Baby Steps

I knew that this blog was coming up on a milestone, but as it turns out, we've just passed it. On August 13, the blog turned one year old.

In that amount of time, I've made just over 300 posts. Some of them were about as inconsequential as it gets; others were plain frivolous. Still and all, I think the blog has been just about the best thing I did for myself all year. Sometimes I think it's the only way I could have gotten through that year! It's been the only voice I had through some, shall we say, interesting times.

With any luck, the worst of it is behind me. Whatever's ahead, good or bad, you can bet I'll continue to vent about it here.

Many thanks to the kind indulgence of those who have spent some of their valuable time here. In the year since I started doing this, the blog received over 10,000 pageviews (one post, "The Peter Pan Syndrome," has had well over 800 hits all by itself). In the world of the blogosphere, where success is measured in the millions of hits per day, that's inconsequential. But given the nature of most of what I yammer on about, and given that I started the thing strictly as a means of coping, of self-therapy, that's not just Pretty Damn Good, it's amazing! I still can't imagine why anyone would want to read this crap, but I'm glad that there are people who do, and I appreciate the feedback more than you can possibly know.

It's nice to know that you're out there.

-- Freder.

Onward...

Casting around for images of moving on the internet, it dawned on me that Howl's Moving Castle was the perfect symbol.

I wasn't going to post today because even I am sick of my whingeing and whining. But I just got off of the phone with the movers, and I have a date: Monday the 27th, starting bright and oily at 8:00 AM, my furniture will be moved into the new house.

I can hardly wait! Life will be so much better all the way around once this is done.

As it stands now, everything is jangling and there are lots of things that I can't unpack because I have nowhere to put them. Living out of three suitcases and a bin is a pain, and it doesn't help that I'm so absent-minded! I couldn't find my razor and had to buy a new one. I still can't find the comb that I packed just a couple of days ago. I had an hour of panic this morning because I couldn't find the wallet, keys and checkbook that I had in my pants pockets yesterday at work! (It puts things into a kind of perspective when you realize how much you can't do without those three things!)

The cats will be happier too, although I fully expect them to subject me to another round of freaking out when I finally release them from the bathroom.

Last night was better. It was good to bring the television, DVD player and computer out from the old house. Even though I'm not connected to anything yet, I could still play DVDs and have something to look at while I ate dinner (the original I Spy), and did some unpacking and puttering around.

I put on the Hogan Peter Pan for that, and no, the significance of my current focus on that story is not lost on me, nor did I title a previous post The Peter Pan Syndrome on a whim. To grow up is an awfully big adventure, and I'm doing a lot of it under adverse conditions, awfully late, and awfully suddenly, all through this terrible year.

The quats are settling down some. The gas fire is a big hit with everyone except Honey. Whitey is no longer hiding. They are eating again. On the first day, Honey wouldn't even eat the turkey breast that I bought especially for her and Whitey. That changed last night! But she still isn't sleeping with me. In the middle of the night I grabbed Patches and was surprised when she stayed with me, purring, until I fell asleep.

I finally managed to get my hands on Tiger Whitestockings yesterday on my trip out to the house. She's in he garage now, but she's a day behind the other guys. She spent the entire day under the previous owner's Corvette, and wouldn't eat at all unless I was kneeling there, petting her. Finally this morning, she found the cloth cover I'd spread out for her, and settled on that.

It looks like we are not going to get the significant snow that they were predicting for tonight -- so I will make the trek out to the old house again, load up the car, and drive back into town. With Friday, Saturday and Sunday off, I expect to spend a lot of time out there packing and getting ready for the movers on Monday. Maybe, just maybe, this won't take as long as I thought.

Tomorrow afternoon, I close on that house.

Onward, indeed. . .

More fey than fairy dust

My current run of Peter Pan pictures would not have been complete without revisiting Paramount's 1924 silent version starring Betty Bronson as the boy who won't grow up. Bronson's principle qualifications for playing Peter seem to be that she has a good silent-movie kind of face and is utterly flat-chested. . . but in all other ways she's about as convincing a boy a Betty Grable would have been.

Her performance is as broad as any you'll see in a silent movie, full of posturing, posing and, worst of all, prancing about and flapping her arms. This latter especially invites some very un-PC Humorous Thoughts to float through my mind.

She also has a habit of flashing her eyes wildly, which at times makes Peter seem more like a deranged serial killer than a Lost Boy. And yet, J. M. Barrie was still alive when this movie was made, and Bronson apparently came with his glowing recommendation.

The picture is in most ways true to the play, although two different actors are used for Mr. Darling and Captain Hook, and there's a sudden and bizarre Americanization that takes place in the final act. The whole affair is made uncomfortable by such a ladylike Pan and a Wendy (Mary Brian) who is much too old for the part -- probably necessitated by Wendy having to appear slightly older than a grown-up woman!

Paramount spent some money on this in the form of a real pirate ship anchored off the California coast. Neverland (here referred to, most annoyingly, as "The Never Never Land") looks just great, and so do the Lost Boys in their fake fur jammies. There are some bathing-beauty mermaids, and all the pantomime animals are amusing in the best sense. In her few close-up shots, Tinker Bell is realized quite well in a long, flowing gown that appears always to be the center of  a windstorm.

But the award for best performance has to go, hands down, to George Ali as Nana, the dog! For me, this is the most fun part of the movie, as it's the closest we will ever come to seeing the original stage production of Peter Pan. As thankless a job as playing Nana must have been, Ali knows how to move and manipulate the costume to great effect.

When all is said and done, it's not a bad interpretation. . . but it is a pretty easy one to fall asleep on.

-- Freder

The Questing Season

Yesterday was my birthday. For my birthday, I got:

-- A prowler in my yard.

-- A minor car accident.

