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I'll get the money in three months if it takes a year
My poem "Something Different from Either" has been accepted by Uncanny Magazine. The title is quoting Eliot; it's about the Fisher King. It was written last May, originally accepted by another market which has since released it, and now rehomed. This feels weirdly appropriate.
Tonight I saw my cats.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel took pictures, of which I will post some as soon as I have copies. They had not forgotten me. They did not disdain me. Autolycus clung to my shoulder when I picked him up. Hestia flopped over like a fainting goat and presented belly for petting. They both wanted to be fed now now now and ran in and out of the bedroom. They are a little skittish and subdued from their ordinary selves still, but Autolycus has a mission to explore the new sink and Hestia groomed herself until she fell asleep beside me. They smell like themselves and their fur is so very soft.
Earlier in the day I saw Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) at the Somerville Theatre. It was the first feature-length film of Harry Langdon, a silent comedian who is now much more obscure than he deserves to be; he seems to be remembered as a forerunner of Stan Laurel if anything, although the later actor of whom he reminded me most was Jacques Tati. Langdon's characters are more explicitly clownish than Hulot—his white-faced makeup with its dark-lined eyes and brows gives him the look of a classic Pierrot, even though his clothes are ragbag contemporary—but they exist at a similar angle to the world, mildly bemused to downright bewildered by normality, attended by chaos and unfazed by it while everyone who expects the world to behave ordinarily is bowled over and outraged in their wake. The plot here is not that important: Langdon's Harry Logan is the son of a traditional shoemaker being squeezed out of business by the mass-produced juggernaut of Burton Shoes, so in order to raise the necessary rent to keep a roof over their heads, he enters himself more or less accidentally in a cross-country walking race sponsored by Burton as a publicity stunt. Oh, and he's in love with the model who appears on Burton's most famous billboard—"The Sole of America"—and happens to be Burton's daughter, played by a jaw-droppingly baby-faced Joan Crawford. Will Harry finish the race? Will he get the girl? Why are you even bothering to ask? The point is the surreal physical comedy, like the thing that happens with the feather bed and the electric fan or Langdon's frankly amazing attempt to bluff his way past an angry farmer with a watermelon down his trousers and a chicken under his sweater, and the much smaller-scale, no less funny range of physical comedy contained in Langdon's total inability to deal with the most basic of human social interactions, like shaking hands. This last becomes a running gag, like he's seen people do it, but can't quite figure out how it works: he holds out one hand, palm-up, about shoulder-height, like an awkward middle-five or an amiably confused shrug, and when inevitably no one recognizes this diffident little gesture as a proffered handshake, he turns it into a bashful head-scratch or a finger-twiddle at the mouth, which would totally be nonchalant if anyone noticed. Every time. The one time an actual handshake looks like it's about to come off, a corned beef sandwich gets in the way. And yet this same character can drive off a cyclone by throwing bricks at it ("David slew Goliath; Daniel tamed the lions; Joshua stopped the sun—and Harry made a cyclone take the air") while dressed in a shower curtain and a proto-Weary Willie burnt-cork beard because he has no reasonable expectations of the universe; if it works, it works. The finale is a piece of double-barreled WTF apparently shot as a gag and kept in because Langdon liked it so much. Based on audience reaction this afternoon, it was worth it. His follow-up feature The Strong Man (1926) screened at the Somerville last November and I think it's the better film, with tighter direction and a storyline that isn't just an excuse to thread bits of business together, but if anyone ever shows Tramp, Tramp, Tramp where you can get to it, run over: it's too weird to miss. This recommendation sponsored by my understanding backers at Patreon.
Tonight I saw my cats.
derspatchel took pictures, of which I will post some as soon as I have copies. They had not forgotten me. They did not disdain me. Autolycus clung to my shoulder when I picked him up. Hestia flopped over like a fainting goat and presented belly for petting. They both wanted to be fed now now now and ran in and out of the bedroom. They are a little skittish and subdued from their ordinary selves still, but Autolycus has a mission to explore the new sink and Hestia groomed herself until she fell asleep beside me. They smell like themselves and their fur is so very soft.Earlier in the day I saw Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) at the Somerville Theatre. It was the first feature-length film of Harry Langdon, a silent comedian who is now much more obscure than he deserves to be; he seems to be remembered as a forerunner of Stan Laurel if anything, although the later actor of whom he reminded me most was Jacques Tati. Langdon's characters are more explicitly clownish than Hulot—his white-faced makeup with its dark-lined eyes and brows gives him the look of a classic Pierrot, even though his clothes are ragbag contemporary—but they exist at a similar angle to the world, mildly bemused to downright bewildered by normality, attended by chaos and unfazed by it while everyone who expects the world to behave ordinarily is bowled over and outraged in their wake. The plot here is not that important: Langdon's Harry Logan is the son of a traditional shoemaker being squeezed out of business by the mass-produced juggernaut of Burton Shoes, so in order to raise the necessary rent to keep a roof over their heads, he enters himself more or less accidentally in a cross-country walking race sponsored by Burton as a publicity stunt. Oh, and he's in love with the model who appears on Burton's most famous billboard—"The Sole of America"—and happens to be Burton's daughter, played by a