Goodbye to All That

Last night I said a temporary goodbye to Farscape with the final installment of The Peacekeeper Wars, the big, loud, messy, sprawling mini-series that winds up all the loose threads (and gives them a pounding for good measure) left hanging when the series was canceled.

No doubt the Sci-Fi network wanted something more actionful and less cerebral than the original series, and that is what Brian Henson (Jim's kid), Rockne O'Bannon and David Kemper served up. Spiny spaceships breathe fire and guns blaze at every turn. Blam! Boom! Enough already. Farscape was many things, but it was never boring, and the mini-series teeters on the edge of that precipice just for being so packed with running, punching and shooting.

The time could have been used much better and more imaginatively. The plot elements that need to be covered were originally meant to play out across the entire fifth season -- having to compress it all into just three hours puts a strain on the proceedings.

And yet, it's still Farscape, warts and all. One of the things I always liked about the series is that they clearly subscribe to Lester Dent's theories of Pulp Fiction. No matter how bad you think it is now for our heroes, don't worry, it's about to get much worse. "Make sure the hero gets it in the neck at every turn," quoth Dent, the man behind Kenneth Robeson and the creator of Doc Savage.On Farscape, the crew of Moya doesn't just get it in the neck -- they get full-body Trouble by the wagonload.

There's something soothing about this, in a perverse way. It's the same draw that a good Soap Opera has: the troubles that the characters experience make what you're going through seem petty by comparison.

The Peacekeeper Wars continues that trend with things like John and Aeryn birthing a child under heavy gunfire, and an alarming number of Major Series Characters who don't make it to the end.

For all the sound and fury that precedes it, the final third is actually near-perfect. Everything that the series has been hanging itself upon is contained in John Crichton's head, and we finally get to see what that looks like. It doesn't disappoint. Even Scorpius, who has spent three seasons doing every dirty thing in the villain's playbook to get that information, is suitably impressed.

And the ending is wonderful. All this time, we've been asking the Dorothy in Oz question: "Will John ever get Home?" It turns out to be the wrong question entirely. Home is not the place you go to. Home is where you make it.

Now I have to find something else to fill my Monday nights for a while. With all the packing I still have ahead of me, I've promised myself not to buy anything, not even a single DVD, until after I am moved. So it'll have to be a re-run. Y'know, I kind of have a hankering to spend some time with my old friends John Steed and Mrs. Peel. It's been years.


-- Freder

The day the fire died

Yesterday I found, neatly packed in a box in the basement, a terrific hooked rug that my mother made in 1962. The design was almost Mondrian-boxlike, with a different element in each box: half a sun, my mother's name, and more. I'd forgotten all about it; had half-forgotten that she ever worked in that medium.

She was so creative and did so many different kinds of things. Signs, clothing, handbags, papier mache fruit and flower arrangements, wooden carvings, wire creations, toys, jack-in-the-boxes, engraved leather work -- and sometimes combinations of all those things. She made the papier mache clock sign in the picture above. She was always working on something, in between raising us kids and doing many antique shows every year.

She sold a lot of it. I remember the summer she got the commission from Unionmutual to do hand-tooled leather bags to be given away at a company event. The arrangements sold at antique shows, as many as she could make. Some of her pieces are still on display at a pancake restaurant in the state capital. Her Jack-in-the-boxes were exhibited at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, Maine, which is otherwise notable for its collection of the work of three generations of Wyeths.

And then, suddenly, she stopped.

This was in the early eighties, right around the time she and my father divorced. The flow of creativity just stopped dead in its tracks, and another flow began, as she started to fill every corner of the house with antiques, toys, books, magazines, Disneyana, vintage games, Disneyana, dolls, teddy bears, and more Disneyana. Whether or not it was antique didn't matter. If it tickled her or struck her fancy, it came home with her.

She claimed to be claustrophobic, but she created a house that had one narrow path to allow a person through. In a way, the house itself became her magnum opus, a collage of Fun Things done on a colossal scale. It wasn't like the homes of hoarders you see on television. It was all neatly and artfully arranged, until after the operation to amputate her right leg robbed her of her ability to venture very far into the house.

When she ran out of money and couldn't afford to buy anything anymore, it made her so sad that she cried.

