Month: January 2006

UPDATE: If someone can make me a mutt of these two, problem solved, right?

Another image of a Wheaten Terrier:

And a Boxer:

All right. I’m done.

I am. I swear.

My Beloved was rummaging around the archives again. He wanted me to put this one up. Actually, I’d forgotten I’d written this.

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“Come,” says The Harvester.

“And see the olive, crushed for the purest oil.”

“Come,” He says again.

“And see the grape, crushed for the sweetest wine.”

“Come,” says The Harvester, at last.

“And see the heart, crushed, for the fine things inside.”

“Not for naught. For the fineness inside.”

For some time now, I’ve been both fascinated and horrified by the story of grizzly bear crusader Timothy Treadwell.

Treadwell was the self-proclaimed “protector” of the grizzly bears in Alaska’s Katmai National Park. There, he spent 13 summers living amongst them, falling “in love” with them, until one of them killed him — and his girlfriend — in the fall of 2003. All that was left of him was a head with backbone attached, and an arm and hand with its wristwatch still running. The killer bear was then killed. Four garbage bags of “people” were removed from his stomach.

It’s chilling, yes, but, still, I was eager to see Werner Herzog’s documentary on Treadwell, “Grizzly Man,” which MB and I rented the other night.

The film was put together from some 90 hours of video that Treadwell himself shot. He had quite an eye, actually, and the film is breathtaking and terrifying to watch, but, really, the star of this show, upstaging even all that WILD, is Treadwell himself. He is wild, too. Tromping around that wilderness with his ridiculous Prince Valiant hair, he seems consumed and crazed by his love for these bears, believing it’s his duty to protect them, despite that fact that this is, after all, a wildlife reserve. The bears were protected anyway, but not well enough to suit Treadwell.

He seems loony, yes, but innocent, too. A mad, lovesick king utterly unconcerned that the queen he so loves just may kill him one day. Or a delighted, silly child romping carefree in a vast and violent playground.

He calls himself a “kind warrior.”

Okay.

But a “kind warrior” who also reminds you just a little bit of Corky St. Clair in “Waiting for Guffman.”

So you root for him. You do. He’s a complete loon, but a likeable loon. He got to me. He really BELIEVED he was doing good. He really BELIEVED the bears needed him and understood him and bonded with him. He gave them cute little names like Rowdy and Satin and Mr. Chocolate. And as you watch him, biting your nails and screaming at his foolishness — he touches the bears, swims with the bears, camps right amongst them — you are virtually hypnotized into rooting for his lunacy. You almost start to BELIEVE, too.

But then he DRIVES YOU CRAZY when he babytalks the bears with things like, “He’s a big bear. Oh, yeah. He’s a big bear. A very big bear.”

Or when a bear attempts to swipe at him and Treadwell just gushes, “I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!”

(Man — No wonder they killed you. I’m sorry, but I wanted to kill you right then. You were unhinged — like some silly, gooey-eyed suitor, screaming your serenade to a wilderness of embarrassed beasts.)

There are also interviews with friends, family, and others. One helicopter pilot says, “He acted like he was working with people in bear costumes.” And you do get that sense. He talks well enough about the dangers of the bears — “they will take me out, they will decapitate me, they will chop me up into bits and pieces” — but he doesn’t ACT as if it’s true. They are more human than humans to him.

That same pilot says, “The bears probably thought he was mentally retarded.”

Sometimes, it DOES seem that way. He cries a bit too much for my taste. And he’s filming himself so it’s a kind of messy, self-conscious melodrama.

At one point he’s sobbing into the camera, saying, “I am SO in love with them and they are SO f***ed and it SO sucks.”

Then THIS, rejoicing over a bear’s poop: “Here’s her POOP! It’s warm, I can feel it! It just came from her butt! Let’s touch it! It was just inside her! I know it seems weird, me touching her poop, but IT’S HER LIFE!”

Or this, to one of his little fox friends: “You are the star for ALL the children! I love you SO MUCH! THANK YOU for being my friend!”

(Actually, the footage of the foxes is enchanting, utterly magical. Their beauty and playfulness tug at your heart.)

