circles
Saying nothing singing songs with
Frank Sinatra as if sadness never touched you
Like poison to your system
Grieving fatal to your will
You would have died there
In the corner the record skipping
Your scotch bleeding into the carpet
High hopes springing up around you
A schoolboy in a sea captain’s hat.
Jennifer Coffey
Archived Saturday, August 4, 2007
Thursday, August 13
Science & Nature
I have never been much of a science student, which in my day meant Terry Mazeika trading my English skills for her expertise in biology in order for each of us to pass. While I struggled away with ions, protons, neutrons and electrons, Terry toiled with metaphor, allegory, bathos (which she thought meant drowning in sorrow), and, bathos's cousin, the mock heroic. I just realized I wrote the mock heroic, which is so insiderish -- like when I lived in Port Credit and we used to say, "We're going to the Dixie Plaza."
Anyway, I have never been good at science, and had to ultimately drop out of both physics and chemistry. (The only thing I remember about either is the word oscillation, and that's because someone showed us oscillation in action.) I do recall more from my biology classes, however, like the day we were dissecting fish and how I opened mine up and began squealing, "My fish swallowed a pen! My fish swallowed a pen!" (At least a week went by before I realized that I had been set up.) My best friend Sandy cried, too, when we had to dissect frogs, and in fact she got up from our double desk and left the classroom for the rest of the period.
When I finished high school, despite having done well enough in most other subjects, I still felt stupid because I had been such a complete failure in the various areas of science. How fortunate for me, then, when I found out that George Brown College held night classes in astrology. This I was sure I could do, having devoted so much of my young life in the Seaway Restaurant matchmaking people of all ages and interests based on their signs. (I didn't know anything about sun signs in those early years, and now that I think about it, I have forgotten most of what I eventually did learn.) It didn't hurt, either (or at least not yet) that I had fallen for a Toronto astrologer (of whom mareseatoats later asked, "Mystic, or mistake?"), and what with the combined charts of his Leo/Cancer/Cancer and my Aries/Aries/Scorpio producing a bouncing Gemini/Pisces/Gemini ("Quadruplets!" I shouted), everything seemed in perfect alignment.
I shall leave that story for another day and installment (there's only so much stomach-churning a person can abide in one afternoon), but I can say with certainty how buoyantly I left my shift at the knives and scissors counter at Eaton's Department Store and headed off twice a week for my class, dreaming of a life with my new boyfriend (who, unbeknownst to me, was producing all kinds of astrological babies all over town), the two of us living in a third floor walk-up in Cabbagetown (which was then merely Cabbagetown, and not the well-preserved heritage pocket it has since become).
What I have been able to do, which I think is rather astute if not exactly Scientific American material, is produce analyses of sun signs based on their relationship to words (i.e., in other words, the best and worst of how people write). I don't want to reveal here the full results of my hard work, as I am sure one day I will win great accolades for my current work-in-progress, Behind Every Great Wordsmith Is A Sun Sign Just Waiting To Leap Out, (or my alternate working title, When Your Solar Plexus Vexes), but I can give you a little taste so as to whet your zodiacal appetite, as it were (and is). Here are some of my findings. (I offer up the zenith and nadir of each):
Aries: dogmatic/passionate
Taurus: imperious/judicious
Cancer: prurient/energetic
Gemini: ponderous/humourous
Leo: vain/vibrant
Virgo: disparaging/innocent
Libra: acerbic/benevolent
Scorpio: stinging/sweet
Sagittarius: callous/joyful
Capricorn: cruel/loving
Aquarius: bombastic/witty
Pisces: covetous/intelligent
Anyway, the subject of astrology came up last night, and I was taken back (in my head) to a time in Prince Edward Island when a day or so before my twenty-fifth birthday I had to have a laparoscopy. How surprised was I, then, to come home from day surgery and discover that my husband had arranged a special birthday party for me? I think there were at least twenty people crammed into the tiny living room of our thin-walled turquoise house out on the old Cottontown Road, and apart from the bubbling abdominal gas, I sat almost comfortably in my chair having a splendid time. Someone -- I think my boss's daughter, who was likely the only person there who could afford one -- gave me a pink-flowered Keepsake Azalea (which I wasn't able to keep very long, given my, as you would have expected, botanical challenges), and Michael M. sat in the corner in his grey and burgundy Velcro shirt and khaki pants, being especially funny, and funnier, as he drank down his bottle of Jack Daniels.
