Wow, this is profound. The writer made the same connection as I did between Buster and the Occupy Wall Street 99%. http://prettycleverfilms.com/2...er-keaton-is-the-99/

Dandelion, forgive me for being obtuse. Isn't this the RAY BRADBURY board? How did we suddenly switch from Ray to Mr Keaton? Just wondering ...

robertp,
If you go to the beginning of this thread, and read through, you will understand. Should only take an hour or two - Dandelion is rather prolix on the subject.

Dandy, great article!

Thanks. I post links only to great articles, and trust me, there is a lot of junk about Keaton rattling around out there, including things demonstrably not true, anywhere from the Internet Movie Database to printed books. One book has him as illiterate, when there are many examples that he wrote extremely well, and in beautiful handwriting, no less. An online article claimed he "wrote one more book than he read." A lie. He read the book on which The General was based and others. This was based on an anecdote which supposedly took place after he'd left his home and was living in a place with no books (he'd have left any books at the house--as he did with his films--) when he was drinking heavily and wouldn't have been reading during that time anyway. It doesn't mean he never did. An Internet Movie Database review claimed Keaton and Joe E. Brown were married to the same woman. Absolutely not true--Brown was married to the same woman from 1915 to his death in 1973! There are also wildly varying accounts of Keaton's eye color and shoe size. Half the fun will be sifting through all the dross to find the truth!

"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey!"



And here is a Buster Kitten update:

Buster and our color scheme are a joke! He is COMPLETELY camouflaged on both the living room couch and the dining room rug--as if he were made to order to match them! Which makes him even harder to avoid stepping on!

Besides "Buster the Duster" (he certainly keeps the table legs well-polished), "The World's Youngest Lion Tamer" (a title he may have to forego as poor Orville has not been seen or heard from since Christmas Day), and "Baby Bumblebee," Buster should also be known as "The Yellow Peril" due to his sometimes destructive playful habits.

I rest my case.

Hey, Bradbury loves cats! He even wrote a book about their pajamas! He helped me name my last one, but I didn't need any help naming this one. Although Keaton was mostly a dog person, he loved other animals as well, as evidenced by the picture above.

"The more I see men, the more I love my dog."

This was a 1980s slogan you used to see on t-shirts or whatever. The other day I heard it in a Buster Keaton film from way back in 1931 and was stunned that it was (at least) that old. Well, the more I see of some Buster Keaton fans, the more I love all Ray Bradbury fans! Why do such hateful people bother admiring such a lovable character? What is their motive in trying to drive away someone interested in a person whose life and work they are sworn to promote? Why does a tiny minority of malcontents wield such power over a much larger group?

Sorry Dandelion, I didn't mean to offend. Who are these 'hateful people'? Tell 'em to go take a hike. If they're nasty to you, cease communication. You can still adulate someone without an "appreciation society" giving you a hard time. Ignore them. Get on with your book and then, at least, you'll have achieved something. You're far too articulate to allow these numpties to spoil your dream.

Wow, thanks, Robert. I've been pretty incessantly attacked over the last several days and when I saw your name braced myself for another.

They are, as far as I can tell, academics who simply can't be pleased--including by attention given by non-approved entities to the subject they pretend to promote. (As I said, in ten years of coming to this board every day, twice a day, I have never seen one instance of that kind of treatment given to anyone--including the spammers! Same deal on the Twilight Zone board, disagreements sometimes but not just flaying and raking a genuinely interested person over the coals over minor details.)

If a post contains a minor error, like one inch off in Keaton's height (which was printed in his autobiography that way and I cited the page) the moderator will jump all over you, but if you carefully discuss and ask questions about details, others (academics I'm guessing) jump all over the moderator for allowing it although he has by his own admission studied these very details at length. (They have a life-sized model which is supposed to be completely accurate including height and eye color, which is what I was talking about--nothing controversial like trashing his family or anything.)

In short, they can't be pleased, and I think are reflecting the current climate of excessive and brutal force applied to peaceful self-expression. This picture pretty well sums it up:



(LOL, it took me some minutes to find an unretouched one--he's been photoshopped into everything!)

