All Eyes on Me

Court jester going "Woe!"

Sat, 21 Dec 2024 17:41:53 GMT

There was this funny thing my mother used to do-- I suppose this joke or reference she'd make sometimes --when she thought somebody was being overdramatic about a situation. It's a little tricky to describe, but basically she'd hold up her hand, palm facing front with fingers spread, and shake it, while saying in a kind of wobbly voice, "Woe!" It was meant to indicate that the situation wasn't that big a deal, and she felt somebody was being a little silly being so miffed about it. While the meaning of the gesture is clear without a ton of explanation, I somehow also got an impression of where the gesture came from, so to speak, and I can't recall where I got it from.

I have always been under the impression that the bit was meant to represent a court jester holding a little head-on-a-stick version of himself-- Google tells me this is called a marotte --acting as a Greek chorus to whatever the king said. So, like, if the king is lamenting some terrible thing, the jester backs him up by shaking the head-on-a-stick and crying "Woe!" In my mom's impression, the wiggling raised hand is meant to represent the jingling marotte, and the "Woe!" becomes sarcastic.

Thing is, I don't know where this understanding of the gesture came from. I can't remember if Mom ever explained to me that that was what she was doing, or if I actually saw it somewhere and put two and two together. Wish I could ask her. Has anybody ever seen something like this? Or did I complete hallucinate this explanation and graft it onto that weird little thing my mom did?

I don't know why I was thinking about this today, but it came into my head.

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Not as clever as I like to think I am

Mon, 21 Oct 2024 20:37:43 GMT

I just remembered something that kind of made me laugh.

Years ago, I was writing a small, short, funny larp that was supposed to capture the feel of the Blandings stories of P.G. Wodehouse. None of his characters, but that kind of silly rich people in that kind of Interwar British country world. In that vein, I wrote a character kind of like the Honorable Freddie Threepwood, a good-natured but stupid posh ne'er-do-well, whom I named Gavin Alaric Post II-- in honor of his mother's beloved late bichon frisé, whose portrait still hung on the manor wall, to remind the second Gavin of all he could never live up to.

(That is, in my opinion, the second best joke in the game. The first is, of course, the reason why the earl's prize show pig Persephone is currently unable to compete, having come down with a case of porcine ennui.)

Anyway, one of Gavin's current problems, as shiftless Wodehouse gentlemen of his station are wont, is that he has fallen in love with a chorus girl, but already has a history of romantic entanglement with her sister. I decided to name his current lady love Bonnie Day as a bit of a cute pun, "bonne ideé" being the French for "good idea." It struck me then, that it might be equally amusing to call his former paramour "Molly Day," as my schoolgirl French led me to remember that "mal" is often the word for "bad".

I was feeling quite pleased with myself until, out of an abundance of prudence, I happen to actually look up how you say "bad idea" in French-- which as it turns out, is not "mal ideé" but actually "mauvais ideé". Yet again, I fail my many, many years of French education! I was quite put out, since I was feeling so smug in my own cleverness.

I can't remember if I used it anyway. Heh, I probably did. Even if it may have made me look dumb rather than clever! But I just laughed so much at the idea, I don't know if I could resist...

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Warwick Davis has a beautiful face

Fri, 27 Jan 2023 01:43:57 GMT

It made me smile to learn that they were making a sequel series to Willow, the 1988 fantasy movie starring Warwick Davis. Normally I’m not a huge fan of decades-later sequels, but Willow has a special place in my heart, and I’m kind of happy to hear there’s new interest in it. It’s not exactly an amazing film, but I’ve enjoyed it since I was young. And there are two particular things about it, in my opinion, that made it special.

The first of which is Warwick Davis himself. I think that in a less ableist world, he would have become not just, like, a beloved specialty actor, but a star— if nothing else, maybe something like Peter Dinklage. He’s not a thespian on Dinklage’s level, but he is an utterly charming and engaging screen presence. And he’s just wonderful as Willow Ufgood. Compelling, lovable, sympathetic, believable. I was floored to learn he was just eighteen years old when he played that role— to carry a whole film like that so young is quite a feat. And he has the most beautiful face. I remember being struck by it when I was small and the impression of it never left me. A face made to be onscreen, full of expression and life, with a light of its own. Willow’s face is so beautiful.

The second is the kind of hero Willow is. He is the one who goes on the quest not because he is a great warrior, or an aspiring sorcerer. It’s because he’s a father. The task is to see that a special baby is saved from the witch who is hunting her, and Willow has to be the one to do it, because he has come to love her and knows how to care for her. Willow has the sweetest little family, a wife and two children he loves, and they don’t have to die to further his growth; he’s just delighted to get to come back to them. And I particularly love how baby care is explicitly part of what he brings to the adventure. Willow often references what to feed her, changing her, how to transport her safely, a depiction of parental tenderness that is so rarely seen in male adventure heroes. His heroism is in love and compassion above all. It’s one of the reasons I was so impressed to hear he was only eighteen years old, that such a young person was so believable as a family man, while still feeling quite young. In fact, I think this young man as a father while setting off on adventure inspired me when I was conceiving of Nathaniel Hawking, who also has two little kids at the beginning of his journey.