About mid-way through the party I went to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, I thought I ought to look down and make sure nothing untoward was coming from me, given that I had just had surgery in my tender bits area. How shocked was I to discover great swirls of steam rising from the toilet bowl? I stood up, hanging on to the wall to regain my balance, terrified. I came out into the living room, and asked an acquaintance named Crystal (whose last name -- no lie -- was Cross, as in Criss Cross) if she would come into the kitchen for a little minute. (I thought it easier to break the news and therefore remain calm in the presence of someone I did not know well.) I told her I had a medical emergency, and I asked her if she could spirit me over the bridge to the old Charlottetown Hospital? We conspired briefly, and telling everyone we were off on a cigarette run, we dashed as fast as her 1962 Mustang would take us.
Fortunately the waiting room was not busy, and I was whisked in fairly quickly because I had just had that laparoscopy. The doctor had me hop up on the gurney, and he asked me what my trouble seemed to be. I told him, as calmly as I could, "Spontaneous combustion." He said, "What?" I said again, "Spontaneous combustion." "How do you think that is possible?" he asked. "Doctor, I do read," I said. "I might not have a scientific mind, but I know what steam coming from my vagina means. Furthermore, I have two young children, and it is my birthday, and if you want me to live to see another one -- if you want my children to know their mother -- I think you ought to get on this right away."
"I'll tell you what," he said. "There's a woman down the hall who believes that whenever there's a full moon, as there is tonight, she grows hair on her chest and her feet, and becomes a werewolf. We are just now waiting for an ambulance to come and take her off to Unit Nine. If you would like to go with her, I will make arrangements. If, on the other hand, you would like to go home and enjoy your birthday, you have (here he looked at his watch. A person never forgets these things) ten seconds to leave my hospital. Before you make your decision, I would like to fill you in on one small detail: when warm urine hits a cold toilet bowl -- and tonight is a chilly enough night after all -- it produces steam."
Who knew?
I left.
The only memories I have about the rest of the night are that Crystal and I bought cigarettes on the way back home; I told no one about the incident for at least a dozen years, and, later that night, when Paul offered Michael a peanut butter and clam sandwich, Michael projectile vomited across the entire living room and all over my Keepsake Azalea.
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
<:^)
Anyway, I have never been good at science, and had to ultimately drop out of both physics and chemistry. (The only thing I remember about either is the word oscillation, and that's because someone showed us oscillation in action.) I do recall more from my biology classes, however, like the day we were dissecting fish and how I opened mine up and began squealing, "My fish swallowed a pen! My fish swallowed a pen!" (At least a week went by before I realized that I had been set up.) My best friend Sandy cried, too, when we had to dissect frogs, and in fact she got up from our double desk and left the classroom for the rest of the period.
When I finished high school, despite having done well enough in most other subjects, I still felt stupid because I had been such a complete failure in the various areas of science. How fortunate for me, then, when I found out that George Brown College held night classes in astrology. This I was sure I could do, having devoted so much of my young life in the Seaway Restaurant matchmaking people of all ages and interests based on their signs. (I didn't know anything about sun signs in those early years, and now that I think about it, I have forgotten most of what I eventually did learn.) It didn't hurt, either (or at least not yet) that I had fallen for a Toronto astrologer (of whom mareseatoats later asked, "Mystic, or mistake?"), and what with the combined charts of his Leo/Cancer/Cancer and my Aries/Aries/Scorpio producing a bouncing Gemini/Pisces/Gemini ("Quadruplets!" I shouted), everything seemed in perfect alignment.