Will the New Year bring hope and renewal, or will it bring...? OMG! So sad. So true. So funny!



Anyhow, I told them, I don't mind the attacks so much as the inconsistency! Either attack someone for getting the facts wrong, or for trying to get them right, but not both! That's hideously inconsistent and horribly hypocritical! (Worse coming from people who have studied these very facts--in some cases for years--when I am brand new with less than three months and naturally confused by inconsistencies.) So now I guess they want me to leave the group.

Okay, I just got a communication regarding the Society and wrote this:

"Who actually collects the dues?

I must admit to being completely mystified by the moderator. Here is a man who by his own admission has paid close attention to details such as eye color for the purpose of colorizing photographs. Someone even spent enough time and effort to create at least one entire life-sized model correct down to eye color which the moderator studied if not helped create! There is an 'Eleanor-approved model'--so presumably there is at least one non-approved one! The moderator was the one who corrected me as to Buster's height. Naturally being new I am confused by inconsistencies and I pointed out that I did check facts and that height was printed in Buster's own autobiography (I corrected it in later posts, to what the moderator said it was.)

How then can the moderator get mad at me, because other people yell at him when I post trying to get a few facts straight (basic statistics, which in no way qualify as conjecture or "gush")? That's like if someone hits your car, pushes it into another car, and the driver proceeds to get out and work you over for hitting his car! It's illogical and inconsistent. I'm flayed for getting even the tiniest detail wrong, then raked over the coals for asking basic details from people who have studied this for years when I have less than three months, people who make life-sized models for crying out loud! And then I'm supposed to be the one with a problem! I just wonder if it can be explained!

(Also, I'd like an idea of who attends the convention. It may be the people I need to avoid won't even be there. If only ten people promise to be nice, I'll go anyway. If the guest speakers are interesting enough, not even that many need be nice to me.)"

As of now, I've been banned from the original group, although I didn't post anything there after being told not to.

This could be just as well. I could have gotten in a lot of trouble consorting with those academics. If they don't bring you around to their viewpoint, they make your life miserable for failing to agree. If they do, and God forbid you later write anything yourself, they will accuse you of being too influenced by them and copying from them. There are enough other sources to draw from. Good riddance!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,

Okay, I posted the following in response to someone coming to my defense on another group.

Well, Friend, if the world had more people like you (or, I suppose, if they were more vocal--maybe there should be a topic "Everyone who doesn't hate (my other friend who has been harassed into silence, and me), post here" and just see how many "Yea" votes you get) I wouldn't have spent 40 of the last 50 years trying to figure out whether to off myself and how best to go about it. I lay around half the day today thinking, everything I've tried to do in life never works...wouldn't it be best to just get it over with? I don't see any way to make something productive out of this pathetic little joke of an existence and I don't see any constructive way to end it. I am profoundly tired of everything and I can't get out.

For one thing, I have my kitten, which could live for twenty years and is the best pet I've had in forty years of trying--and too many other things going. I have been knocked back almost to the point I was in October, where what I'm undergoing is not a life, and dying is not an option. In fact, the main and simple fact is, dying would be self-indulgence, plain and simple! I do acknowledge even such as it is, life with Buster is STILL better (possibly way better) than life without, and for that I do thank Buster, Eleanor, and any descendants who continue his legacy.

