I wish I could forget...

  Is there anything you wish you could forget?  There’s a famous horror movie, Night of the Living Dead, which I haven’t seen myself, but one critic warned, “Afterward you may wish you could forget the whole experience.”

I wish I could forget The Flintstones.  That was an animated Stone Age sitcom from the early 1960s, which has had a very long afterlife in syndicated reruns.  It was produced  on a low budget by Hanna-Barbera Studios, and the animation was terrible!  The sort of thing where a car would drive along and pass by the same three or four buildings again and again, as if it were going around in a circle…

The writing was terrible too.  The main characters, of course, were knockoffs of the characters on Jackie Gleason’s far superior show The Honeymooners.  Ever see Laurel and Hardy in Sons of the Desert?  That’s the one where they wanted to go to a Shriners-type convention but their wives wouldn’t let them, so they pretended to be sick and go somewhere else for recuperation, but their wives found out the truth… Anyway, The Flintstones redid that story again and again!  In one story the wives found out from a talking parrot who kept saying words like “convention”; in another the husbands were caught on a Stone Age version of Candid Camera. (The running joke was that everything in the 1960 world had a Stone Age equivalent…) There was another episode that redid Preston Sturges’ Hail the Conquering Hero, complete with the unconvincing happy ending.

One story I remember in particular had Wilma becoming a hand model (like George on that Seinfeld episode), and they wanted to put her in a TV commercial, but only showing her hand.  Fred got in a prideful huff and wouldn’t let her do it, because the story would have no point otherwise.  In the end, Betty made the commercial instead, and they saw the commercial on stone age TV, and they showed Betty’s face as well as her hand!  Terrible, terrible writing.

And TV cartoons at the time weren’t all as bad as that.  Rocky and Bullwinkle had the same marginal animation, but the writing was nice and sharp!  I’ve rewatched the show on video in recent years, and it holds up pretty well.  I like the relationship between the sinister spies Boris and Natasha, and how Natasha ended up doing all the work!  My favourite part was Bullwinkle as Mr. Know-It-All, who’d do subjects like “How to get into a movie theatre without buying a ticket.” (This was before cartoon characters had to be good role models…)

I’m ashamed that there was a time when I liked The Flintstones and actually wanted to watch it.  When we look back at our childhood, we notice that we had no taste back then!

GOOD TIMES

 

I used to watch Good Times in the 1970s, the Norman Lear sitcom about an African-American family struggling to survive in the Chicago housing projects.  It was a curious mix of cheesy sitcommery, preachy social consciousness and jive-talking shtick.  Jimmy Walker as the oldest son JJ had the catchphrase “Dy-no-mite!” (He started out as a supporting character but advanced to become the show’s star, like Henry Winkler as Fonzie on Happy Days at the same time.) The youngest son Michael was in his mid-teens and out to advance Black Power. (His nickname was “The Militant Midget.”)

I remember an episode where the father was tempted to go off and work on the Alaska Pipeline to make real money for a change. (He said, “We are poor—and that’s the last thing anyone wants to be, except for sick and dead!”) But the mother wasn’t happy about him leaving her and the family behind.  Meanwhile, Michael was with this group of boys out to promote Black Power, but they got attacked by a street gang.  He mentioned that they were going to attack them in retaliation, and the father responded by making him leave the group, taking away the jacket that showed he was a member.  Then he said “Want to discuss it?” while making motions with his belt. (In other words, “One more word and you’ll get a beating!”) He said “No!” and walked away, and the audience laughed.  Then he decided he should stay in Chicago, saying with a smile and a wink that he had to keep his son on the right path.

That “Want to discuss it?” moment made me laugh too, but something about it bothered me.  It isn’t that I’m an anti-spanking fanatic; I’ve never raised children, and I don’t know that I could completely avoid resorting to physical violence.  But threatening violence just to cut off the discussion is unacceptable to me, especially when  dealing with teenagers.  That’s bullying your kid, and it’s teaching him to be a bully too!  Of course, a show like Good Times was short on subtlety:  a father solving the problem through subtler means wasn’t something they expected viewers to have the patience for.  It’s a common cliche on TV shows:  if you want to get through to someone, confront him!