It was as if she was filling the empty space inside of her that was created when she stopped making art of her own.

My uncle O____ once said to my father, "You broke her heart."

It was a cruel thing for one brother to say to another, but it was true.

The Great Man Takes Wing

Why MCA's DVD release of The Big Broadcast of 1938 came as part of a Bob Hope set is beyond me, when Fields gets top billing and is clearly the only reason to watch the movie! Oh, sure, Bob introduces his signature tune, "Thanks for The Memories," and it's a nice scene. But Fields gets much more screen time and makes the most of it. And, since Edith Head designed the costumes, it's nice to see The Great Man look dashing for a change.

The plot concerns a trans-Atlantic race between two steamships. That's pretty much it: just a clothes horse to hang novelty numbers and comedy scenes on. The novelty numbers are, alas, particularly uninteresting -- most likely the reason why I didn't remember any of them.

Never mind. Fields gets things off to a smashing start with a whirlwind round of golf, careering around the course on a rocket cart and shouting "Get out of the way!" to a throng of cowering caddies, before putting the wings down and literally taking to the air. As the bad-luck brother of the owner of the steamship Gigantic, Fields is meant to sabotage the other boat simply by gracing it with his destructive presence; instead, he lands on his own ship and promptly shuts down the new radio-power invention that was guaranteed to win his company the race.

Dorothy Lamour is on hand, but she can't wait to get rid of Hope so that she can sing and smarm over Leif Erikson as the Young Inventor. Hope's three former wives are also present to insure their alimony payments. Hope himself is the emcee of the Big Broadcast of the film's title, which seems to go on endlessly.

Of course Fields gets a snooker sequence, cheating outrageously and blaming the other fellow. Martha Raye arrives, powering a lifeboat with her own Mighty Lungs, and turns out to be Fields's even more disaster-prone daughter. Fields tries to leave her abandoned at sea.

The race is all but lost before Fields realizes his mistake and assumes command, piloting the boat through a maze of icebergs with approximately the same level of caution that he piloted the golf cart earlier on.

With its gimmicks and effects, this is more like Never Give a Sucker an Even Break than it is like My Little Chickadee or The Old-Fashioned Way, both of which are better comedies. But when Fields is on-screen, he fills it with gusto, even though his health was already starting to wane.

Also on the bill was a Little Rascals comedy, with Alfafa murdering "The Barber of Seville" right and left, and an uncredited Henry Brandon as an evil agent. Brandon was then under contract to Hal Roach, and went on to play the horrible Mister Barnaby in Laurel & Hardy's Babes in Toyland, among other notable but small roles.

And I'm nearing the end of the 1943 "So Bad It's Good" Batman serial from Columbia. Columbia's serials were the bottom of the barrel in most every way, but they had the buying power to outbid Republic on both Batman and Superman. Their Superman literally turned into a cartoon every time he flew, while Republic's Captain Marvel, filmed years earlier, soared convincingly. You can bet your bottom dollar that a Republic Batman would not have been the chubby, frumpy guy in the ill-fitting and ill-tailored Halloween Costume that you see above! Every episode opens with some nifty mysterioso mood music, but once the action starts I keep expecting Graham Chapman to show up with his swagger stick and shout, "Stop that! It's silly!"

The first of the auctions

Finding this on the web just now really made me sad. It's the notice for the first of three auctions to be held around my mother's estate. Click here for the listing. Be sure to look at the image gallery. It's coming right up, on December 7. What a day to choose.

Anyway, here's your chance to own a piece of the funhouse. Or for me to buy it back.

-- Freder.

Mountains to Move and Thanksgiving Redux

Well. Thanksgiving.

I am actually thankful that I have a lawyer who is a nice person and was concerned enough about me to invite me to her festivities. And I'm thankful that Whitey and Honey, at least, loved the turkey I gave them.

The actual festivities. . . I've had better, I've had worse.

The worst ever was a holiday fete at least a decade ago with my then-girlfriend and her extended family. This was like something out of H. P. Lovecraft. They all looked exactly alike, as if they had been deeply inbred, and this impression was reinforced by my then-girlfriend's confession, prior to the event, that while in her twenties she had conducted a lengthy sexual affair with her own cousin -- and had gone back to him after her divorce from her first husband. And, yes, the guy was there at the family event.