jaw-droppingly baby-faced Joan Crawford. Will Harry finish the race? Will he get the girl? Why are you even bothering to ask? The point is the surreal physical comedy, like the thing that happens with the feather bed and the electric fan or Langdon's frankly amazing attempt to bluff his way past an angry farmer with a watermelon down his trousers and a chicken under his sweater, and the much smaller-scale, no less funny range of physical comedy contained in Langdon's total inability to deal with the most basic of human social interactions, like shaking hands. This last becomes a running gag, like he's seen people do it, but can't quite figure out how it works: he holds out one hand, palm-up, about shoulder-height, like an awkward middle-five or an amiably confused shrug, and when inevitably no one recognizes this diffident little gesture as a proffered handshake, he turns it into a bashful head-scratch or a finger-twiddle at the mouth, which would totally be nonchalant if anyone noticed. Every time. The one time an actual handshake looks like it's about to come off, a corned beef sandwich gets in the way. And yet this same character can drive off a cyclone by throwing bricks at it ("David slew Goliath; Daniel tamed the lions; Joshua stopped the sun—and Harry made a cyclone take the air") while dressed in a shower curtain and a proto-Weary Willie burnt-cork beard because he has no reasonable expectations of the universe; if it works, it works. The finale is a piece of double-barreled WTF apparently shot as a gag and kept in because Langdon liked it so much. Based on audience reaction this afternoon, it was worth it. His follow-up feature The Strong Man (1926) screened at the Somerville last November and I think it's the better film, with tighter direction and a storyline that isn't just an excuse to thread bits of business together, but if anyone ever shows Tramp, Tramp, Tramp where you can get to it, run over: it's too weird to miss. This recommendation sponsored by my understanding backers at Patreon.
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Thank you!
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We're going to try to set up a regular visiting schedule, so that I do not have to go nearly four days without seeing them ever again. They are wonderful cats and I feel better around them.
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Thank you. I've seen them twice more since, and should plan for the next visit. It is important to me not to let time just pass without them.
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Thank you!
Tramp, Tramp, Tramp sounds utterly demented, which sounds like something you need right now.
Yes. It was a great distraction. And genuinely worthwhile as a curio of silent comedy, which is always nice!
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Yeah, that doesn't ring true for me, among other reasons because his style of comedy is not very much like Chaplin's. There's a sort of superficial resemblance in the little character trying to get along in a big world, but Chaplin's Tramp is much more resourceful in a crisis or an altercation, however bewildered and battered he might have been before; Langdon's protagonists aren't totally passive, but they're dangerously close to it. They sidestep trouble much more often than they confront it, or they simply fail to notice it's there at all; they live in charmed circles of their own obliviousness, like the fool of the world in a fairy tale. I'm not sure there's any guarantee that, if you were a fan of Chaplin, your affections would automatically transfer to Langdon.
There does seem to have been something about the combination of Harry Langdon and Frank Capra—they worked together on Langdon's three most famous features, the two I've mentioned and the next year's Long Pants (1927), and he never seems to have been as successful again. On the other hand, it was the end of the silent era and his character really doesn't seem to have translated well to sound, so I don't know how much was Capra's direction and how much was timing and how much was just the sea-change in pop culture between the 1920's and '30's that took him out. He is totally worth your time, however. He isn't like any of the other major silent comedians and I'm glad we have the films we do.
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That film sounds wonderfully ridiculous.
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Thank you!
That film sounds wonderfully ridiculous.
It was great. There's an extended take which is just a close-up of Langdon's face as he herky-jerkily falls asleep after having been stoned out of his mind on sleeping pills and booze and it's hilarious. The whole movie is like that. None of its timing is quite what you expect, except that the punch lines are all exactly where they need to be and the gags that don't have punch lines are just as funny. I really can't think of anything else quite like it in the 1920's. I'd love to know if it can be proven that he affected a next generation of comedians, given how briefly his popularity seems to have lasted and how little he seems to be known nowadays.
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Enjoy! What else is on there? I've only seen Tramp, Tramp, Tramp and The Strong Man (1926).
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Disc 4: Knight duty (1933 ; 21 min.)
Hooks and jabs (1933 ; 19 min.)
Love, honor and obey (the law!) (1935 ; 22 min.)
Lost and found (2007 ; 75 min. ; documentary)
Disc 3: Lucky stars (1925 ; 21 min.)
Saturday afternoon (1926 ; 27 min.)
Fiddlesticks (1926 ; 20 min.)
Soldier man (1926 ; 31 min.)
His first flame (1927 ; 45 min.)
Disc 2: All night long (1924 ; 19 min.)
Feet of mud (1924 ; 18 min.)
The sea squawk (1925 ; 19 min.)
Boobs in the wood (1925 ; 20 min.)
His marriage wow (1925 ; 21 min.)
Plain clothes (1925 ; 16 min.)
Remember when (1925 ; 19 min.)
Disc 1: Picking peaches (1924 ; 22 min.)
Smile, please (1924 ; 19 min.)
His new mamma (1924 ; 15 min.)
The first 100 years (1924 ; 13 min.)
The luck o' the foolish (1924 ; 21 min.)
The Hansom cabman (1924 ; 19 min.)
Catalina, here I come (1927 ; 17 min.)
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Those are some amazing titles.
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