UNIVERSAL DONOR: MA VIE EN CROUTE
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Universal Donor
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Wednesday, October 19, 2005
My life is one long search for a comfortable place to sit or lie down. Sometimes this search fades into the background, during long periods when my back, for whatever reason, decides to give me a break. But the urgency is renewed instantly when something goes spasmy like it did just as I was trying to go to sleep last night. I won't go into the detail, nor will I try to concoct elaborate metaphors of agony. But I will show you a picture of something that looks very comfortable to me. If I were in the market for a large jet from which to run my business, high above the quotidian concerns of surface dwellers, I would strongly consider the AirBus A380, basing my decision solely on this "artist's conception" of what the interior could look like. It looks real enough to me, even if it is just a 15-foot section in a warehouse somewhere. That thing's bigger than my apartment!
---------------------------------- Every once in a while, a conversation or article (or, like, an associative word) will remind me of something from my past or childhood that I had completely forgotten about, which essentially means that I hadn't thought about it since before 7th grade. Like here: if I say the name "Gunther Gebel-Williams," does it mean anything to you? As a hint, here's his picture, which I love, and which bizarrely looks gay -- awesomely, powerfully, Roy-maulingly gay, but gay nonetheless; check it out: (hint picture). Did you look at the picture? I could tell you did, because there's a little bit of gay on your lapel (no, not you, sir). Okay, so as hints go it's a pretty easy one. But I heard Gunther's a pretty easy one too! Oh snap oh no you di'in't! Oh yes I di'id! Tsk! Williams was the rugged Aryan lion tamer (is that term obsolete? Do you say animal trainer now?) for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus when I was a kid. But so as soon as I heard my coworker mention his name during a conversation about the circus, memories came rushing back to me, first in incoherent chunks and then a little bit more sensibly, eventually slowing to a seepage, and finally to the point where the memory flood has slowed to the decomposition speed of U-238. I don't have a billion memories about Gunther Gebel-Williams, after all. Who does? You know who does? His cats. I bet that immediately after each one was born, he sedated its mother so he could get close and then pried its damp little eyelids open so that he'd be right there and imprint on them as mother/protector, instead of their legitimate, furry mommy. And that's just the beginning of the abuse: big cats can run really fucking fast when they're chasing an impala, eland, kudu, or some other animal that only exists in Africa or crossword puzzles. But I bet he doesn't let them run. Who could afford a place that big? Even if you built a giant "cat run" you'd have to, like, put a dome over it, or enclose it with several concentric rings of electrified fence, because cats also love to climb shit and they like to escape and they hate being enclosed. Cats would make great spies -- if they weren't so lazy (The Rosenbergs rarely took a break to nap in a sunbeam). But will Gunther let his cats be spies? Nope. What a jerk! I shouldn't joke around so much -- some people, like for example this guy, actually take this issue so seriously that they are willing to dress up like "the devil" in public on a day other than Halloween.* I put the devil in quotes because I think it's pretty presumptuous of us to presume we know what the devil would look like if he existed. But actually that last sentence is an ironic metacomment on the PETA dude, because it's just the kind of pedantic, hyperliteral complaint that superserious protester types are always yappityflapping on about, no matter what the discussion. Like one time this girl stopped me in midsentence to correct my usage thusly: "Um, what you're referring to is the vulva, not the vagina. You should use the correct term, because so many people get it wrong." Later she almost removed my head when I mistakenly used the degrading term "Suffragettes" to refer to the members of the Suffragist movement. She was of course correct in both cases, but we were just in a private living room, shooting the shit, you know? It's not like I used the wrong terms on like Sesame Street, tainting the minds of children for years to come. And in defense of the Suffragette error, it's less a result of any deeply ingrained misogyny as it is the result of watching Mary Poppins a billion times too many.