I shall leave that story for another day and installment (there's only so much stomach-churning a person can abide in one afternoon), but I can say with certainty how buoyantly I left my shift at the knives and scissors counter at Eaton's Department Store and headed off twice a week for my class, dreaming of a life with my new boyfriend (who, unbeknownst to me, was producing all kinds of astrological babies all over town), the two of us living in a third floor walk-up in Cabbagetown (which was then merely Cabbagetown, and not the well-preserved heritage pocket it has since become).
What I have been able to do, which I think is rather astute if not exactly Scientific American material, is produce analyses of sun signs based on their relationship to words (i.e., in other words, the best and worst of how people write). I don't want to reveal here the full results of my hard work, as I am sure one day I will win great accolades for my current work-in-progress, Behind Every Great Wordsmith Is A Sun Sign Just Waiting To Leap Out, (or my alternate working title, When Your Solar Plexus Vexes), but I can give you a little taste so as to whet your zodiacal appetite, as it were (and is). Here are some of my findings. (I offer up the zenith and nadir of each):
Aries: dogmatic/passionate
Taurus: imperious/judicious
Cancer: prurient/energetic
Gemini: ponderous/humourous
Leo: vain/vibrant
Virgo: disparaging/innocent
Libra: acerbic/benevolent
Scorpio: stinging/sweet
Sagittarius: callous/joyful
Capricorn: cruel/loving
Aquarius: bombastic/witty
Pisces: covetous/intelligent
Anyway, the subject of astrology came up last night, and I was taken back (in my head) to a time in Prince Edward Island when a day or so before my twenty-fifth birthday I had to have a laparoscopy. How surprised was I, then, to come home from day surgery and discover that my husband had arranged a special birthday party for me? I think there were at least twenty people crammed into the tiny living room of our thin-walled turquoise house out on the old Cottontown Road, and apart from the bubbling abdominal gas, I sat almost comfortably in my chair having a splendid time. Someone -- I think my boss's daughter, who was likely the only person there who could afford one -- gave me a pink-flowered Keepsake Azalea (which I wasn't able to keep very long, given my, as you would have expected, botanical challenges), and Michael M. sat in the corner in his grey and burgundy Velcro shirt and khaki pants, being especially funny, and funnier, as he drank down his bottle of Jack Daniels.
About mid-way through the party I went to the bathroom. As I sat on the toilet, I thought I ought to look down and make sure nothing untoward was coming from me, given that I had just had surgery in my tender bits area. How shocked was I to discover great swirls of steam rising from the toilet bowl? I stood up, hanging on to the wall to regain my balance, terrified. I came out into the living room, and asked an acquaintance named Crystal (whose last name -- no lie -- was Cross, as in Criss Cross) if she would come into the kitchen for a little minute. (I thought it easier to break the news and therefore remain calm in the presence of someone I did not know well.) I told her I had a medical emergency, and I asked her if she could spirit me over the bridge to the old Charlottetown Hospital? We conspired briefly, and telling everyone we were off on a cigarette run, we dashed as fast as her 1962 Mustang would take us.
Fortunately the waiting room was not busy, and I was whisked in fairly quickly because I had just had that laparoscopy. The doctor had me hop up on the gurney, and he asked me what my trouble seemed to be. I told him, as calmly as I could, "Spontaneous combustion." He said, "What?" I said again, "Spontaneous combustion." "How do you think that is possible?" he asked. "Doctor, I do read," I said. "I might not have a scientific mind, but I know what steam coming from my vagina means. Furthermore, I have two young children, and it is my birthday, and if you want me to live to see another one -- if you want my children to know their mother -- I think you ought to get on this right away."
"I'll tell you what," he said. "There's a woman down the hall who believes that whenever there's a full moon, as there is tonight, she grows hair on her chest and her feet, and becomes a werewolf. We are just now waiting for an ambulance to come and take her off to Unit Nine. If you would like to go with her, I will make arrangements. If, on the other hand, you would like to go home and enjoy your birthday, you have (here he looked at his watch. A person never forgets these things) ten seconds to leave my hospital. Before you make your decision, I would like to fill you in on one small detail: when warm urine hits a cold toilet bowl -- and tonight is a chilly enough night after all -- it produces steam."
