So another thing that terrified me when I was a kid was this:
This nightmare was brought to me courtesy of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. The Ceti eel, which I'm sure is a perfectly lovely little creature when it's not busy crawling into people's ears and wrapping itself around their cerebral cortex and then slowly killing them, also looks fetching when emerging from an ear:
It didn't help that the 1980s were the decade of the earwig, at least when it came to the basement of my family home. They skittered around just out of sight. They skittered around in plain sight. They would find cosy places (usually in or around things I liked and had a tendency to want to play with) and curl up there and then wriggle around energetically when they were discovered.
When I was in grade two or thereabouts, I got some lovely small glass bottles from Science City and proceeded to pretend to be a hardboiled detective and take dramatic swigs from them (while writing down secrets notes and smoking a pencil—oldtimey movies on PBS warp children way more than video games and communism) and inevitably the whole thing ended in disaster when I polished off a shot of earwig.
So in public school, I was haunted by the idea that earwigs wanted to get inside my head.
My mother, a resourceful, creative, and patient parent, proved herself to be a veritable genius when responding to my earwig/science-fiction eel-in-brain phobia. She made up a story about a young boy who was very lonely. One day, she said, this boy met a young earwig who was also very lonely. The young earwig then crawled inside the little boy's head. From that point on, they went everywhere together and the two of them became the best of friends.
Bizarrely enough, because of my mother's storytelling intervention, I went from fearing that a devious crawly thing would slither inside my ear to feeling like no human relationship would ever be as intimate or as fulfilling as one between a boy and his brain bug.
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I recently re-watched a movie that is noteworthy for being quite good and for featuring a female lead who is, in my always-nuanced opinion, totally grating and charmless. The film is Four Weddings and A Funeral, and it is generally charming enough that one forgets that Hugh Grant received sexual favours from a prostitute in his car and can overlook the fact that the climax of the film involves Grant's character jilting a fish-faced, but well-meaning, woman during what's supposed to be their wedding ceremony.
It is even charming enough that, if one concentrates enough on the cheerful buoyancy of Grant's hair and the quippiness of Grant's quips, one can overlook the presence of Andie MacDowell.
She has to be one of the least charismatic, least believable, least likable female characters in any romantic comedy EVER. Grant trips about being hapless and delightful and pining over a woman so unredeemed by anything appealing that ones questions whether he's really a man worth pining over himself, seeing as how he's gone mad. Plus, Kristin Scott Thomas is in love with him, and any man who chooses a drawling automaton over Kristin Scott Thomas is depraved or mentally defective.
Usually when I really and truly loathe one of the leads in a romantic comedy, I find myself really and truly loathing the movie overall. But I have come across the MacDowell effect before; in fact, to honour my first experience of it, it should really be named after Ione Skye. Any woman of my generation and my general cultural background who does not hold Say Anything's Lloyd Dobler up as the standard of boyfriendness to which all other men should be compared is either lying or as crazy as a man who'd pursue Andie MacDowell while himself being pursued by Kristin Scott Thomas.
Lloyd Dobler yearns and babbles, and then yearns and babbles and kick-boxes, and then proves the depth and selflessness of his love with a ghetto-blaster. The problem is that his deep and selfless love is directed toward a girl so irritating and so whiny that you keep expecting her to announce that she has to go into Tosche Station to pick up some power converters. Ione Skye's Diane Court does well at school and looks clean, but that's about all that can be said for her.
The male leads in these movies helped me realize that I like handsome Englishmen who banter and that I like handsome American men who banter. They also helped me realize that even if I did run across such a man and he wasn't busy (a) getting a blow-job in the front seat of a car, or (b) appearing in Con Air, he probably wouldn't like me anyway because (a) I'm not unusually successful or good-looking, and (b) he'd be too busy losing sleep over an attractive head of lettuce.
