Edward Gorey and Moments of De-Normalization

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology


I think we all have a moment, if we're cut from a certain cloth, when we realize as adults that we didn't turn out like the other kids. Full disclosure: I have had several, if not dozens of these moments. 


This is the story of the most recent. 


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This Christmas, I was given a sewing machine by Bug, a terribly thoughtful gift to feed the fires of my love for fashion. I just picked it up this weekend and, in my typical learning curve, immediately dove into a project way too advanced for my skill level. Without hubris, I ponder earnestly, would I ever learn anything? 


The first of these projects was a doll for my cousin, who I adore. It's fairly straightforward, and so fun to design. But did I chose a princess? No. 


Did I choose a classic character from children's literature? Oh, no no no. 

I choose to make my 3 year old cousin a doll, made with my loving intentions, depicting one of the 26 children who meet their untimely demise in Edward Gorey's The Gashlycrumb Tinies. I picked Una! 

It's my favorite Gorey book, and I read the tale of dancing with the afterlife in (told in rhyming dactylic couplets) when I was, oh, say seven? I think I found it at Granny Bates, on a high shelf. Gorey drew his famous illustrations with a stern Victorian whimsy which, yeah, seems like an oxymoron until you see his work. He plays with ideas of moral instruction, strange comforts of the macabre and dark and sinister ideas of the familiar domicile. 

Gorey played this mild terror straight and for the same resons I read and love Roald Dahl, spared no unfortunate circumstance for his young (or possibly not so young) readers. He said, "Sunny, funny nonsense for children — oh, how boring, boring, boring. As Schubert said, there is no happy music. And that's true, there really isn't. And there's probably no happy nonsense, either." For that, Edward Gorey is one of my secret obsessions. He's dark and weaves a similar tapestry of childhood, which I've always looked back on as a Gothic, vaguely sinister time, full of half-understood languages and inherited secrets. 

Anyway. The doll is almost finished. I hope she likes my Gothic little friend! I even made a little tag so that when my cousin gets older and grows a sense of humor, we can bond over the delights of the macabre. Una the doll has no hair right now, but she does have the blankest, most dour expression. Place your orders now---I might sew up all 26. 




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X-Men First Class trailer

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology





Wait a...hold on now. So the X-men solved the Cuban Missile Crisis? I mean, my instinct says to go for the easy jab and gesture to the mountain of history books currently propped up against my desk that disagree with that idea...but no. Not today. 


Because you know what? It is way too awesome for me to get mean. It is pointedly absurd and I love it. Kind of like how the inclusion of super-beings in Alan Moore's Watchman made the whole book sort of like a massive, decade-spanning version of Where's Waldo for historical events. Watchmen took it to epic levels, creating a vivid, alternate tapestry of skewed national memory. In comparison, this just seems cute. Precious, even. Like a seven-year old acting out Citizen Kane in their living room. 


...what? That's perfectly normal, right? Lots of kids...did...ahem. 


So despite the fact the history student in me should be fuming, instead a vision of Magneto floating Soviet submarines over the South Atlantic makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Some absurdities just reaffirm your faith in the world, you know? 


Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over here, pretending Spiderman showed up in Andy Warhol's Empire and spoiled the original take. 

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A Boy and his Ursine: Fictional Bears Throughout Culture

by Jillian Butler, Ampersandology

This post is dedicated to my friend Adam, whose love of bears and bears-related topics inspires me almost every day (...that he mentions this passion). 

While I never forgot that Lord Byron owned a pet bear, I did forget the reason he got it. 


It was because Cambridge wouldn't let him get a dog. Badass. He later suggested that the bear apply for a college fellowship. Badass. His ultimate goal was to make the bear his best friend. MOST BADASS OF ALL. 

Loose interpretation of the event. 

I wish Childe Harold's Pilgrimage had been about Byron and his bear roaming the English countryside and solving mysteries.  Not only would that make a much better poem, it has serious sitcom potential: like The Odd Couple, but with BEARS! 


Bears represent so much more than the last thing you'd want to meet in the woods. Especially in children's literature and film, bears become a great example of the place in the imagination where fear meets anthropomorphism: look no farther than the high quantities of "friendly" bears to tell us how much we like to paint the scary corners of our fears in bright colorful polka dots. 


Indulge me, if you will, to take a look back through the greatest bears of pop culture history. 

Baloo (The Jungle Book)

Troubling racial messages aside, Disney's The Jungle Book features one hep cat in the form of Baloo the bear. He sings, he dances, and BOY. Does he love honey. Some of the most bizarre imagery of my youth came from watching Baloo eat a mouthful of bees. Is honey delicious enough to warrant a tongue full of bee stings? The question haunted me so I didn't put on my food until age 17. Regardless, this laissez-faire attitude is what puts Baloo on this list: the "Bare Necessities" is less a runaway pop hit and more an anthem of a strangely-spartan hedonism.





In the original Kipling work, Baloo was basically the exact opposite of his screen portrayal. He was stern, and often used beatings and other punishment methods to get through Mowgli's thick human head. That backwards stiff has no business on this list. One stiff and disciplined, the other carefree and hip. Makes you think of the Wakefield twins, really. 

Paddington Bear

Let me tell you, it is HARD to pull off red and blue without looking like the political split down American soil. Paddington Bear does that and then some, managing to get himself adopted by humans and conforming to a charming British befuddlement. 

Smokey the Bear 

Did you YOU leave fire unattended in the forest? Yeah, I didn't think so. I sure didn't. Mostly because I don't ever go in the forest, but ALSO because of Smokey's simple, elegant threat against my well-being.

Fozzy Bear (The Muppet Show)

A beloved fixture from my youth, I still can't pinpoint why Fozzy Bear is so charming. Is it his fuzzy, over-sized digits? Perhaps it's his little cravat, making him both clownish and fancy in one fell swoop? Personally, I think it was the deep level of pathos he carried with every lame duck of a joke; he's a clown who's not funny, giving whatever laughter he earns the slight tinge of sadness. He's that one uncle who thinks you'll still laugh at the same joke you liked when you were two. Those guys are hard to shake. I know what a cow sounds like, Uncle Geoff. I'm 25. God.  

Sleeping Bear (Legends of the Fall)

Skip ahead to 1:20 to see the only bear that has EVER bested Brad Pitt. 

Bear Grylls

Convince me this man is real. You can't. I saw him use his own bloody fist as bait! BAIT! There is so much wrong with that sentence that it doubles back into right. Though I know at least one person that would disagree with me, Bear Grylls impresses me in the same moment I reach the dictionary to look up the definition of Batshit Crazy (verb, meaning to be foolish or impractical to the point of insanity; intensely involved with LAUGHING AT THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN BODY). His mother was probably Hera or something, which makes him a demi-god, not a television host. Nice try, Discovery Channel, but you can't fool me twice! 

Wojtek the Bear 

Orphaned as a cub, this real-life bear was adopted by the Polish army and trained to transport ammunition, in addition to eating cigarettes, drinking beer, and --reportedly-- interrogating Nazis. Let me repeat that--this bear supposedly sat himself down across from Nazi spies and asked, "WHAT'S UP, BADDIE?" in Bear. To be fair, it's the move of a brilliant tactician--what wouldn't you tell a bear who's demanding a full confession? What a way to serve your country; did you hear that, Von Trapp family singers? Do re methinks you've been served. 

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Got a favorite bear? Leave it. 

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