-- A broken light fixture in the kitchen.

-- And the news that the buyers of my mother's house want me to come down $11,000 on the already bargain-basement low price they were getting.

This is so very frustrating. The reason I moved forward on the new house was because the old one was being yanked out from under me. Now, if the deal falls through, I'm left with two houses on my hands and more responsibility than I can possibly cope with. It backs me into a corner and diminishes my prospects.

As the agent who did the evaluation on the house points out, it doesn't make much sense to take a reduction when the house hasn't even been on the market.

Today I close on the new house and my emotions are running high and very mixed. Because of the prowler I have had several people say to me, "Get out of there now!" and I look around at all the packing and moving that lies ahead of me, and I think, "Riiiiiight! I'll just do that little thing!" I'm all alone, people!

Yesterday was my birthday. For my birthday, I also got:

-- Lots of well-wishes from friends on Facebook.

-- A new secret room on Pet Society from my friend D_____.

-- A bottle of whiskey.

-- And my cats Patchy and Whitey sat on my Halloween blanket in my lap and we all watched Finding Neverland again. That's right, an uplifting film about death. This time, for the first time, I blubbered as much as the rest of the audience had the first time I saw it.

This morning I realized that one of the biggest difficulties for me lies in the fact that I don't believe in anything. If I could believe that my mother wandered off into the depths of Neverland, the way Kate Winslet does at the end of the film, that would be something nice. But I don't believe that, any more than I believe in heaven or hell. Despite my supernatural dreams that I posted about a while back ("Dreams of the Departed") I don't believe that the dead talk.

It's been proven that energy can't be destroyed, only transmuted. Okay, that means something. But it's impossible to know the answers, and religion is a creation of men, not divine voices, and a place in the clouds where a bearded old man sits on a throne and weighs souls is an even more ridiculous concept than Neverland.

In just two hours I will be closing on the new house, and now the impact that this will have on my life is even more in doubt. Everyone says that it will be a good thing, and I "believe" they may be right. But I can't forget the reasons why I have ended up at this juncture, which all put an unhappy shade over what should be a happy thing.

Wish me luck! -- But, no, I don't believe that wishes work, either. If wishes came true, I would not be here.

The Peter Pan Syndrome

Jason Isaacs as Hook in P.J. Hogan's delightful film version of Peter Pan

There are rights and wrongs in art as in life. Here are two wrongs having to do with J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan, before I move on to the rights.

J.M. Barrie gave a remarkable gift. For nearly one hundred years, his royalties from Peter Pan have gone to benefit the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children in London.

Now that the copyright for Peter Pan has lapsed and the character is in the public domain, the moral right of the Great Ormond Street Hospital is under attack by none other than the Walt Disney Company. In a move that can only be described as a crass attempt to glom the copyright of Peter Pan for themselves, their book publishing arm Hyperion has issued several new novels about the character co-authored by the otherwise respectable Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson.

It seems strange to be working in a bookstore and to ask you all not to read or support a book, but that is exactly what I am doing. By publishing these unauthorized rogue “prequels” to Peter Pan, the Disney Company is literally stealing from sick children. So much for the vaunted “family values” of the suited corporate criminals hiding in the shadow of Mickey Mouse.

In an effort to hang onto their bequest, the Great Ormond Street Hospital has authorized an official sequel of their own, Peter Pan in Scarlet by Geraldine McCaughrean. If you must have new stories featuring Peter Pan, please support (and encourage your children to support) the official novel, which promises to take the Barrie bequest well into the new century.

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And now, on to the travesty that is Hook. Anti-intellectual, wallowing in stupidity, this shocking rape of J.M. Barrie twists and contorts his play into a contemporary parable about finding one's "Inner Child." Despite Hoffman (who is fine), this is typical Spielberg soft-headed manipulation. Stay away -- stay away!

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On the other hand, Finding Neverland is more of a right than a wrong. It's merely an incredibly efficient machine for making people cry. The audience I saw it with all blubbered unashamedly. For my part, I am entranced by the movie's portrayal of the original Victorian-era stage production of Peter Pan.

*

But the real reason I'm yammering at you today is to encourage everyone to check out P.J. Hogan's little-known and under-appreciated 2003 version of Peter Pan. This is, by far, the best, most faithful film adaptation of J.M. Barrie's play. Somehow it manages to balance a modern approach and very showy computer work with respect for the source material. A terrific cast all up and down the line is highlighted by Rachel Hurd Wood in her first-ever acting job as Wendy, and Jason Isaacs following in the tradition of the stage play by taking the roles of both Mr. Darling and Captain Jas. Hook, and doing a smashing job at both. The delightful Richard Briers co-stars as Smee, and, in a major milestone that finally allows some of the play's subtext to come to light, Peter himself is at last played by a boy, Jeremy Sumpter.

This changes everything, and allows the play to breathe deeply. For the first time, Peter Pan becomes what it really was all along: a Romance. It's made quite clear that Wendy is on the verge of becoming a young woman, and her feelings for Peter are colored by frustration at his refusal to grow up with her. Meanwhile, Isaacs's Hook turns out to be something of an embittered Romantic, a Poe in Pirate Drag whose motivations in hating Peter go far deeper than just the loss of his hand. He's jealous, and choked with regrets so powerfully strong that he actually distills poison from his own tears (this is a detail right out of Barrie). In fact, he is able to manipulate Wendy because he understands her.

The one real liberty that's taken with the play happens at the end, when Hook discovers the power of flight and the final swordfight between him and Peter takes spectacularly to the air. Happy thoughts, to him, involve murder and lawyers, so, with the requisite dose of Fairy Dust, he soars quite well -- until Peter, in a very nice twist, realizes Hook's dark secret and turns it, fatally, against him.