Who knew?
I left.
The only memories I have about the rest of the night are that Crystal and I bought cigarettes on the way back home; I told no one about the incident for at least a dozen years, and, later that night, when Paul offered Michael a peanut butter and clam sandwich, Michael projectile vomited across the entire living room and all over my Keepsake Azalea.
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
I'm just burning doin' the neutron dance
<:^)
Recycling
Come on! It's summer! What can it hurt? Besides, if you're not already a blonde, you know you wanna be.
BLONDE LOGIC
Two blondes living in Oklahoma were sitting on a bench talking when one blonde says to the other, "Which do you think is farther away...Florida or the moon?" The other blonde turns and says, "Helloooooooooo, can you see Florida ?????"
KNITTING
A highway patrolman pulled alongside a speeding car on the freeway. Glancing at the car, he was astounded to see that the blonde behind the wheel was knitting! Realizing that she was oblivious to his flashing lights and siren, the trooper cranked down his window, turned on his bullhorn and yelled, "PULL OVER!" "NO!" the blonde yelled back, "IT'S A SCARF!"
BLONDE ON THE SUN
A Russian, an American, and a blonde were talking one day. The Russian said, "We were the first in space!" The American said, "We were the first on the moon!" The blonde said, "So what? We're going to be the first on the sun!" The Russian and the American looked at each other and shook their heads. "You can't land on the sun, you idiot! You'll burn up!" said the Russian. To which the blonde replied, "We're not stupid, you know. We're going at night!"
IN A VACUUM
A blonde was playing Trivial Pursuit one night. It was her turn. She rolled the dice and landed on Science & Nature. Her question was, If you are in a vacuum and someone calls your name, can you hear it? She thought for a time and then asked, "Is the vacuum on or off?"
KEEPING TIME
A girl was visiting her blonde friend, who had acquired two new dogs, and asked her what their names were. The blonde responded by saying that one was named Rolex and one was named Timex. Her friend said, "Whoever heard of someone naming dogs like that?" "HELLLOOOOOOO.....," answered the blond. "They're watch dogs!"
Wednesday, August 12
Arts & Entertainment
Does anybody credit his or her sources anymore?
I have been spending some of my free time soaking up classic movies on the Turner Classic Movie channel (or is it a network, and if so, what is the difference, because I know there probably is one) and honest to God, if you name a movie, television program, catch phrase, or joke that was purportedly written in the last forty years, I can probably tell you the original source. Oh yes, I know. We're all paying homage. Well, homage is all right if you do so with grace, talent, complement, and credit to your source (see: The Office; The Hours; The Birdcage), but is that truly the way most of this re-writing and re-working is re-happening?
I thought the movie Babel nigh on perfect, but nowhere did I read in the writer (Guillermo Arriga)'s blurb a word about Before the Rain (written by Milch Manchevski), and nowhere was any credit or even any idea of 'borrowing' suggested. The situation comedy, Men in Trees, which is also derivative, is a story of a female relationship expert/writer who dashes off to a predominantly male community, with a weekly voice over by the protagonist herself. Shortly on the heels of this program (which I like especially for the outdoor shots), comes a sitcom called My Boys. In this show, a female sportswriter dwells in a predominantly male community and, once a week, there is a voiceover of the same style and input as the voice of Men in Trees. My daughter tells me there is a third program just released of almost identical thematic content. And what about Ugly Betty vs: The Devil Wears Prada? Or Wedding Bells and its recent predecessor? I am too irritated to go on (and aren't you feeling fortunate?). And please don't tell me about the no-such-thing-as-an-original-idea, because here are a few titles and programs that scream originality, and I can name them off the top of my head with barely a scratch:
Codco
Being John Malkovich
Mulholland Drive
Adaptation
The Milagro Beanfield War
Twin Peaks
American Beauty
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Ally McBeal (not my favourite, but fair is fair, and Sex in the City wouldn't exist without this predecessor)
The list is obviously much longer, and not all of the scripts were written by David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman. And it isn't as if all the stories have to be unique -- but the voice does, the speaker behind the words, the eyes behind the vision, and that's where my argument lies.