Another cheesy aspect of the show was how they were often giving JJ a new girlfriend who’d make a single appearance to illustrate a new social issue.  One was pregnant—JJ wasn’t the father, of course—and another one had venereal disease.  And there was one two-part episode where JJ got engaged to a girl he didn’t realize was a drug addict! (Happens all the time…) Near the end someone says that drugs will always be a problem, and the father retorts, “President Kennedy said we’d put a man on the moon in ten years, and we did it.  So why can’t we get rid of drugs?” Big applause from the studio audience.  In hindsight, that bothers me too—a serious, complicated issue dealt with through rabble-rousing triumphalism!

And don’t get me started on Norman Lear’s other African-American sitcom The Jeffersons!

Being late

  I remember in Grade 3 when a girl came into class late, and the teacher told us all to turn around and look at her!  That was rather mean…

Yesterday I went to my singing group in the East End.  I’m often late to it because I live near the West End and buses are less frequent on Sundays.  And it goes from 1:00 to 3:00, too late for lunch afterward.  On the other hand, I’m not a morning person, especially on Sundays, so I often have breakfast at 10:30 or so, and since I have to leave by noon I don’t always have time for lunch beforehand.  Sometimes I’ll have lunch in the East End just before going to the group, if I think I have enough time.  

Yesterday I thought I had enough time, so I stopped at A&W and ordered a sausage and egg muffin.  But I ended up waiting half an hour, because my order had fallen through the cracks!  So I was half an hour late. (Fortunately, several others were also late, though not as late as me.)

I was telling Carolyn the group leader about it afterward, and she told me of the time she took her mother to a hospital for medical treatment and they ended up waiting five hours because her mother’s medical file had fallen off the table!  We’re both a bit too patient…

But there was one good thing to come out of this.  I was afraid this would be one of those weeks when I can’t think of anything to write, but this gave me something to write about!

Epitaphs & Losing your marbles

Back in the ‘70s I recall listening to the CBC radio comedy Dr. Bundolo’s Pandemonium Medicine Show.  One skit they did was about pet funerals!  One of the lines was “Have you considered an appropriate epitaph—something like ‘He ain’t around, he’s in the ground.’”

William Butler Yeats’ epitaph is his own lines “Cast a cold eye/On life and death,/Horseman, pass by.” Remember Kathleen Kennedy, JFK’s sister who married an English nobleman and was killed in a plane crash? I’ve always liked her epitaph “Joy she gave, joy she has.” I also like Cecil Day-Lewis’ own epitaph “Shall I be gone long?” Robert Frost suggested for his epitaph “He had a lover’s quarrel with the world.” And Dorothy Parker suggested “Excuse my dust.”  Benjamin Franklin’s epitaph is lines he wrote when he was young:

The Body of B. Franklin, Printer

Like the Cover of an old Book

Its contents torn out,

And stript of its Lettering and Guilding,

Lies here, Food for Worms,

But the Work shall not be wholly lost:

For it will, as he believ’d,

Appear once more

In a new & more perfect Edition,

Corrected and amended by the Author.

I think I’d like a Chinese-style “tree burial,” where they cremate you then plant a tree over your ashes.  If they want to put up an inscription plaque it should be the Chinese proverb “Our ancestors planted trees, we sit in the shade.”

Our other subject this week is “Losing all your marbles.” Just now I’m reading Alexandre Dumas’ mega-novel The Count of Monte Cristo.  It’s about a guy who gets framed and becomes a political prisoner for fourteen years.  Then he makes an incredible escape and finds a huge treasure.  Eventually he sets about getting even with the people who got him sent up.  He does that by cleverly manipulating things so that they ultimately destroy themselves!  The worst of his enemies has the worst fate, going insane in the end.  You’re bound to wonder, Is what the hero does to him worse than what he did?  In one of the Kill Bill movies, the Japanese sword-maker warns a vengeful Uma Thurman, “You may think of revenge as a road, but it’s more like a forest.” That movie came out about the same time as 9/11, which prompted a pretty rash vengeance campaign by the American government… 

The Trans-Canada Highway

 

I grew up in the town of Sackville, at the southeastern corner of New Brunswick.  The nearby Trans-Canada Highway came near there around the time I was born.  It was just a few lanes wide and didn’t get expanded into a freeway till the mid-1990s, by which time I no longer lived there.

Driving west, you’d ascend Beech Hill and go a length through the woods to Memramcook, where the road descended to a river valley with a gravel quarry.  Then you’d go back uphill and soon get to the Moncton area, where you’d enter the city or go even further, on routes that took you to west to Fredericton and northwest to Quebec, or southwest to St. John and west to Maine.