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I recently watched the last half of a movie I never imagined I'd watch the first or last half of ever again: Harry and the Hendersons. It's not the worst movie ever, and I was happy to watch it rather than Mark Harmon being all stern (he was busy being stern on almost every other channel I get), but I suppose it was an hour I could have devoted to, say, reading Proust. Or something like that.What I didn't expect was that watching John Lithgow being humanized by a giant, kind-eyed big-foot would send me hurtling into a vortex of pain - childhood movie pain. Harry and the Hendersons, you see, reminded me for some ridiculous reason of a film I saw back in 1984 - a terrible, no-good, very bad film that made me very, very sad when I was eight years old.WARNING: What you are about to read is full of spoilers. It is pretty much made up only of spoilers. Why you would be upset to find out things about movies you could have seen hundreds of times over since the 1980s, I don't know, but there it is. And if you have seen either of these movies (I'm going to talk about another one, too, because remembering the misery caused by watching the first one reminded me of the misery caused by watching the second one) hundreds of times, you are a terrible, terrible person who wants to support filmmakers who make young, sensitive, imaginative girls cry their hearts out. Also, by "spoilers", I mean "plot points I'm pretty sure I remember having been part of the plots of these movies, but that I may, in fact, have made up because I was under ten years old when I saw the movies, and my memory is not very reliable."So. In 1984, I saw Iceman. I just looked it up on Imdb and discovered it was directed by a man named Fred Schepisi, who looks like a cross between a jolly uncle and Freddy Krueger and went on to make things like Roxanne, Six Degrees of Separation, and, naturally, Mr. Baseball. Iceman starred Timothy Hutton, and John Lone, and Lindsay Crouse (Riley's boss from the Initiative [Buffy]). Here's the Imdb summary:"An anthropologist who is part of an arctic exploration team discovers the body of a prehistoric man who is still alive. He must then decide what to do with the prehistoric man and he finds himself defending the creature from those that want to dissect it in the name of science."That's right. There is a lovely prehistoric man who is very confused but wants to be friends with people, and a couple of decent scientists who respect life and feelings, and then there are EVIL, HEARTLESS science-y people who want to torture this poor, confused, friendly creature in order to learn things. Here's where my memory gets a bit hazy. For some reason, this man hates the sound of helicopters. And after a whole lot of "But he's a living creature! He deserves respect!" and "He could advance the cause of human knowledge! He must be dissected!" he is hanging out in his enclosure, the bad science people bring in a helicopter for some reason, and he freaks out, jumps off something and dies. He just dies. And all the kids watching learn a little something about moral ambiguity, and the suffering of innocents, and how life is tragic and awful and tragic.Remembering how inconsolable and angry I was at the end of this movie reminded me of how inconsolable and angry I was at the end of another movie. This one was called The Dog Who Stopped the War (or La guerre des tuques), and it was also released in 1984. That year was one that made me very sad, apparently. The film poster makes the whole thing look like an adorable cuddle-fest: Snow-fort fun! Winter hijinks! A big, goofy, lovable dog! Here's the Imdb plot summary (which I suspect was translated from a different language, probably French):
"During Christmas' holidays, the children of a village split in two gang to play a snowball war. But that half-tone war scattered some bitterness and make more difficult the mutual attirance between Luc, the chief of the assailant and Sophie one leader of the snow castle defenders."
The kids have a snowball fight. They build giant snow fortresses. They start kind of hating each other. There is a big, goofy, lovable dog. The children become more and more hateful and competitive and vicious. THE BIG, GOOFY, LOVABLE DOG IS CRUSHED BY A COLLAPSING SNOW-FORT AND DIES. The children realize that they have become hateful and competitive and vicious and decide never to fight again BECAUSE THEY KILLED THE DOG.
I believe I saw this in the theatre at someone's birthday party. During the closing credit sequence, all you could hear was the sound of dozens and dozens of young children weeping. One of those children was I. I knew those snowball-throwing kids were taking it all too seriously. Throughout the movie, I was thinking, "Come on, guys. You should learn to cooperate and be nice to one another." I already knew that kids shouldn't fight and be mean. THE DOG DIDN'T HAVE TO DIE.
Thank God for the arrival of 1985 and movies like Back to the Future, which was only upsetting because I kept thinking Marty McFly was going to make out with his mother.
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I recently received the following letter from a reader:
I am only two years short of being an official senior. My fingers are arthritic and gnarly. My hair is thinning. I have one or two chronic illnesses. My best friend is dying of cancer. My old house has never been renovated and it is falling apart. My dog is very farty. I don't have any savings. Do you think granite countertops would give me a much needed boost? If so, do you know where can I find someone who would be willing to pay for my new countertops in exchange for my "friendship" (wink. wink.), or something else that I can afford to swap (maybe the farty dog????)?
This letter presents me with an unusual challenge. For the most part, I spend my time transforming seemingly insignificant things into promises of future disappointments, disillusionments, and tragedies. I focus on how one unimportant decision can result in totally unintended and appalling consequences, or how one stupid, selfish butterfly in Brazil can flap its stupid, selfish, flappable wings and cause me to make an unimportant decision that then results in totally unintended and appalling consequences.