Apart from this small diatribe, Chris Rock's new movie is being praised as his best writing and directing achievement, compared by at least one critic to a younger Woody Allen accomplishment.
Speaking of short men with small appendages and enormous egos, I saw Woody Allen last night (also on the Turner Classic Movie Network) -- speaking of derivative and outright stealing from Ingmar Bergman -- in an interview with Dick Cavett. Woody Allen was thirty-five, so the year was 1970. (Thank you IMDB.) When I was a kid I had such admiration for Dick Cavett. Who else had the power to intimidate Lester Maddox off the stage, mid-segment, not a gun or slingshot in sight, using only words? But watching Woody Allen and Dick Cavett, together (and apart, as logic would have it) made me feel icky...these two '70s swingers -- sordid, sexist, and smarmily sickening. Worse, neither was half as intelligent as I had once believed and, worse again, how pretentious must I have been to have found their masturbatory pawing in any way attractive, and, worse worse worse, funny? No wonder so many women marched in the streets -- gaslight, anyone? -- in the 1970s. And where was Mia Farrow's head? (We clearly know where Woody -- if you'll pardon the pun -- had his.) I read her lyrical, haunting, sweet, candid autobiography, and I shudder to think she fell for that dickhead the same way I might have. If he passes for either art or entertainment, I'd rather shove a large kidney stone through my left scar-tissued ureter.
Anyway, I admit that this is a bit of a rant, but really, enough is enough. If you want to write for television or for the movies or for the Ladies Home Journal, trust yourself: find your own language, your own viewpoint, your own anger, your own truth, your own humour, your own words, and always credit your source/s. Otherwise, do what I do and write a blog. And speaking of Dick Cavett and cybernetic journals, I have a new name for them: Blogs: Where Celebrities Go After They Die.
Or, as my mother said whenever my feelings got hurt, "Darling, consider the source."
<:^)
Archived Saturday, March 17, 2007
I have been spending some of my free time soaking up classic movies on the Turner Classic Movie channel (or is it a network, and if so, what is the difference, because I know there probably is one) and honest to God, if you name a movie, television program, catch phrase, or joke that was purportedly written in the last forty years, I can probably tell you the original source. Oh yes, I know. We're all paying homage. Well, homage is all right if you do so with grace, talent, complement, and credit to your source (see: The Office; The Hours; The Birdcage), but is that truly the way most of this re-writing and re-working is re-happening?
I thought the movie Babel nigh on perfect, but nowhere did I read in the writer (Guillermo Arriga)'s blurb a word about Before the Rain (written by Milch Manchevski), and nowhere was any credit or even any idea of 'borrowing' suggested. The situation comedy, Men in Trees, which is also derivative, is a story of a female relationship expert/writer who dashes off to a predominantly male community, with a weekly voice over by the protagonist herself. Shortly on the heels of this program (which I like especially for the outdoor shots), comes a sitcom called My Boys. In this show, a female sportswriter dwells in a predominantly male community and, once a week, there is a voiceover of the same style and input as the voice of Men in Trees. My daughter tells me there is a third program just released of almost identical thematic content. And what about Ugly Betty vs: The Devil Wears Prada? Or Wedding Bells and its recent predecessor? I am too irritated to go on (and aren't you feeling fortunate?). And please don't tell me about the no-such-thing-as-an-original-idea, because here are a few titles and programs that scream originality, and I can name them off the top of my head with barely a scratch:
Codco
Being John Malkovich
Mulholland Drive
Adaptation
The Milagro Beanfield War
Twin Peaks
American Beauty
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Ally McBeal (not my favourite, but fair is fair, and Sex in the City wouldn't exist without this predecessor)
The list is obviously much longer, and not all of the scripts were written by David Lynch and Charlie Kaufman. And it isn't as if all the stories have to be unique -- but the voice does, the speaker behind the words, the eyes behind the vision, and that's where my argument lies.