What gets me down perhaps the most is the extreme lack of logic displayed. Here these people set up a group supposedly to promote the life and work of Buster Keaton. Yet if we talk about anything of which we don't know every fact (like that we can't know if Natalie was a total bitch but all evidence certainly indicates it) we get in trouble for that. After we have dropped a forbidden subject, someone else BRINGS IT BACK UP, we say that was discussed and the conversation is over, then SOMEONE ELSE WRITES US TELLING US TO LEAVE THE GROUP for talking about topics we were asked not to when it was someone else who brought it back up after we dropped it! (This was after I was accused of "posting off-topic about some other actor" in a post about Keaton's blood relatives--and the question was answered--politely--TWICE--and I accepted the answer and moved on, then someone kicked up the dirt after the whole matter had settled.) Well, of course I got blamed for it! It's like I said several times in the last day or so, if car plows you down and flings you into something, YOU are responsible for the damage! It's never the maniac who mowed you down! After over 40 years of taking this, the last two years I snapped a couple of times and let my family know I wasn't going to put up with it anymore, that I knew I wasn't responsible for these goons and wasn't going to be fooled that I was, yet it happens every fifth or sixth place I go. Evidently it can't be stopped. I just have no idea how to deal with it.

Same thing with PLAIN, BASIC FACTS. I posted about eye color saying I wasn't sure what Buster's was but it was plainly NOT BROWN, as I watched a color film which was in good condition where Buster was in the SAME LIGHT with an actor with CLEARLY BROWN EYES and Buster's eyes did not match that person's eyes. Mod 1 accepted this and posted at length about the exact shade and color makeup of Buster's eyes, using as many or more words as I did. Mod 1 and Mod 2 said they were hazel; I accepted it. Then someone else comes along AFTER THE MATTER IS SETTLED and kicks me in the butt saying basically his eyes were brown, I am just too stupid to see it. While I'm still trying to get up out of the dirt, someone else kicks me down, because the guy who posted this was an "expert" and says, quit contradicting the experts and while you're down there be sure to kiss this guy's butt. Well, Mod 1 is an expert and I never contradicted him--in fact, I was agreeing with him about getting details right being important--(so already I was accused of doing something I didn't, in a conversation that as far as I was concerned was over anyway), I was accused of "stringing out topics in which no one else is interested" when Mod 1 was interested and I wasn't the one who strung it out, it was these other two (one of whom had it in for both me and my friend who was also harassed.)

So I ACCEPT THE ANSWER I RECEIVED IN THE FIRST PLACE BEFORE THESE OTHER THREE CLOWNS GOT INVOLVED and started a WHOLE OTHER TOPIC on a perfectly simple, basic subject. I said I noticed there were discrepancies in printed statements about Buster's height and shoe size--including in Buster's published autobiography and a spoken statement recorded just four years later. And someone tells me to go to the other site to "gush." HOW IN HOLY HELL IS SHOE SIZE GUSH? Do they think I have a foot fetish or something? Get real! There are some things which can be measured and have only one answer, I'm trying to learn if there is an accepted answer and I get accused of frivolity and gush? (If anyone still had a pair of his everyday shoes, or a record of what he bought, it could be easily settled. I gave away all my dad's shoes when he died, but I know his size. But no, they'd rather snipe at me.)

It's the frivolity accusation that really hurts. For one, I cut out all references to Buster's attractiveness or anything else too personal when asked. For another, here, by Mod 1's own admission, there are AT LEAST TWO LIFE-SIZED, FULL REPLICAS OF BUSTER. Don't tell me that didn't take massive amounts of time, energy, and expense to construct for someone--there almost had to be more than one person involved in such a project. Mod 1 was using the "Eleanor-approved model." I said (with only a little sarcasm, mostly sincerely) that I'd like to see it and make up my own mind for myself about the hair and eyes, and I am accused of being some sort of troublemaker. EXCUSE ME, BUT MOD 1 HAS SPENT DECADES ON THIS INCLUDING BEING CLOSELY ASSOCIATED WITH AN ACCURATE, LIFE-SIZED MODEL, I come on for three months and ask a few questions (a lot of my "excessive" number of posts were actually brief responses to others' topics) AND I AM AN OVERLY-OBSESSED, NITPICKING NUT?

Sorry, is Friend the only one who sees a problem here? That's not to mention what you already pointed out, a lot of the griping and bellyaching is coming from people who barely bother to post! I haven't seen anything since I was banned but the last couple of names I saw I didn't even recognize.

It's a terrible position to be in. I can't go on like this (the fact that I have for fifty years doesn't make it better, it makes it worse), I can't escape, and attempts at improvement don't seem to work. To be clear: they don't want to kill me. They just want to make me disappear as if I never existed.