** Whoops got a little tangential there. My point was gonna be about how the memory came back to me after years of being completely suppressed. J_____ said his name and my brain recognized the sound pattern, the pleasing series of three two-syllable words with the stress on the first, the second syllables all containing schwas and all mumbled almost to the point of elision: GUNthur GAYbul WILyums. It sounds soooo good. Whoever picked that stage name was a genius, because it feels so good just to say it that it's almost its own advertisement. I wonder if the Ringling Brothers (see below) noticed that? They must have an instinct for the ear-catching turn of phrase, descended as they are from carny barkers who had to get you in the tent with your nickel in your hand before you walked past their tent.*** Hmm. That was kind of a digression too. Speaking of promotional speech, the page I got the picture from is pretty fantastic -- breathless RBB&B promotional pap that starts out with a bang: "From the moment Gunther Gebel-Williams stepped into the giant steel cage of The Greatest Show On Earth®, he was destined to change the face of the American circus forever." Wow! What a first sentence! Don't you want to see that guy? He's got destiny! He stepped into it! Into Destiny! Step Into Destiny. Also, you may be interested to note that The American Circus has a face, fagodsake. Gunther changed it, but it exists. Anywhey, the whole thing is pretty great in a similar vein. The page reveals that he starred in a made for TV documentary called My Father, the Circus King. I also love how in the world of PR that produced this, "over twenty-five years" always becomes "more than a QUARTER CENTURY" (emphasis mine, but can't you just feel the all caps in that term, and hear a deep booming bass voice over the PA system? I can). Anybop, digression digression digression. If I had an original point, it's inextricably snared in the Sargasso of my digressions. I think I was going to say that it was cool how hidden in my brain Gunther Gebel-Williams had been, how deeply lost to my conscious mind, but still there, waiting, waiting, a sleeper cell of information and memories, activated after all those years underground. I seriously think it was deep enough that if you had asked for his name in a trivia context, where my retrieval of arcana is top notch, I wouldn't have been able to access it. Heh. This was also gonna be a quick, short post. It was gonna be the first of a new breed of Universal Donor post: old school one-paragraphers, hit-and-write, speedy gonzales, kiss kiss bang bang, die with your mask on kind of things. Guess I picked the wrong week to quit sniffin' glue. ---------------------------------- Today I've accomplished an important long-term goal of mine. It's a real milestone, so don't laugh. I've always wanted, after quoting someone else in my writing, to use the term "emphasis mine," (assuming I made part of the quote all caps or bold) or "italics mine." It seems so professional, so serious, something important in the writer's box of knowledge and tools, right alongside little foreign phrases, the difference between synecdoche and metonymy, and the proper usage of the semicolon. But more than that, somehow: a tool of someone whose life is lived among belletrists and theater reviewers, someone who quotes others so often that he feels comfortable just adding emphasis willy nilly, waking up one morning and saying "think I'll stress that clause right now! Gonna add me some italics or bold up that Shaw." And now I've joined the lofty ranks of those who have added emphasis and then acknowledged possession thereof.* Not only that, the guy is willing to actually go to hell just to observe the displeasure of animal abusers, and last time I checked, there weren't like short vacation packages or time-shares in Hades, so Mr. Protester is making an eternal commitment to confirming his enemies' pain. That's baaadasssss. 0 comments |
OTHER REVIEWS: Scrabble NEW! LATEST BOOK REVIEWS: The Game Moneyball One-Upsmanship Siddhartha You need the Fear Not Guide to Life. Buy it already. ($4) Now available! The Broomfield Variations CD ($10) or go to The UD Store 
MY IMAGINARY GIRLFRIENDS Chan Marshall Rotem of the IDF Eleanor Friedberger Amy Goodman Bernardine Dohrn ('69) Maya Rudolph Joanna Newsom Imogen Heap Caroline Dhavernas Shana Rae Ray DISALLOWED FOREVER "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you!" - "from whence" - "...the exception that proves the rule" - any use of the question "spit or swallow?" - the phrase "drop trou" - fake-o reviewer verbs: "penned" for wrote "helmed" for directed "lensed" for whatever - "expat" - the euphemism "passed away" - pronouncing merci beaucoup as "mercy buckets!" (see also: "grassy-ass!") PET PEEVES "confinscated" - trying children "as adults" - "drownded" - misuse of reflexive pronouns, as when someone says "Please talk to Bob or myself." Come on people now. "Myself" is not just a fancy version of "me"! LEARN IT. - tattoos in the Courier font - any use of Comic Sans |