Apart from this small diatribe, Chris Rock's new movie is being praised as his best writing and directing achievement, compared by at least one critic to a younger Woody Allen accomplishment.
Speaking of short men with small appendages and enormous egos, I saw Woody Allen last night (also on the Turner Classic Movie Network) -- speaking of derivative and outright stealing from Ingmar Bergman -- in an interview with Dick Cavett. Woody Allen was thirty-five, so the year was 1970. (Thank you IMDB.) When I was a kid I had such admiration for Dick Cavett. Who else had the power to intimidate Lester Maddox off the stage, mid-segment, not a gun or slingshot in sight, using only words? But watching Woody Allen and Dick Cavett, together (and apart, as logic would have it) made me feel icky...these two '70s swingers -- sordid, sexist, and smarmily sickening. Worse, neither was half as intelligent as I had once believed and, worse again, how pretentious must I have been to have found their masturbatory pawing in any way attractive, and, worse worse worse, funny? No wonder so many women marched in the streets -- gaslight, anyone? -- in the 1970s. And where was Mia Farrow's head? (We clearly know where Woody -- if you'll pardon the pun -- had his.) I read her lyrical, haunting, sweet, candid autobiography, and I shudder to think she fell for that dickhead the same way I might have. If he passes for either art or entertainment, I'd rather shove a large kidney stone through my left scar-tissued ureter.
Anyway, I admit that this is a bit of a rant, but really, enough is enough. If you want to write for television or for the movies or for the Ladies Home Journal, trust yourself: find your own language, your own viewpoint, your own anger, your own truth, your own humour, your own words, and always credit your source/s. Otherwise, do what I do and write a blog. And speaking of Dick Cavett and cybernetic journals, I have a new name for them: Blogs: Where Celebrities Go After They Die.
Or, as my mother said whenever my feelings got hurt, "Darling, consider the source."
<:^)
Archived Saturday, March 17, 2007
Monday, August 10
I'll Take Epiphanies for Two Thousand, Alex
We were driving back from Ottawa yesterday, chatting about our weekend and listening to the radio. Lynda Barry was (on CBC) talking about her past and her books, which led to car conversation about my past and about writing. (I am laughing as I type this, knowing too well the rigours of narcissism.)
Anyway, as we were rolling along in the rain, I was also thinking about having said, the previous day, to my son and his wife that life is full of useful epiphanies. I told them the story of the time in the late '90s when I ran through the Rideau Street Loblaws waving a $4.99 block of on-sale Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese, careening around corners looking for Don. "I know why my father didn't call me back!" I roared. "He was jealous! Because I was in school! It wasn't what he expected me to do. He expected me to fail." (Which is doubly interesting in light of the fact that I gave up that degree course shortly after realizing that my father was likely never going to speak to me again.)
Anyway, yesterday, as we were driving and listening and laughing, we got to talking a bit about writing, this part of the conversation engineered not by me but by mareseatoats, who has been wondering if I am ever going to finish that novel I began about fifteen years ago (if two pages of writing counts as began), picked up for three months in 1999 and three more in 2000, returned to briefly in 2004-05, and have dabbled at intermittently since.
I said that I was beginning to wonder if the excuse I have been using forever -- I don't want the journey to end (I am quoting a friend of mine, actually, who said this of me several years ago) -- is truly the reason I have not completed the book. I wondered out loud how it was -- how it is -- that I had completed a first novel back in 1991 in three months; have marked and corrected and copy edited dozens of stories, articles, textbooks and pieces of novels; have taught grammar, punctuation, style, syntax, dialogue and short story writing; edit our annual publication, and blurt out dozens of blog entries, and yet...
And then, like epiphanies do, it hit me.
My first novel had been rejected (and not once, but a dozen times). In fact, one well-known publishing house sent me a personal letter, discussing what their staff felt were the merits of my writing (another editor, who no longer published fiction, had referred me to this publishing house because he thought I could write, whatever that means, or meant to him). The rejection letter was so full of praise, in fact, that I wondered if I ought to have framed it. Still, there was no story in my novel, and there were problems with my protagonist. (I think agony and separation of church and state might have been among them.)