What I find it difficult to do is to respond in a flip, glib, or hyperbolically pessimistic way to someone already well aware of life's hazards and griefs. It's the people who burble on about how you should always be positive and how I should really read The Secret I'd like to trick into watching anything by Ingmar Bergman, followed by anything by Lars von Trier, followed by Up.
So, because I can't make snarky, negative comments about much of this, and telling someone her life might be really hard at the moment, but her sense of humour and her use of "farty dog" in such a manner as to make it sound like a euphemism for something naughty and distressing should really be a great source of comfort is trite and unconvincing, I'll focus on the one thing I can in good conscience catastrophize: the suggestion of exchanging sex for kitchen renovations.
It's entirely possible that granite countertops would bring you a much-needed and well-deserved boost. I also think it's entirely possible you could find someone who'd provide you with some countertops free of charge if you subjected him to your feminine wiles. The problem is, such a man would undoubtedly be either a) a dangerous pervert, or b) desperately lonely and vulnerable and dull and interested in you for more than your wiles. Either way, you'd find yourself resenting those granite countertops that initially promised so much pleasure and delight.
I have found, though, that feeling smugly superior to other people can also inspire sensations of pleasure and delight. So I recommend the following: visit the houses of people you know who have beautifully-renovated kitchens and bulging savings accounts. Then, concentrate on how boring they are, how much less funny than you they are, and, if they leave the kitchen for a moment, encourage your dog to fart on their counter.
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In order to really effectively and profitably catastrophize, it's occasionally a good idea to brood about something that on the surface may appear to be not much more than surface. This adds variety to the habit of obsessively worrying about things, and allows you to later reproach yourself for being petty and superficial. Which brings me to the upcoming Muppet movie.There are a number of things that went into forming me. I will now enumerate the ones that are least embarrassing: Star Wars, the Beatles, Doctor Who, and The Muppet Show. The recent incarnation of Doctor Who is not awful (although I seem to be the only person not charmed by either River Song OR Amy Pond); I never liked Paul very much, so the fact that he turned out all earnest and chipper and jowly doesn't really bother me.Which brings me to Star Wars. I don't need to belabor this, because I seem to recall others discussing this a number of years ago... I went to see the prequels, young and full of hope and excitement, and left, an old and broken woman without wonder. George Lucas, who took a break from cultivating his McCartney-esque jowls to break me, romped through the memory of a generation and pooed all over it.It remains to see whether we will now be pooed on by the Muppets. A new movie is being made. Jason Segel is making it. Jason Segel is kind of charming. Therefore the new Muppet movie might be kind of charming.However, recent reports indicate that Frank Oz is not happy with the new movie. Veteran Muppet puppeteers considered dissociating themselves from the film. So either: a) Frank Oz is right and I will no longer like Jason Segel and another childhood memory will be tarnished; or, b) Frank Oz is just upset because he didn't get to make the movie and is not, in fact, a glorious and magnanimous person, in which another childhood memory will be tarnished.Muppets fans desperate to reassure themselves in the lead-up to the premiere are reminding themselves that Oz might not be a reliable source in any case, as he was also involved with the Star Wars prequels. At least we know that since Oz isn't involved with this reboot, he won't make Kermit shoot Greedo in self-defense.
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Unfortunately, circumstances have obliged me to revisit my conclusions of last week. I am often obliged to revisit my conclusions, as they are frequently wrong. Perhaps thinking about things more thoroughly or researching would help, but I avoid such activities on point of principle as they are hallmarks of Socialism.At any rate, last week I concluded that gender equality would eventually be achieved at least in part through offensive bibs. But recently, a news item reminded me that we still have a long way to go when it comes to degrading boys as much as girls.Most episodes of Toddlers and Tiaras are remarkable for their awfulness and for helping you realize that, whatever you might think, your parents were classy and your youthful fashion sense sophisticated (and - full disclosure, I occasionally watch Toddlers and Tiaras. And Hoarders: Buried Alive. There's probably a German word for how they make me feel and why I keep watching them.). The show, though, has now lowered the bar of good taste to unprecedentedly low levels. Wendy Dickey, pageant mom and self-professed Good Christian Woman, dressed her 3-year-old up as Julia Robert's Pretty Woman prostitute character, clearly in a misguided attempt to illustrate some of the more obscure teachings of Christ.