Bernie and I rewatched the movie the other night, and I enjoyed it as much as I ever have. We’ve started the new series, which honestly is just okay, but I’m liking it all the same. Willow deserves a little more love for being something special.

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Chocolate Oreo dream pie

Sat, 12 Feb 2022 19:34:24 GMT

For the first time as an adult and after many, many years, I have made my favorite dessert as a child— a chocolate dream pie in an Oreo crust.

My mother wouldn’t make a lot of processed desserts when we were growing up, but this is the one. Dream whip mixed with pudding mix and milk, beaten to a fluffy consistency and chilled, in a crust made out of Oreo cookies. My favorite thing to eat in the world as a little kid.

My tastes as an adult don’t run as a sweet as they did when I was a kid, so I’m not a hundred percent sure I’ll like it anymore. But it’s chilling in the fridge now, and I’m excited to try.

I have sampled it now. It’s a LOT, so I can’t exactly inhale it the way I used to when I was little. But it’s very tasty, and even though I’m not a person with a lot of sensory memories, I took a bite and it tasted like a dozen Christmases. 🙂 That made me smile.

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A closet called CLOSET

Fri, 10 Jul 2020 17:55:14 GMT

I should be asleep. But instead all I can think about is how, in the most 70’s interior design feature of all time, there was a closet labeled “closet” in the negative space of an earth tone racing stripe painted across the apartment in Welcome Back, Kotter.

Why can I not find a clearer picture of this, the most deeply iconic of bad taste in 1970s aesthetics? Why are there not more images of the closet labeled “closet”?

When I was a kid, I would sneak out of bed at night sometimes to watch Nick at Nite, which exposed me to Welcome Back, Kotter. The existence of the “closet” closet has obsessed me ever since.

Ah, here we go. The CLOSET:

What's funny is in my child's memory it was EVEN BIGGER and WEIRDER LOOKING. I recalled it as being burnt orange, and climbing up the whole wall in groovy 70s font. Compared to that, the reality is almost subtle and tasteful. Oh, the whimsy of childhood.

Clearly this is a home decor project I must pursue. ONLY MINE SHALL MATCH MY BLUE AND WHITE OLD LADY COLOR SCHEME. Can't you just see it here?

When I have a real person house, I will label EVERY door with CLOSET.

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A writing hero who became a bete noire

Sat, 16 Mar 2019 04:24:25 GMT

There's a writer whose work I really loved by the name of Christine Morgan.

She's not famous, or at least not more than Internet-famous, and only back in the early days of the concept. I came upon her when I was in high school or so, when I was rediscovering my love for the 90s Disney animated show "Gargoyles." She was known as basically THE premier writer of Gargoyles fan fiction. She wrote over a hundred stories, including multi-installment spinoffs, building upon the existing narrative to make her own decades-spanning cosmology, and it was wonderful. Beautifully written, evocative, cohesive, engaging, and often sexy— her stories were the first erotica I ever read. I followed her obsessively for years, and she never disappointed, even when she brought her massive series to a conclusion to focus on original work. She captured the tone of the show so effectively, she used words so masterfully, she carried out character arcs so powerfully. The way she wrote Goliath and Elisa had a profound impact on the way I think of romance to this day.

When she transitioned to mostly original work, I followed her into that as well. She was an old-school roleplay gamer, and published novels that took place in a campaign setting she'd made. Generally I dislike "game fiction" for the way it tends to sacrifice literary merit for gratifying its creator, but she even made that work. I even bought horror novels— which at the time I was a little ooky about —because she wrote them. As time went by, I kind of lost track of her, but to this day I truly believe she is a great writer.

But even though she's still writing to this day, it strikes me that she never really... made it. Most if not all of her novels, including those early ones that I read, are self-published. She seems to fairly regularly get stories in fantasy, horror, or erotica anthologies, but they all appear to be what could charitably be described as "indie press." I mean no disrespect, as God knows what a rough game writing is, but I kind of expected more. She genuinely has the skill. And she could get shit DONE; she always wrote so fast, and generated an incredible amount of work. Why did she never manage to get published— at least, by any entity that seems at all serious, or at least not incredibly niche?

Was that not her goal? Did she not submit to more mainstream publishers? Was she bad at querying and couldn't get attention? Was the nature of her work— often kind of grindhouse-y in subject matter, like extreme horror or straight-up pornographic — prohibitive to that? Or did she just never get picked up, despite the fact that she really could put a story together? How could someone so talented have stayed so... small time?

I don't know. Maybe to her, she's exactly where she wants to be, with exactly the career she aimed for. But I guess, with my toxic level of ambition, I couldn't help but expect more. It kind of haunts me. If she couldn't really make it— someone with talent, creativity, and an incredible work ethic —what chance do the rest of us have?

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