As mareseatoats and I drove along, I said to myself, "That's it. It's the rejection." Not the fear of rejection, but the rejection.
The dead mother.
The lost brother.
The absent grandparents and aunts and uncles.
The absent cousins.
The disappearing nephews.
The lost father.
The quickly sick and dying and then, and now (and forever), the -- my -- interminably terminally dead and too-young-dead husband.
The loss of identity.
The loss of a son.
The loss of two grandchildren.
The friends you thought you had and had not and, therefore, lost.
The veiled threats of loss that surround you all the time.
(And why am I writing you when clearly I mean me? And why am I using a question mark when I am so obviously making a statement.)
And then, magnificently, horribly -- their loss: of life, of daughter, of son, of wife, of mother, of father, of aunt, of uncle, of niece, of nephew, of cousin, of brother, of sister, of friend. Of life. Of life. Of life.
I used to say to Don, "Why isn't knowing enough?" Which is just another way of saying...epiphanies aren't much use to you if you can't make them useful.
Maybe today I will get back to my novel. Maybe today I will create new deadlines. Or maybe today, because deadlines have a way of scaring people (just look at my list above), I will remind myself of the thing I already know best: it's in the doing, not the done.
Either way, I now have a longing for a hunk of Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese and, more deeply, for a time when I was young -- but not too young -- and had no real way of knowing.
Anyway, as we were rolling along in the rain, I was also thinking about having said, the previous day, to my son and his wife that life is full of useful epiphanies. I told them the story of the time in the late '90s when I ran through the Rideau Street Loblaws waving a $4.99 block of on-sale Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese, careening around corners looking for Don. "I know why my father didn't call me back!" I roared. "He was jealous! Because I was in school! It wasn't what he expected me to do. He expected me to fail." (Which is doubly interesting in light of the fact that I gave up that degree course shortly after realizing that my father was likely never going to speak to me again.)
Anyway, yesterday, as we were driving and listening and laughing, we got to talking a bit about writing, this part of the conversation engineered not by me but by mareseatoats, who has been wondering if I am ever going to finish that novel I began about fifteen years ago (if two pages of writing counts as began), picked up for three months in 1999 and three more in 2000, returned to briefly in 2004-05, and have dabbled at intermittently since.
I said that I was beginning to wonder if the excuse I have been using forever -- I don't want the journey to end (I am quoting a friend of mine, actually, who said this of me several years ago) -- is truly the reason I have not completed the book. I wondered out loud how it was -- how it is -- that I had completed a first novel back in 1991 in three months; have marked and corrected and copy edited dozens of stories, articles, textbooks and pieces of novels; have taught grammar, punctuation, style, syntax, dialogue and short story writing; edit our annual publication, and blurt out dozens of blog entries, and yet...
And then, like epiphanies do, it hit me.
My first novel had been rejected (and not once, but a dozen times). In fact, one well-known publishing house sent me a personal letter, discussing what their staff felt were the merits of my writing (another editor, who no longer published fiction, had referred me to this publishing house because he thought I could write, whatever that means, or meant to him). The rejection letter was so full of praise, in fact, that I wondered if I ought to have framed it. Still, there was no story in my novel, and there were problems with my protagonist. (I think agony and separation of church and state might have been among them.)
As mareseatoats and I drove along, I said to myself, "That's it. It's the rejection." Not the fear of rejection, but the rejection.
The dead mother.
The lost brother.
The absent grandparents and aunts and uncles.
The absent cousins.
The disappearing nephews.
The lost father.
The quickly sick and dying and then, and now (and forever), the -- my -- interminably terminally dead and too-young-dead husband.
The loss of identity.
The loss of a son.
The loss of two grandchildren.
The friends you thought you had and had not and, therefore, lost.
The veiled threats of loss that surround you all the time.