But one of my favorite moments doesn’t even involve a bear. There’s a dead bumblebee on a leaf and Treadwell, of course, must commentate through his ready tears: “Oh, isn’t this so sad? This little bumblebee was just working and …. it just expired …. working busy as a bee … it’s just touched me to no end. I LOVVVE that bee! OH!! …. the bee moved!!”

It’s true! The dead bee moved, people!

I mean, it’s hysterical — because it’s so RETARDED!

Later in the film, Treadwell, hunkered in his tent, rails at God for the piddling amount of rain they’re getting: “Let’s have some water, Jesus Boy! Let’s have some water, Christ Man! Let’s have some water, little HINDU FLOATY THING!!”

He’s just hilarious and moving and infuriating. One minute, you’re sure he’s acting; the next minute, he seems authentic. That the camera is his constant companion is both good and bad. You’re witness to moments of wild and poetic beauty, but also of sad and silly histrionics. Treadwell is a guy who’d be fascinating to talk to, but impossible to live with. Still, you’re drawn in because he’s a character, in every sense of the word.

His death was horrifying. His video camera was on, but so was the lens cap. The audio, though, recorded everything, his death AND his girlfriend’s, who was terrified of grizzly bears. It will never be released into public domain. In the movie, Herzog, the director, is shown listening to the audio. One of Treadwell’s good friends, in possession of the tape, watches Herzog’s face. It’s an awful moment, made almost more awful because we’re not allowed to hear it, just to imagine it. Done listening, Herzog says to the woman, “You must never listen to this. You should not keep it. You should destroy it because it will be like the white elephant in your room all your life.”

Treadwell says more than once in the film that he would die for these animals. His friends say he died doing what he loved.

I wonder if he thought that at the last.

A magnificent, maddening film.

See it.

Okay. Cullen tagged me — and I’m going to try to be better on “tagging follow-through” this year …. once I’m done laughing at that statement.

Anyway …. I’m supposed to name 5 of my quirks, which works out well because I have EXACTLY 5 — and no more. NO MORE, I SAY!

1) I love coffee. Not a quirk, I know, but here’s the thing: I’ve never, ever finished a cup of coffee. Think I’m exaggerating? I’m not. My Beloved will vouch for this. He likes to say, “For you, coffee is not a beverage; it’s an accessory.” Hahaha. Well, I am quite good at carrying it around with that certain artistic nonchalance we all strive for.

But, you see, I do drink it; I do. I just don’t finish it. Ever. I don’t know why. I do try, though. I mean, I always buy the smallest size cup, I never finish it, but because I feel guilty that I never finish it, I’ll put it in the fridge thinking I will finish it later — which I never do, because that would be — let’s face it — disgusting. So, far too often, our fridge becomes what MB calls the “Coffee Cup Graveyard” — old Starbucks cups standing in silent sentinel, a leaky, paper monument to my inability to finish what I start or let things go. It begs questions like “why?” and “what for?” and “seriously — what the !%@#!?! are these doing here??”

Truly, this is a deep, deep mystery.

So “Coffee Cup Graveyard”? I think not. I prefer to call it “Coffee Cup Stonehenge.”

2) I cannot be a passenger in a car that’s going up a steep hill. Sound stupid? Oh, trust me, it IS. Intensely stupid. Because it used to be downhill as well, but I’m (mostly) cured of that. And if you’re thinking “She can’t mean what I think she means.” Oh, I’m sure I do. It’s just this simple: If I’m a passenger in a car and we come upon a very steep hill — and in my defense, it has to be very steep — but don’t ask me what “very steep” is, I just know — I will GET OUT OF THE CAR AND WALK because I am sure we will start sliding furiously backwards and I will lose my voice from all the screaming I will do — which could be viewed as a sign of mistrust — but that all this won’t matter anyway once we hit the bottom of the hill and I’m dead. So I really shouldn’t worry about the screaming part.

How did I get this way, you wonder? Well, once, a very steep — and very evil — hill in Seattle met my friend’s decrepit Volkwagen and decided to play head games with it while I was in the car. It ended ….. unhappily.

