Getting to know you

Its been awhile since I participated in a fun meme, and so here we go! These are "Getting to Know You" Questions from the Blogging from A to Z Challenge.

1. What is the most daring thing you've done?

Hitchhiking to New York City from Ohio, twice. And back! Also hitchhiked out of Candlestick Park after the Rolling Stones concert, and considering the acidheads who picked me up, that was rather daring, as well.

Speaking of which, I've also done my fair share of LSD, and probably your share, too.

2. What is your favourite article of clothing?

I love my vintage 'Doris Day coats' from the 50s, lovingly salvaged from estate sales, attics and such, but of course, I rarely get a chance to wear them. One is far too fragile to wear (although I did wear it for one season); the stitching holding the lining together has nearly turned to dust, and it really does need to be properly restored... the other is bright red and doesn't go with anything, but it's nice during the holidays.

But it is rarely cold enough in SC to wear these kinds of old-style heavy coats.

3. What is your favourite monster?

I love all the vampires in THE HUNGER (David Bowie, Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon), and Jeff Goldblum in THE FLY.

4. If you had to dress up as your favourite literary character, who would it be?

Hmm, not sure. I guess I could be one of the women from JG Ballard's COCAINE NIGHTS, but who could afford those designer-duds? I'll 'dress' as one of those characters after they become addicted to morphine, and just be naked in the back of a limo, perpetually confused.

5. What is your favourite fairy tale, urban legend or nursery rhyme:

I am terribly fond of all GREAT conspiracy theories, particularly the most outrageous and ridiculous of our time. I like the 911-truthers a lot, that is some highly-entertaining stuff, and there appears to be no end to it, regardless of the dedicated-debunkers.

Of course, as an ex-Yippie, I know all the JFK-assassination theories by heart, and I like to concentrate on Jack Ruby's role, as regular readers know. I also believe Roman Polanski was tipped off before Charlie's girls dropped by for a visit... that sudden trip to France has always been suspect to me. (I believe the worst of Polanski, always, and he has never disappointed.)

My favorite conspiracy theory these days is CHEMTRAILS: those "tracks" in the sky that are rendering us sterile. I urge you to study and learn and read all about it! I used to hear this story every day (for about 3 yrs) when I sold supplements, and then the overall popularity of the theory seemed to fade a bit. But I am still all about the CHEMTRAILS and I love hearing people talk seriously about them.

I also love Wilhelm Reich's ORGONE theory... not a conspiracy theory, but amazing and wonderful and certainly worth mentioning here.

6. What is a cause near and dear to your heart?

I am a lifelong activist, so there are many... right now, I want to continue the work Occupy Wall Street (and Occupy movements throughout the country) have started, particularly the strengthening of local networks (especially here in conservative SC) and progressive communities. Occupy and its various accompanying social networks have given us the tools, and we must stay connected and involved. KEEPING PEOPLE'S SPIRITS UP (in the face of unbridled right-wing attacks) is crucial right now, and that is something I am concentrating on too.

When people are in jeopardy, I tend to put animal rights on the back-burner, but animal rights ARE near and dear to my heart, also.

7. What is the strangest item you've used as a bookmark?

I famously destroyed a book by using a leaky-pen as a bookmark! YIGH!

8. Do you have any nicknames? What are they and how did you earn them?

Daisy IS my nickname, which I took from my late grandmother.

9. Name one habit you want to change in yourself?

Various food addictions that wax and wane. When I tackle them, I veer off into ORTHOREXIA, and when I don't, I can easily chow down on Reese's Easter eggs, one right after the other. No healthy and sane in-between seems possible for me in the area of food. I am usually in one mode or another (or on my way to one or the other). I chalk this up to a lifetime of evilll dieting, as well as having gone without food (unwillingly) for long periods as a child.

"Feast or famine" is something I have deeply internalized, unfortunately. (sigh)

10. Tell us something interesting or shocking about yourself.

Is there anything I haven't fessed up to on this blog? If I haven't, rest assured, I HAVE fessed up somewhere and I expect somebody will re-print it one of these days. ;)

I once dressed up as the antichrist for Halloween, with a bright "666" etched on my forehead in red-and-black paint, with upside-down crosses on both cheeks; swathed in black, with a black shawl. People took my photo at various parties, all night long, and if I ever run for office or get famous as a talk-radio maven, I expect to see these dreaded antichrist photos re-surface and posted coast-to-coast. (I guess I will have to plead drug abuse, which is true enough.)


Thanks to my beloved Deadhead friend Jojo, for this meme. THANKS JOJO!

Welcome to my breakdown

Looking at some famous movie-breakdowns and engaging in some general acting-out on this steamy Monday in the south.

I have helpfully catalogued some of my favorite nervous breakdowns in films.

Comments welcome, and feel free to link your own personal favorite personality-disintegrations on celluloid!

~*~

All alcoholics love this scene ... did he drink or not? Is a phantom bottle of bourbon as damaging as a real one?