I can think of one really good word to describe the affair: **SQUIRM!**

The only really squirmish factor about this Thanksgiving was being the odd man at a family gathering. J____ had another guest, thank goodness, K_______, a woman visiting for the week from Florida. She had a deep Southern accent and turned out to be quite social, even forward. You might even say that she was close to being a Dirty Old Woman!

But I learned that between 2008 and 2009 she had had herself a Bad Year that put my Bad Year of 2010 to shame. Her husband died, she was diagnosed with breast cancer, her younger brother killed himself, her nephew died playing something that she called "The Choking Game," (I do not want to know the details), and more.

She must have the Cheerful Gene to come through all of that and be as open and upbeat as she was.

I do not have the Cheerful Gene, as those of you who know me are well aware, and I tend to be Eeyore in the best of times.

There was one more nice thing about the afternoon. One of the people was a thirty-something woman, and midway through the afternoon she started looking at me. That way. I didn't discourage it. It's been years and years since a woman looked at me That Way. I'll admit I enjoyed it.

Of course she's married to my lawyer's son, so it's a complete non-starter, but that's okay, too. A little innocent flirtation never hurt anyone.

I came home, gave the cats their treat, made myself a pizza, had my movie night, and didn't fall asleep on it.

The next day was All For Packing. The new house had better actually happen, because I have started to pack For Real and in ways the make the house even more depressing. I have one room basically done, and a good start in several other rooms.

Mainly, yesterday was all about packing up boxes full of books. I went through most of my mother's books and sorted what I wanted to keep from what I wanted not to keep, then started in on my own shelves. I packed up eighteen large boxes of books, carried them downstairs to my "staging area," and guess what? If you look at my shelves you would never know that I had packed anything at all. I realized that "I Have Not Yet Begun" to pack books! Funny -- it was so easy getting them in to the house!

But -- that picture up above? That's all boxed up and the shelf is down in my mother's bedroom, waiting to be loaded up. As soon as the Closing happens on the All-New, All-Different Duck House, I will be ready to start moving.

Fingers Crossed, I hope that it happens this week.

Hope all of you out there in the interwebs land had yourself a good holiday.

-- Freder.

Thanksgiving with Strangers

My mother loved Macy's annual Thanksgiving Parade. I liked the floats and balloons, but didn't have the patience to sit through the tedium of all those marching bands and teen celebrity singers in order to see them. Anyway, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays for Happy People.

Maybe you can understand why I am not in a very thankful mood this year. My mother and I struggled through another lousy New England winter, and just as Spring was coming, she died suddenly, alone and in terrible pain. I drank my way into the hospital, all the while enduring violations from my sister, who never lifted her finger to help while Mom was alive, from the creditors, from the auctioneers, and even from my employer. I'm living in the midst, literally, of the crumbling remains of my mother's former life, trying to make the best of things, piecing together my scrapbook of memories.  I suppose I could be thankful for the prospect of a better future, but that's still uncertain.

I can't even be thankful for a day off. My lawyer has twisted my arm into spending Thanksgiving at her house, with her relatives, all strangers to me. I'm not comfortable with any part of this. All I wanted was to spend the day packing and cleaning, to maybe buy a pre-cooked breast of turkey and share it with my cats. Instead I have to be "thankful" in a group of people that I don't know and have nothing in common with. If anything will test my ability to refrain from drinking during the day, this will be it.

Not sure if I will even try to watch the parade this year. The day will be depressing enough without it.

All done with wires

The cinema this weekend was especially good. I'll start with Sunday night, only because this is such a great photo of Cooper and Stanwyck that it had to go at the top. Last night I wanted to write about their faces. Today I see that I don't need to: the picture says it all.

Yup, it was Meet John Doe, a Capra offering that had eluded me until now. It's a pretty hefty slice of cheese -- but, first of all, what's wrong with cheese? I really like the stuff, if it's good cheese like Cooper or Hoffman's Super Sharp, or in this case, Meet John Doe. Second, if you've put cheese on the menu, for heaven's sake, get Frank Capra to direct. He'll hire the best actors and the best photographers, and he'll heat it up just right, leaving you in a warm cheesy glow.