I immediately tried to figure out what the boy-child equivalent would be. A pint-sized Joe Buck would probably go unrecognized by a pageant audience; My Own Private Idaho is most likely too private for the public Idaho and a reference to it would also perplex. And I don't remember The Basketball Diaries being a heart-warming crowd-pleaser or involving snooty retail salespeople getting their comeuppance.
Really, a caring Christian mother looking for the male equivalent of Roberts' beloved movie prostitute would find herself at a loss. I guess she could always stick to the Pretty Woman theme instead, and dress her beloved Bentley or Ethan or Jayden up as a knee-high Richard Gere. My utopic vision of a future in which both and girls are equally objectified and in much the same way might never be realized, but I'm somewhat comforted by the prospect of toddler hookers and toddler johns.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
We live in an age of (I love any sentence that begins that way) totally appropriate and defensible analogies. Wisconsin is likened to Cairo; Obama is equated with Hitler. I was going to write something wry and revealing about this enjoyable trend, and I was going to make excellent points about how responsible it is by way of a discussion of Charlie Sheen and Gaddafi. I was going to ask gentle readers to identify whether a quotation was from Sheen or Gaddafi and then make little waspish comments about how popular media outlets would probably ask gentle readers to the same thing, but unironically and therefore indefensibly. My constant and adorable pose of bored cynicism held me in good stead when I discovered I had been (unironically) scooped by The Guardian. Yesterday, they released their Sheen/Gaddafi version of Whose Line is it Anyway? (their words).I was both undaunted and loathe to be redundant. Thankfully, I found a way out of this bind by creating a Crazy Actor/Crazy Dictator quiz that involves neither Two and a Half Men nor Libya, but still manages to be current.Errol Flynn v Benito Mussolini: whose line is it anyway?The U.S. actor and the Italian leader have both produced some choice lines. Can you identify which man was responsible for each of the following quotes?
1. Yes! happy and happy when we grow old. For the day's getting on and the night's getting long. Darling please gimme your arm and we'll joggle along, yes, we'll joggle and joggle and joggle along.2. It isn't what they say about you; it's what they whisper.3. It's good to trust others, but not to do so is much better.4. The rest of my life will be devoted to women and litigation.5. Inactivity is death.6. There are parts of me that are Dennis Hopper.Answer Key:1. Errol Flynn2. Errol Flynn3. Benito Mussolini4. Errol Flynn5. Benito Musolini6. Charlie Sheen Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Dear Catastrophizer -
A concerned query: is it possible that pessimism could be seen as merelyapotropaic --i.e., unconsciously intended to ward off evil by imagining the worst (whereas optimism could be seen to be hubristic--i.e., asking for it...)?
It's absolutely and entirely possible. In fact, I think it might be unavoidable, especially now that I know it has such an impressive name. All the kids will be doing it ("Johnny, come down from your room right now and stop being so merelyapotropaic!").
It's also something that must be guarded against. Catastrophizers must sincerely and unremittingly expect the worst. They must not go unconsciously doing anything in a doomed attempt to safeguard themselves. No amount of negative thinking can protect you from all the terrible things that will undoubtedly happen to you.
If you wish to remind yourself that the worst really is bound to happen, just follow the following simple steps:
1) Watch any movie by Bergman.
2) Drink a pot of coffee.
3) Go to bed and cuddle up with Tolstoy's The Death of Ivan Ilych.
4) Remind yourself repeatedly that while optimists and pessimists may disagree over the likelihood you'll be killed in a plane crash or struck by lightning while falling from the 23rd story of a high-rise and suffering from small pox, no one, no one can argue that you're not going to die. Nope. Even if you miss every car crash and disease, you'll be dying at some point. You will no longer BE. Of course, it's also possible that your self-awareness will be compromised by senility before you die, so that might take the edge off.
5) Sweet dreams.
It's in fact imperative you do this, even if you are a devoted and dutiful Catastrophizer. As any PBS special or old person will tell you, our culture tries desperately to deny the fact that we're all going to die. We try to hide our wrinkles and our old people as best we can. We obsess over life-prolonging treatments and diets as though a acai-berry smoothie will cancel out mortality altogether. We avoid confronting other people's deaths by natural causes by, as I said before, shuffling off our elderly to old-person ghettos (unless they're wealthy, in which case they may be lonely and un-visited, but they at least get to play golf on a Wii).
Our popular culture provides us with no memento mori art. We have Beckett's Pozzo saying, "We give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more" in Waiting for Godot, but who reads that past college? Who actually reads that in college?
It's possible there will be more open discussion about everyone dying when the Baby Boomers get even closer to it. If they haven't already, they will soon be realizing that their generation is going to be dying en masse in the very near future.