Subtlety doesn't work with them because they don't notice it. Plain English doesn't work with them because they don't get it. Whacking them over the head with a pipe wrench does not work with them because they don't like it. If anyone finds what DOES work, please tell the rest of us. We are dying to know.

I am still waiting, after fifty years of hearing how terrible I am, to hear a rational, reasoned explanation of how the universe is really better off without me and exactly how and why the world will be improved if (or, rather, when) I am removed from it. I'm not sure this is something I really want to know. I just welcome anyone willing to take it up to try to explain it so I can understand and accept it.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,

I commence this year admitting I have had it. Another year of grabbing, twisting, turning this life upside down and shaking it to see if it can be pounded into anything resembling "acceptable and worthy of note." I'll probably know I've "arrived" when I impress a certain relative who has let me know repeatedly my life doesn't amount to a knat's ass in his estimation. This is the worst year yet, as it is the first and only in which I will start out being 50, and be 50 for most of the year. After that I will be over 50!

This month I have to start writing a book. (I started on November 11 as far as writing the dedication and research.) It's about a subject I've studied most of my life (meaning, all of my adult life and last five years of childhood.) It is very important and dear to me. If I do not do an absolutely stellar fantastic job, it is all over. I'll lose the last of what little identity I have (admittedly not much as it's mostly been manufactured based on my own beliefs system from, well, since I've been old enough to have a beliefs system--1968 or so--till now.)

I saw the Jacob Marley speech at least a half dozen times over the holidays--watched A Christmas Carol all the way through five times and caught part of another--and was impressed that the "chain he forged in life" was all composed of deeds he had not done. I've been dragging such a chain for 40 years. Every time I think I'm about to make some breakthrough accomplishment, it all gets stacked up alongside me and I feel relieved that the weight has been lifted. Of course, every time something goes wrong the entire thing collapses and, being heavier from being added to, hurts more each time. What's more, I get hit by individual links and have bad flashbacks to things that went wrong in high school and so on. It hurts much worse having things dropped on you from a height, than dragging them at ground level, I've found.

Anyhow, I have to do this but I'm dreading it because of all that can go wrong and what that will mean.

Maybe the bad thing is because I want a good solid self-concept, have wanted it so bad since 1968, that I actually want it worse than the writing. (By that I mean, valid enough to be recognized by others--not just imagination or delusion on my own part.) If I could do it in some way other than writing I would but I can't think of anything else that might work. It's not only every day, week, month, year but every decade. The '60s was the only one in which I have lived that I didn't do this, because I wasn't around for the whole decade or have much of a concept of this till near the end of it. Well, the '70s wasn't my decade, nor were the '80s, '90s, '00s, and now we are in the last year of the tens and then the teens start. I am profoundly weary.

Not that I would go back, but in a way it was easier when my dad was alive, because the negativity coming from him was so huge and so consistent that anything else was mostly just a distraction. It was all I could manage to try to deal with what Dad was throwing at me. Just building up and keeping up defenses from all that was a massive amount of work and a real expending of psychic energy. Since he's been gone I expected a break, which on the one hand I kind of got. On the other hand, there is too much coming from too many directions--I can't narrow it down to just one source, and say, all I have to do is produce something good enough to satisfy him, and I'm there. In the last few years of my dad's life I saw I wasn't going to be able to do this in his lifetime. After he was gone, there was some relief as I didn't have to worry every day about what he had said recently about how or why exactly I was horrible, or what he might come up with next, when, or how bad it might be. So if people want to take this as a post saying I miss my dad, they can take it that way. My energy level did improve a little just from not having to struggle against this every day, but unfortunately in over four years I haven't been able to come up to what I should.