Gary Cooper and Barbara Stanwyck sell this one hard. Cooper runs the gamut from quiet dignity to laconic hayseed to outraged indignity as the man on the wire, while Stanwyck manages the transition from the most persistent and dishonest of reporters to regret and love in a way that actually makes it believable. Her high energy is grounded by his steadiness. But really, everyone in the cast is excellent -- Capra had access to a wonderful stable of character players, and he used them so wisely.

I really didn't know how it was going to end. At a certain point you think to yourself, as Cooper's character undoubtedly does, "Well, he's got to jump now. The choice has been taken away from him." At the same time, you know that it can't end that way -- this is a Frank Capra movie! But the question remains -- how are they going to stop him in a way that still allows them to put the villain in his place? Capra's solution is elegant and -- dare I say it? -- subtle. For Capra, that is.

Saturday night was something I've seen many times, but not recently. I just had a hankering to revisit Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It's not the martial arts action that sends me (although it's beautifully done) -- it's the deep, repressed romance, the emotions that can only be expressed in flight and dance against exotic backdrops. It's not how they're fighting -- it's why and when; it's not about crushing the opponent, it's about wanting something so badly that you won't allow anyone to stand in your way, to ruin your one slim chance at happiness.

This is Shakespeare without the poetry. . . or, rather, with flight in place of poetry.

Some people object to the flying, but for me it's a central element of the drama. It even develops the characters: flying comes as an effort to Shu Lien, as a game to Jen, and as Peace to Li Mu Bai.

I must say that Michele Yeoh is a Goddess. There are popular actresses working today who are not as accomplished at their craft as Ms. Yeoh -- and they can't do any of the other things that she can.

-- Freder.

I was going to make a crack about Wounded Knee but thought better of it. . .

Hey, now! You want to hear the latest? I've sprained my knee!

It is exquisitely painful and it turns all of life's humdrum activities (like getting dressed and feeding quats) into a real adventure!

I have no idea how it happened, but I think it involved my fat quat Pandy Bear sitting on me.

For two days I did what guys do -- ignored it. It kept getting worse. Finally on Sunday I thought to myself, "Do you think. . . ?"

Obviously, the answer is, "not much, and not very deeply."

I checked in with "Dr. Google." They said not to walk on it.

Riiiiiiiiight! I live alone in a house the size of the Ponderosa with five hungry quats! My bedroom is about a mile and a half from the kitchen. Don't walk on it!

So I spent Sunday in bed as much as I could, with an ice pack on my knee. This did help -- I can now walk without screaming. Can't remember the last time I spent a day reading. I did ultimately become engrossed in the book, but at first it was just frustrating. I have so much to do around the house, and it all involves getting down on my hands and knees. Also, I cope pretty well with grief as long as I keep busy. Lying in bed reading is a nice thing to do, but it's not the same.

The temptation to drink during the day was as strong as it has ever been. Pain killer and grief-number. But I've been beating that temptation down long enough that it's getting easier. Just read and sip on your Ginger Ale, idiot.

The book was The Last Greatest Magician in the World, a biography of Howard Thurston and, around the edges, an account of his mild rivalry with Harry Houdini.Thurston was by all indications hands down the better magician, so why don't we remember him? As Walter B. Gibson, creator of The Shadow and editor of a magic magazine, puts it, "All of Thurston's publicity was aimed at getting people into the theater; all of Houdini's publicity was aimed at creating a legend."

Thurston was welcoming and urbane on the stage -- but what a life he lived! He was a con artist, a hobo, a carnival barker, a rough character; it's doubtful that anyone in the packed houses of his later career dreamed that he was a more colorful person than they imagined.

On Saturday, the crew from Auction House number two came around to "clean me out." The less said about that, the better. I limped around the periphery, and didn't let them in the house, but even having them  pick just from from the shop and barns, it still felt like an assault. They tried to take my roller skates from my childhood! Plus, I was in pain. There were a lot of tears this weekend. Glad to get back to work. Especially since the boss is out!

Oh, and the car? Yeah, it was the battery. That guy from Triple A needs to get a new tester!

-- Freder.