Touching the Hem Never Works Out Right.

Admiration is a tricky fiddle to play. 

I have seen a ton of celebrities from afar. But I have only approached a few.

With terrible results.

These two Eugenes have given me equal short shrift, making me re-question my interaction with the world. 

Eugene Hutz

Eugene Mirman

Both encounters were painful incidents that were preceded by myself talking myself into stepping outside my own comfort zone and initiating a conversation with both men.

Similarities in both engagements were:

1. Despite their reputations as entertainers, there was an extreme lack of smiling.
2. There was very little eye contact.
3. The animal in the situation was unclear. Were they cornered creatures or was I an escaped beast?

These were not just celebrities that I happened upon and were fascinated by the novel nature of their celebrity. It must be said that these men have produced work that I have loved and have pondered.

But these interactions left me irritated and, consequently, put me in a state of revision towards my feelings for them.

As I mulled over their rude actions, I gradually realized the source of the nature of their coldness. It was an unbalanced relationship.

Relationships succeed when both parties give and take.

A non-celebrity confronting a celebrity is always on the taking side of the relationship with no giving to balance it out.

As a fan, I knew far too much about both these men that they had not personally given me. I made the mistake of only talking about the very things that made them both famous, placing us squarely in that imbalanced situation.

I should have just talked about something else, like Ray Harryhausen or the incredible Tsar Bomb. (hmmm...maybe not. They're both ex-Soviets.)

There is one celebrity I know, though, that transcends all this.

You guessed it.

Andrew W.K. - Honorary Plebe

What Little Sense I Once Possessed

Two friends arrived from Ohio with tales of their upcoming country band, Ding Dang Dong.

Although they seem united in the nature of the band, they were divided in their view on the meaning of the name. One felt it racist, while the other felt it captured the regional sensibilities of certain parts of America quite well. 

I felt the name is a perfect example of literary nonsense.

Literary nonsense is a form of writing that injects meaning through illogicality into a piece of poetry or prose.

We don't know what Ding, Dang, Dong means. Yet, somehow, we do. 

Another notable piece of dongery is by famous nonsense purveyor, Edward Lear, as follows:

"The Dong With A Luminous Nose"

When awful darkness and silence reign
Over the great Gromboolian plain,
Through the long, long wintry nights;--
When the angry breakers roar
As they beat on the rocky shore;--
When Storm-clouds brood on the towering heights
Of the Hills of the Chankly Bore:--

Then, through the vast and gloomy dark,
There moves what seems a fiery spark,
A lonely spark with silvery rays
Piercing the coal-black night,--
A Meteor strange and bright:--
Hither and thither the vision strays,
A single lurid light.

Slowly it wanders,--pauses,--creeeps,--
Anon it sparkles,--flashes and leaps;
And ever as onward it gleaming goes
A light on the Bong-tree stems it throws.
And those who watch at that midnight hour
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as the wild light passes along,--
'The Dong!--the Dong!
'The wandering Dong through the forest goes!
'The Dong! the Dong!
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

Long years ago
The Dong was happy and gay,
Till he fell in love with a Jumbly Girl
Who came to those shores one day,
For the Jumblies came in a sieve, they did,--
Landing at eve near the Zemmery Fidd
Where the Oblong Oysters grow,
And the rocks are smooth and gray.
And all the woods and the valleys rang
With the Chorus they daily and nightly sang,--
'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.'

Happily, happily passed those days!
While the cheerful Jumblies staid;
They danced in circlets all night long,
To the plaintive pipe of the lively Dong,
In moonlight, shine, or shade.
For day and night he was always there
By the side of the Jumbly Girl so fair,
With her sky-blue hands, and her sea-green hair.
Till the morning came of that hateful day
When the Jumblies sailed in their sieve away,
And the Dong was left on the cruel shore
Gazing--gazing for evermore,--
Ever keeping his weary eyes on
That pea-green sail on the far horizon,--
Singing the Jumbly Chorus still
As he sate all day on the grassy hill,--
'Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue
And they went to sea in a sieve.'

But when the sun was low in the West,
The Dong arose and said;--
--'What little sense I once possessed
'Has quite gone out of my head!'--
And since that day he wanders still
By lake or forest, marsh and hill,
Singing--'O somewhere, in valley or plain
'Might I find my Jumbly Girl again!
'For ever I'll seek by lake and shore
'Till I find my Jumbly Girl once more!'

Playing a pipe with silvery squeaks,
Since then his Jumbly Girl he seeks,
And because by night he could not see,
He gathered the bark of the Twangum Tree
On the flowery plain that grows.
And he wove him a wondrous Nose,--
A Nose as strange as a Nose could be!
Of vast proportions and painted red,
And tied with cords to the back of his head.
--In a hollow rounded space it ended
With a luminous Lamp within suspended,
All fenced about
With a bandage stout
To prevent the wind from blowing it out;--
And with holes all round to send the light,
In gleaming rays on the dismal night.

And now each night, and all night long,
Over those plains still roams the Dong;
And above the wall of the Chimp and Snipe
You may hear the sqeak of his plaintive pipe
While ever he seeks, but seeks in vain
To meet with his Jumbly Girl again;
Lonely and wild--all night he goes,--
The Dong with a luminous Nose!
And all who watch at the midnight hour,
From Hall or Terrace, or lofty Tower,
Cry, as they trace the Meteor bright,
Moving along through the dreary night,--
'This is the hour when forth he goes,
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!
'Yonder--over the plain he goes,
'He goes!
'He goes;
'The Dong with a luminous Nose!'

I'm A Mean Beast and Cut it Very Fine

Before Video Week took over everyone's life at Man is Men, there was a discussion that addressed the inability of a certain E.R. Eddison to "Murder his Darlings" in his deranged epic The Worm Ouroboros. 

To "Murder" one's "Darlings" is a sentiment echoed down through the century in the craft of writing in regards to an element of one's work that one may be too emotionally attached and, consequently, cannot make a proper editorial decision about whether or not the element enhances or detracts from the larger work.

Fellow Blogger of Writing Kristen Lamb writes a astute analysis of the concept here.

However, when one turns their eye to the phrase "Murder Your Darlings," one may wonder who came up with such a poetic decree for the unwashed hordes of sentimental scribblers.

It is this man. 

His name was Arthur Quiller-Couch and he set the tempo and tone for literary tastes during the first part of the 20th Century. 

Just as Anna Wintour was a taste maker in the world of fashion through Vogue magazine, Quiller-Couch   acted as the arbiter of literary trends with his mundane-sounding Oxford Book of English Verse 1250-1900.  

He preferred to be called "Q." His office was called the Q-bicle. This is his tombstone.

Perhaps you, like me, have felt that Arthur Quiller-Couch has had no deep effects on your life. But, Q has been worked into the DNA of a book that has had a larger part in my life than I ever realized --Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. 

Grahame was so affected by Quiller-Couch's character that he fashioned his sensualist character, Ratty, after him.

The past century has not been good to the aesthetic of Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. After Disney got their sanitizing gloves on the piece, they transformed it into a very American cartoon, draining it of all the details that made it a unique piece that reflected the air of the day. Capitalization reaching a capitulation point with the invention of a roller-coaster?!

In my estimation, the only way to experience The Wind in the Willows (aside from reading it) is through the absurd stentorian tones of Carry-On alumni Kenneth Williams as follows:

I'm a Mean Beast and Cut it Very Fine.

Behind The Canine Foie Gras Cannery

I think we betrayed our American nature and were duly snubbed.

Underworld: Party Like it's 1929

Director Josef Von Sternberg was as fanatical about mood and scene as an art form then as Wes or Paul Thomas Anderson are today.