I met a guy in the store today, the father of some guys my sisters and I went to school with. First he asked me if I were my sister, the doctor, and then if I were my sister, the lawyer. I said, "Thanks for the compliments, but no, I'm the writer." Now, this may be the first time in six or eight years I self-identified as a writer without anyone else saying something first. First I was an in-home health caregiver for my dad, then unemployed, and over the last two years I have not said what I am (which were the two years I attended my and my sisters' 30th high school class reunions.) So, it's progress. Progress I don't want to lose. As I said, I am back on track after four years of being sidelined, and already people who don't even know me are doing their level best to derail me, which I don't appreciate. When someone says they don't like what I am doing and to stop, I don't stop. I change directions and try any number of other things I hope might work better, but to stop is the biggest red flag possible for me. It's like that scene in It's a Wonderful Life: "All right. You were never born." That's exactly what I figure these people are trying to do to me, fix it so I don't exist, never did, and never will. Just the last possible thing I would ever allow if I can help!

Edited to say: I'm sorry the above didn't make the situation totally clear. It made it sound as if my writing and what I and other people think of it are the whole problem when they're only a small part of the problem.

I wrote the following to the group moderators: "In what way do I not qualify as having a 'serious' interest in Keaton? I have watched at least half his films, done some reading (though by no means whole books), watched two documentaries, tracked down some interviews and asked where I can obtain more, and shown ample evidence of having comprehended much of what I saw--some of which I watched twice already so as not to miss anything. Can you name one person among your supposedly more-deserving group, who did all this in only three months? Some of them have had years or decades. How can they look down on me as 'not serious'?"

No answer so far. Barring family obligations or something interfering with both at once, this can only mean:

1. It's a Sunday and a holiday and they're not answering mail.

2. They know I have a point and anyone would rather die than admit that. (Actually the most common and likely reason.)*

3. Despite the one moderator stating in a previous message that I was not being shunned, they actually are shunning me to the point of not even answering a brief, simple message.

* Story of my life. Only two things ever happen to me. 1) everything I try or do is totally shot full of holes and discredited, which has been pretty effectively done in this case, or 2) when I do something perfectly, that no one ever did or so much as came up with, even people who have studied the subject much longer than I have, so perfectly that no fault can be found, the only thing they can do is ignore it. If I say anything, I am accused of bragging or whining, usually both. There is a third thing, doing something great and having someone else take credit, which must happen, but I can't think of any real instances in my case. There are plenty of instances of people being highly praised for doing a hell of a lot less, though.

"Not being paranoid" does no good. It's the worst way to walk straight into danger. "Being optimistic" is the second worst. I spent this whole thing saying, if I just ignore them and change the subject, I'll find one they like! HA!

What this has to do with my mortal survival is--well, everything. If I don't make good with the first book, I'll have to continue with this marginal existence which will be down to nothing once my mom goes. In a couple of days will be the 35th anniversary of when her mom died, at age 86. And my mom will be 86 this year. Do you see where I'm going with this? If I don't finish the first book and make good with it before my mom goes, I'll be too depressed to go on and I might as well be dead. Short of real fortunate illness or accident, I have absolutely no idea of how to die without creating a huge mess, so, see the top of this message again. I have to make good, or else--just to survive--and the worst of it is when my mom goes I'll probably feel so bad, I'll wish I was dead anyway, so no matter how good I do now, it will never be enough. That's why I'm nervous. I don't know why I bother with the newsgroup. I keep thinking, if I can do a small thing right (like get the newsgroup to take me back) maybe the big things will work out, when I know they won't, and can't.

Now, on the one hand, if I spend the rest of my life being insulted--for instance, as being too "frivolous" to consort with the "real" group (the people being nice to me being looked down on as the fake, reject group)--I may be more happy to part with my life when the time comes. I will, however, not enjoy my life as much in the meantime. It's a heck of a choice!

This message has been edited. Last edited by: dandelion,

quote:

Originally posted by Braling II:
robertp,
If you go to the beginning of this thread, and read through, you will understand. Should only take an hour or two - Dandelion is rather prolix on the subject.

Dandy, great article!

Prolix is a good word.

quote:

Originally posted by robertp:
Prolix is a good word.

It's been used about Thomas Wolfe.