(And why am I writing you when clearly I mean me? And why am I using a question mark when I am so obviously making a statement.)
And then, magnificently, horribly -- their loss: of life, of daughter, of son, of wife, of mother, of father, of aunt, of uncle, of niece, of nephew, of cousin, of brother, of sister, of friend. Of life. Of life. Of life.
I used to say to Don, "Why isn't knowing enough?" Which is just another way of saying...epiphanies aren't much use to you if you can't make them useful.
Maybe today I will get back to my novel. Maybe today I will create new deadlines. Or maybe today, because deadlines have a way of scaring people (just look at my list above), I will remind myself of the thing I already know best: it's in the doing, not the done.
Either way, I now have a longing for a hunk of Cracker Barrel cheddar cheese and, more deeply, for a time when I was young -- but not too young -- and had no real way of knowing.
Wednesday, August 5
Alan McPhee
One of the few comforting memories from 1980 is the sound of Alan McPhee's late-night voice on CBC radio -- to all of you out there in vacuum land -- a phrase I found endearing and reassuring. Nowadays, in this, our current Age of Cynicism (she said cynically), I often wonder if the overwhelming response to the preponderance of negative attention seekers arises from a generation of baby boomers who did a really poor job raising children whose resultant pervasive sense of entitlement, and its corollary (if not rewarded) -- negative attention -- serves only to foster the same. [I wrote this last sentence over two years ago, and I have almost no idea what I mean.]
What I mean[t] to say, simply, is that tonight I long for the quiet, confident tones of Alan McPhee.
I met him once when I was a waitress in Prince Edward Island. He came to the island the same summer Pierre Berton showed up snapping his fingers and yelling across the early morning dining room, "Waitress! Coffee! Waitress!" An overtly friendly Sheila Copps, and Will Miller from the Irish Rovers, made appearances that year too. Will was pleasant but upset with his beer, which, he said, was skunky. The bartender was in a bad mood that day (that day?), and alas, Will's beer made the transition from one glass to another, then back to the table. No complaints.
Anyway, Alan McPhee came in on a balmy evening and sat with several friends (or were they family?) at a large corner table, and he was as lovely as any one of us could imagine. Midway through the meal, when he asked me my name and I replied Jennifer, he stood up softly and recited Leigh Hunt's verse:
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
Anyone could easily see that he had done this for me alone and not as some grandstand gesture. I loved him. As he and his guests were leaving, he wrote my name and a few words about me in the comment book that sat on the credenza in the foyer. Over the summer, I must have read his note a hundred times.
There were cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born, the loveliest of them all was the unicorn.
<:^)
What I mean[t] to say, simply, is that tonight I long for the quiet, confident tones of Alan McPhee.
I met him once when I was a waitress in Prince Edward Island. He came to the island the same summer Pierre Berton showed up snapping his fingers and yelling across the early morning dining room, "Waitress! Coffee! Waitress!" An overtly friendly Sheila Copps, and Will Miller from the Irish Rovers, made appearances that year too. Will was pleasant but upset with his beer, which, he said, was skunky. The bartender was in a bad mood that day (that day?), and alas, Will's beer made the transition from one glass to another, then back to the table. No complaints.
Anyway, Alan McPhee came in on a balmy evening and sat with several friends (or were they family?) at a large corner table, and he was as lovely as any one of us could imagine. Midway through the meal, when he asked me my name and I replied Jennifer, he stood up softly and recited Leigh Hunt's verse:
Jenny kiss'd me when we met,
Jumping from the chair she sat in;
Time, you thief, who love to get
Sweets into your list, put that in!
Say I'm weary, say I'm sad,
Say that health and wealth have miss'd me,
Say I'm growing old, but add,
Jenny kiss'd me.
Anyone could easily see that he had done this for me alone and not as some grandstand gesture. I loved him. As he and his guests were leaving, he wrote my name and a few words about me in the comment book that sat on the credenza in the foyer. Over the summer, I must have read his note a hundred times.
There were cats and rats and elephants, but sure as you're born, the loveliest of them all was the unicorn.
<:^)
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