Driving east, you’d go past the Tantramar River with its tidal dam, and a group of radio towers that were used by the Canadian Northern Service back then for shortwave broadcasts. The land is flat and marshy there, and the railway runs parallel to the road.  Then you’d climb a ridge to Aulac.  The National Historic Park at Fort Beausejour was there, along with a tourist information centre and a place that sold apples every fall. (I think they have an EV charging station there now!)

There one branch of the Trans-Canada Highway goes east to Northumberland Strait.  Our summer cottage was in that direction, and further on was the ferry to Prince Edward Island. (There’s a bridge there now, but it was only built after I left.)

The other branch goes south to Nova Scotia.  You’d descend to more of the marshy flatland, and the Missaguash River that forms the boundary between New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.  Then you’d climb another ridge to where Fort Lawrence was, and another tourist information centre.  This was in the Amherst area where you could enter the town. (In the late 1980s, we often went to Amherst to rent videos.  There was also a Dairy Queen there.) But you could go further south to Truro, and from there south to Halifax or east to Cape Breton Island, which we regularly visited in the summer.

That was then, this is now.  I never learned to drive, but now I live in a big city near a streetcar line.  My household went carless ten years ago.  The Trans-Canada Highway doesn’t even reach Toronto!

Favourite job

I don’t have much job experience, but sometimes I think about jobs I’d like to have.  I would have made a good town crier in the old days.  I have a loud voice and like telling people what I know.  And in Africa they have a guy called a kafo whose job is to keep a community’s records in his head, sometimes going back for centuries!  I think I would have liked doing that.  I read a book about America after a nuclear war and they had professional remembers who basically did that.

Other jobs that appeal to me are more fanciful.  I think I’d like to have a job introducing American movies to Chinese audiences and explaining their context.  Or introducing famous paintings in London’s art galleries to tourists and giving them my perspective.

There’s an A.A. Milne poem “Cherry Stones” that goes,

Tinker, Tailor,

Soldier, Sailor,

Rich Man, Poor Man,

Ploughboy,

Thief —

And what about a Cowboy,

Policeman, Jailer,

Engine-driver,

Or Pirate Chief?

What about a Postman — or a Keeper at the Zoo?

What about the Circus Man who lets the people through?

And the man who takes the pennies for the round-abouts and swings?

Or the man who plays the organ, and the other man who sings?

What about a Conjuror with rabbits in his pockets?

What about a Rocket Man who's always making rockets?

Oh, there's such a lot of things to do and such a lot to be

That there's always lots of cherries on my little cherry tree!

Earworms

  For some people the summer of 1994 was the summer of Forrest Gump.  For me, it was the summer of The North China Herald.  Back then I was researching my Ph.D. thesis on the British community in the Chinese treaty port of Chongqing, and that was one source I spent a lot of time on.  The North China Herald was an English newspaper published in Shanghai’s British concession, with correspondents in all the treaty ports, so I went through all the reports from Chongqing.  It took a long time, and in the last four years before the newspaper closed after Pearl Harbour, there was a big increase in Chongqing reports because the Nationalist government moved there.  It’s a bit like Heartbreak Hill in the Boston Marathon:  not far from the finish there’s a hill that runners have to ascend first!

Anyhow, in the later part of my work I started to hear music going around in my head, from our record album The Royal Family of Opera.  Both were Wagner pieces:  Elsa’s Dream from Lohengrin and the Prize Song from Die Meistersinger. Elsa’s Dream is what the heroine sings when she’s accused of witchcraft and faces the stake, and all she can talk about is this dream where a knight came along to save her.  And I’ve heard that Die Meistersinger is a pretty boring opera, but if you can sit through two hours, you’ll hear that wonderful aria, which the hero sings to win a music festival prize.  It’s odd about Wagner—he composed great music, but whenever I’ve gone to one of his operas, there always seems to be a point where I have trouble staying awake…

Earworms are funny.  Some of the songs that get into my head are genuine keepers, like those ABBA songs in the 1970s.  Others are just silly, like Melanie’s “Brand New Key.” And of course, some are commercial jingles or TV series theme songs, which I’m ashamed to admit I remember.  But I’d rather not say any more because if I start thinking about them, I may be unable to stop…