Aside: I just love how Stephen King works in references to Maine in everything he does.



~*~

I have written about Roman Polanski's Repulsion before, and how great it is, despite my various "issues" with it (see link).

Here we see that Catherine Deneuve has totally lost her shit, and is afraid of a drippy faucet. As a result, big male hands start coming out of the walls... JESUS H CHRIST! If you are a woman, do not watch this at night, alone at home. (triggers and so on)



~*~

Unfortunately, embedding is disabled for this clip (as well as all of the others) of Charles Foster Kane's famous flip-out when Susan finally departs... but check those famous mirrors at 3:27... everybody stole from Orson Welles. I know most of the lines of the movie by heart.

~*~

In John Ford's The Searchers, Nietzsche's idea that in hunting monsters we must take care not to become monsters ourselves, is given a very good once-over. Although most Hollywood Westerns of the day were morally righteous and fairly unambiguous, this one sure isn't, and consequently didn't make a lot of money at the time. No one wanted to see John Wayne freak out, even in his controlled, macho fashion. It was UNBECOMING. And it is therefore vindication that the movie is now a classic. John Wayne's hyper-masculine cowboys (and impersonal characterizations) have not dated as well as his heartfelt, complex and true performance in the role of Ethan... which BTW, is also the name of one of John Wayne's sons.

Things to look for: 1) Racist or not, when they zoom in on young Lucy's face (19-20 seconds in) and she looks terrified and screams? I have never seen the fear of rape communicated so clearly and realistically in a film. (I realize it is supposed to be much worse than garden-variety rape by white men, but I still think the whole scene is primal.) As a young woman, it scared me to death. 2) Natalie Wood's sister Lana plays young Natalie as a girl, which accounts for the strong resemblance. 3) Notice the first part of this clip closely matches up with Mary McDonnell's childhood trauma in "Dances With Wolves"--wherein she is instructed to run away when the house is attacked by Pawnee. 4) Also notice at 2:33, the similarity to Luke Skywalker's home being destroyed; the scene is almost exactly the same. Both #3 and #4 are deliberate homages to the film. 5) Scene @ 4:45-- me and Mr Daisy sometimes say, "Put an Amen to it!"--when the situation requires. 6) When John Wayne desecrates the Indian corpse? (7:30) Viewers suddenly realize this isn't the John Wayne we're accustomed to.

It also shows us that he is becoming (or has become) the monster Nietzsche warned us about. A strongly subversive film, for its day.



~*~

I can't pick just one scene in The Conversation... so I hereby offer the trailer. If you have never seen this amazing movie, you need to rent it ASAP. Gene Hackman's finest hour, Coppola's mesmerizing genius; this is movie-making at its most wonderful. Hackman perfectly embodies an emotionally-repressed surveillance expert with a guilty Catholic conscience. Too great for words, and more pertinent than ever, in our cameras-everywhere age.

Stuff to look for: 1) Harrison Ford at 2:12; he has maybe 3 lines in the whole movie. 2) Teri Garr's scene was cut for first release, then put back in for DVD. As much as I love Teri Garr, the film is much stronger without her scene. Harry is a loner, and it is far more effective to think of him as not having a girlfriend, or anything approximating one. His infatuation with Cindy Williams also makes more sense if he is alone.



~*~

And the all-time greatest: "Here is someone who stood up."

I know ALL of the lines of Taxi Driver by heart. Every one. I enjoy injecting them into various conversations without people knowing who/what I am quoting.

But every now and then, someone says, "Travis!"

Nothing much to say about Travis... you either understand him or you don't.



Today's blog post title comes courtesy of Alice Cooper.

Repulsion (1965)

As my regular readers know, I am an old movie geek. I pepper my conversation with lines from old movies. I inspect old movies like old maps, old gems, old still-photographs...I wait for great moments, great scenes and great facial expressions. I know I have written about these hundreds of times on this blog.

I also look for mistakes; I find boom-mikes in the margins of the frame, I find hippies in movies supposedly set in the 40s (The Godfather has a hippie in one frame, if you are fast enough to catch him). Movies are like songs and records to me, I watch them over and over. I know them by heart, I know the climax and the resolution. I wait for the Jack Rabbit Slim's commercial to play on the car radio as Bruce Willis is running by in PULP FICTION. I wait to hear Luke Skywalker say, "Prisoner transfer from cell block 1138." (I love THX 1138 with a passion.) I eat that stuff up.

And I've watched Roman Polanski's movies over and over, too.

Years ago, I decided that REPULSION could be the subject of a feminist dissertation. The story of a woman's sexual disintegration and pathological fear of men (driving her to kill them), is simply a stunning, amazing film. The scene in which the incredibly beautiful Catherine Deneuve picks up her roommate's boyfriend's t-shirt off the bathroom floor, recognizes it as... a MAN'S shirt... and involuntarily gags... that is a great moment and a great scene, one of those I wait for. (There is also a moment of fun inside-trivia, wherein Deneuve receives a postcard from the roommate and her boyfriend in Italy, announcing that they are enjoying "La Dolce Vita"--the title of the Fellini film Deneuve's former partner, Marcello Mastroianni, made in 1960.)