And I missed my audition, too.

Stupid, thoughtless hill.

3) I like Lay’s potato chips — too much — so I will only allow myself eat the ones that are nicely folded over on themselves. I like their compact crunchiness. I don’t know. Let’s go with that as the reason why. But look at it this way: More chips for you!!

4) I sleep with a white noise device next to the bed. You know, one of those machines that goes “WHHHHOOOOOSSSSSHHHHH” while you sleep. My parents bought me one when I went away to college — to help me fall asleep in the noisy dorm, I guess. (Never mind that no one sleeps in college. Except during class, of course.) Anyway, seems I got very used to it, verrrry, because I ended up sleeping straight through a fire drill in college — and the fire alarm was on the wall right outside my door. My roommate thought I was dead.

(Not dead, just — whhhhhooooosssshhhhh — sleepin’. )

And, you know, I think it’s so courageous that — even in the face of my recent passing — she still went on that fire drill.

Well, you gotta move on, you know?

5) Now that I’ve lost all credibility as a sane person, let’s go for the coup de grace: I REALLY don’t like sitting next to strangers in movie theaters. Now, I’m sure that lots of people don’t like this, so big whoop, right? Weelll ….. um ….. I’ve been known to …. you know, in the PAST, not LATELY, of course ….spill water on the seat next to me so no one can sit there. Now — I’ve been known to do this more particularly if the movie has started and people whose concept of time is woefully different from mine come lumbering my way with their extra large drinks and their extra large popcorns and their extra large arses needing to squeeze past that extra small space in front of me to get to THE SEAT THEY SIMPLY MUST HAVE — the one next to ME!

“Ohhh, you know what? That one’s wet or something. I mean, I don’t know if you want to sit on that.”

“Oh, really? Ewww. Okay. Thanks for telling us.”

And … off they go.

I know. It’s dreadful. SHAMEFUL. And I truly haven’t done that in a very, very long time. (Now, of course, I’ll never be able to do it again, since I’ve confessed it here. That was dumb, Tracey.)

At least it was water. We all know those seats get a LOT worse. So, I was cleaning them, you see.

Okay. There you have it — my 5 quirks.

Sooooo ….. wanna hang out?

Or an alternate title: “My First Deeply Stupid Comment of 2006.”

Yes, I made a mental note of a few firsts this year.

And although I’ve no doubt that I’ll utter many rank stupidities this year, and though the year is still so young, I’m sure that when the Counting of the Idiocies happens at year’s end, THIS one will still be a standout. I almost hesitate to share it, knowing how it calls into question my existence as a human with a HUMAN brain, but it’s just too good ‘n’ stupid.

I should be proud to start the year so strongly. In fact, this makes me WAY ahead of most of you.

Now, we were driving along — as my nephew used to say when he was 5, “going happily along” — and My Beloved and I ended up in a discussion about the movie “Sling Blade.” A great movie, no? We began to recount certain scenes, of course trying to imitate Carl and failing. Then we reached that pivotal scene near the end and the exchange went something like this:

ME: “…. and it always gets me, because then Carl goes after him with …. with …. some kind of blade!”

HE: (after a short silence, then quietly): A sling blade?

Oh, even typing it, I feel myself shrinking and shriveling. The horror, THE HORROR!!

I’ve been having major problems accessing my site today. This was the earliest I could even log on and then I couldn’t even comment on my own post! What is up with that? Thanks for all the comments on the movie question, really.

Dave in Montana — “Platoon” was My Beloved’s choice, actually. No offense was meant with it, I’m sure.

Personally, I’d replace it with a completely different kind of American movie — oh, say, “To Kill a Mockingbird.”

Also, I think I’d just have to add “Singin’ in the Rain,” THE quintessential American musical.

…. that is, Sal’s GREAT cinematic question to all of us in the comments section of my last post.

I’d put it here, but I’d kind of like to see the answers all in the same place.

Go answer it! (And I’m already revising MY list in my head.)

That Sal’s quite a gal. Thanks, Sal!