And unless or until you have a human skull to stare at, keep this idea in mind: you won't be far behind.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
LOL! I am laughing so hard at this satire, it is difficult to write!!Some people, though, did not realize that because this letter was satirical, it could not be racist. The National Tea Party Federation (which the Tea Party Express belonged to even though everyone in it thought Swift's A Modest Proposal was really about eating Irish babies!!) expelled the Tea Party Express so it could prove it wasn't satirically racist to the gay, socialist, secret Muslims who run this county. You're probably wondering why I'm writing to you about all this. Well, Tea Party Express spokesman Joe Wierzbicki got so mad at the secret lesbian Unitarians who run the National Tea Party Federation that he said the following:"The Tea Party Express with over 400,000 members is by far larger than the Tea Party Federation's entire membership. Most rank-and-file tea party activists think we're talking about Star Trek when we try to explain who the 'Federation' is. Given the absurdity of the actions by the 'Federation,' this is quite fitting, since their conduct is alien to our membership."Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not in favour of it when secret fascists form giant, taxation-addicted governments, but when Tea Party activists band together to lead a tithe-enhanced libertarian rebellion, well, that's something else.
The thing is, when right-wing fringe groups join forces to fight secret Jon Stewart Bolsheviks, we stop being so fringe-y. We start being able to do outrageous things like influence elections. We don't like losing fringe credibility by forming larger organizations, and we certainly don't like working with other groups whose ideas won't fit on their placards, but we do quite like setting the national agenda and listening to Anderson Cooper say our names.
I would be so grateful if you could give me advice to pass along to Joe Wierzbicki about how to how to transform autonomous organizations into semi-autonomous ones that are controlled by the Tea Party and that agree to abide by the principles of:
Rampant reactionism
Aggressive anti-Communism
Capitalist boosterism
Insistent insurrectionism
Small-governmentism
Mongerism (of most things)
Live long and do really well! Thank you in advance for all your help,
An Ardent Tea-Party Supporter
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough. Also, I'm not very good at copy-editing, so if something looks wrong, it was put there by accident.
Today we will discuss the manner in which watching films can instruct catastrophytes in the art of cultivating fearful anticipation.
You know The Moment Before. A woman comes home from work. She drops her keys on the table. She changes into more comfortable clothes and starts preparing dinner. LITTLE DOES SHE KNOW (actually, that's another possible name for what I'm talking about: LITTLE DID THEY KNOW) that in her closet, determined and evil, is a psychotic killer. But WE know. The audience knows. We know that there is someone waiting, lurking, planning. And we know that she has absolutely no idea what life has in store for her.
There is another kind of Moment Before that has more to do with sudden and unexpected tragedy than it does with a psychotic individual bent on murder. A family sits down together at dinner. They are laughing, making fun of one another, waiting for the older brother to get there. They make fun of him, too, because they are a relaxed and happy family who know how to have a little fun. Then there is a knock on the door, the policeman at the door, the horror on their faces, etc... The audience knows what is going to happen, either because the film has cut to scenes of the older brother driving on a slick, icy road, or because the film has been marketed as a tear-jerker primarily to female movie-goers .
Watch as many of these kinds of film as is possible, eager catastrophyte. If you watch enough of them, and watch them in a responsive enough state, your life will be forever changed. Terribly, wonderfully changed.
Every time you get home, take off your shoes, throw your keys on the table, you will suspect that there is someone in your closet.
Every time you have a delightful meal with your family (which should be an impossibility, because your constant catastrophizing should be a blight on all such get-togethers), even if you have no older brother, you should be waiting for The Phone Call. Or the Knock on the Door. Anything really that sounds as though it could begin with capital letters.
If you learn to dread The Moment Before, you will in effect become both the character in one of these films (because you are the one who will be attacked and/or emotionally devastated) and the viewer of one of these films (because you, like the viewer, possess the knowledge that an attack and/or emotionally devastating revelation is imminent).
You will never arrive home or eat a meal the same way again.
Knowing that something is about to happen changes this from a LITTLE DID I KNOW moment to a I TOTALLY DID KNOW moment, which will be something to hold on to when that man bursts from the closet or the knock comes on your door.
Send the Catastrophizer your requests for advice and/or rationalizations using the form conveniently provided HERE. I will publish my responses on the THE CATASTROPHIZER page.
POLITE DISCLAIMER: This site is intended for entertainment purposes only. If you are not entertained, fair enough.
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