The scene in which Deneuve thinks she sees a man behind her in the mirror is utterly terrifying, and has been used by every horror-movie director in the world... but as far as I know, Polanski was the first. When the church bells wake her up and she hallucinates a man in her bed, who overpowers her? Jesus H. Christ, people. And then, her famous nightmare, the hands descending from the walls. The maze of hands, groping, grabbing, seeking to hold onto her, to harm her.

Deneuve is being hounded, to say the least. MEN will not leave her alone. And don't lots of us feel that way, at certain times in our lives? That we are being forever hounded by men?

Which females in our culture are most likely to feel this way? Well, I know that when I did, I was about 13 or 14 and just becoming accustomed to being one of the hunted.

Put another way, I was the age of Roman Polanski's victim.

The last scene shows us a photograph of Deneuve as a scary-looking child, as if to say, the kid's always been strange, but even in this photo we see her jarring, uncanny beauty. By choosing a woman of such world-renowned beauty, Polanski is telling us that she deserves to feel hunted, because she IS hunted. Men throughout the movie, poor saps, want to party with her. She has been called one of the most beautiful women in the world. In a postmodern sense, we know who she is, she is Catherine Deneuve; and this pushes the film into a dreamlike realm. One can't help but think that she HAS been stalked and followed all of her life; of course she has. She is a famous beautiful woman. She has good reason to be afraid. Men all over the world have wanted her. Imagine, we are thinking, how that feels?

Doesn't feel good.

Deneuve stands in for all of us; her coveted beauty is suddenly frightening, a notable weakness. We realize there is no escape for her, because she is too beautiful. The "princess" fantasy is that every man will worship us, and Polanski flips this adolescent daydream on its head: Yes, every man will want you. See what it's done to poor Catherine? Her sanity is gone, gone, gone.

Now that Polanski has been busted in Switzerland, and both Hollywood and Blogdonia are ablaze with defenses and counter-defenses, let me make it clear that I believe Polanski is scum. Yes, a great artist, but total and complete scum. And this movie is how I know. Yes, right here in this stunning WORK OF ART, I see what a horrible man he is.

I see a rapist.

I've always seen him, the reflection in the movie-mirror.

It's like Woody Allen's MANHATTAN, wherein Woody is unabashedly involved with high-school girl Mariel Hemingway: How can you miss it? Certain film-directors let us know, in ways large and small, exactly who they are. And Roman Polanski projects his consciousness onto Deneuve in REPULSION. Polanski is the man who has created this character, after all. And it is his incessant interest and desire that has caused Catherine to flip out, to imagine men are everywhere. Polanski's arms are the arms that emerge from the walls; Polanski is the man who appears when the church bells ring.

Roman Polanski is the man Deneuve is afraid of.




~*~


Please read these threads for further Polanski discussion: Polanski Defend-a-Thon Part 1 and Part 2, and Getting Over It (by Lauren at Feministe, a must-read).

EDITED TO ADD: Her reasons are not yours (Shakesville)

~*~

Repulsion trailer (may trigger, etc)

Squeaky's out! Official Manson Family open thread

Wacky Squeaky is out of prison today!

Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme, Manson Follower and Would-Be Assassin Released from Prison

Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the would-be assasin who took aim at President Gerald Ford 34 years ago and the chief disciple of serial killer Charles Manson, was released from a federal prison in Texas this morning, said a prison spokeswoman.

Fromme, 60, had previously completed her sentence for the assassination attempt in July 2008, but was ordered to serve additional time for a 1987 prison escape.

"Lynette Fromme was released about 8 a.m. today," prison spokeswoman Maria Douglas told ABCNews.com. She had finished her term at from the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas.

Fromme took aim at Ford with a semi-automatic .45-caliber pistol Sept. 5, 1975. There were four bullets in the gun's magazine, but none in the chamber and an alert Secret Service agent grabbed the gun from Fromme.

At the time of the assassination attempt, Manson and several of his followers were serving life terms for killing nine people in his grisly Helter Skelter plot to start a race war.

Fromme told her defense attorney that she targeted Ford because she wanted to garner attention for a new trial for Manson.

Since I know everything (really) about the Manson murders, ask me anything. For a lifelong scandalmonger like myself, the loooong, far-reaching tentacles of the Manson Family (The Beach Boys! Angela Lansbury's daughter!) were like freaking Fort Knox. I've read all the major books, and not a few of the minor ones.

I am also familiar with all of the attendant conspiracy theories, such as Roman Polanski being a possible satanist, etc.

Consider this an open Charlie thread! No outright gore, please. Article/post linkage welcome!

EDIT: Wikipedia does not include GARY HINMAN in their list of Manson Family victims. WHY NOT? No way to edit, or I'd include him. :(