WHY THIS BLOG?

I AM PARCA'S CHOSEN:
My name is Denise Sevier-Fries (nee Buchy). Parca is the Roman Goddess of Childbirth and Destiny and after you get to know me, you will see why I believe she has, without doubt, made me her Poster Child. Come here for some serious issues, but mainly just some cheeky fun; satire with the odd parody tossed in, and a generous helping of hyperbole, with a dollop of facetiousness.

I am Canadian so expect a bit of politeness too. Sorry.

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1) MY eBOOKS CAN BE FOUND ON AMAZON: here

2) MY eBook Trailers are on YOUTUBE
3) My website:denisesevierfries.com
4) My Photo-Art Youtube Trailer is here too.





Friday, September 23, 2011

A GIANT, RUSTY INFLUENCE (re-posted by ROGER EBERT on his FB page: see bottom of post!)

I’ve just had an epiphany. A retro-revelation, as it were. 

An unexpected foray onto Youtube left me seriously starting to reflect upon what invisible hands shaped the lump of me that became me.

If I were to get one of those social media, wanna-get-to-know-you-better questionnaires that say ‘TELL ME 5  FACTS ABOUT YOURSELF’, I would write:

1)      I am a huge Harry Potter fan, largely in part because of the Camelot-ish atmosphere and castles: the giant Hagrid is a clear favorite character of mine (and second only to Snape, who I would have sex with on my mothers dining room table during Thanksgiving supper if he asked).
2)      I collect roosters, but call then chickens. (Sounds funnier).
3)      I love miniatures.
4)      I enjoy classical music and medieval type folk songs (e.g. Loreena McKennitt)
5)      I am a romantic and was a far-too-clingy girlfriend in my day…but I was usually the ‘dumper’ and rarely the ‘dumpee’.

This random list is ‘me’... unexplored; constant. But fast forward to 10 minutes ago when, suffering yet another 3:00 a.m. bout of sleeplessness, I spontaneously decided to go on YouTube and seek out some old videos of childhood shows. Perhaps I could drift back into my childhood and remember how it felt as a kid to"Go to bed!" and actually sleep!

Living in a small town in Southern Manitoba, we had only two TV channels. Damn lucky to even have a TV! My strongest memories were of Hockey Night in Canada, newsman Linus Westberg from Yorkton, The Beverley Hillbilies, Ed Sullivan with Topo Gigo, Get Smart and Mr. Dressup. 

I adored Casey and Finnigan in Mr. Dressup.That Tickle Trunk was a right proper miracle! I quickly found an old clip.

But instead of clicking on it, I noticed another video of an old children’s show that I grew up with…a show I hadn’t thought of in over 40 years but had watched daily in my formative years in the 60's: The Friendly Giant. I loved that show and its theme song was the first music I remember…and the first song I learned the lyrics to. For those of you who don’t know the show, here is a quick preview of how many of us Canadian Baby Boomers spent our extremely limited TV watching hours: *watch closely, there will be a pseudo-quiz afterwards…


 Did you notice the following?
1)      A castle. Medieval, complete with moat and drawbridge.
2)      A giant who is gentle and loves animals.
3)      A rooster named ‘Rusty’.
4)      A miniature cozy living room with miniature everything in it.
5)      The opening and closing theme music is classical/folk mix with a decidedly haunting melody. This theme song is oft times called ‘Early One Morning’ but is actually titled "The Forsaken Lover". The lyrics begin…

“Early one morning,
Just as the sun was rising,
I heard a young maid sing,
In the valley below.

CHORUS:
Oh, don't deceive me,
Oh, never leave me,
How could you use
A poor maiden so?”

I admit that this is as far as I ever sang it, but I knew the words verbatim at age 4 regardless of what the hell they meant.


Are we seeing a pattern here? I sure did. The second I heard that tune playing and saw the castle drawbridge open, it was like my entire world made more sense. So THAT is where I formed this love of such odd things! It brought me to tears. Not the ear-shattering, heart-rending cry and complete agony one felt when Donny Osmond got married, but the light eye-dampening of yesteryear reminiscences. A wistful whimper.

And WOW!, the 'love'm and leave'm before they leave you' routine I subconsciously followed during my dating years seems like it was taken from the chorus of 'The Forsaken Lover'. What would Freud say about all this?

As I shook my head and smiled inwardly, I wiped my eyes and wondered, in enlightened awe, at the serious influence a children’s show can employ. Then two powerful ideas broke through my mist of nostalgia:

1)      Thank God we only had 2 channels and the only other show I now remembered watching faithfully was The Bugs Bunny Show, which explains my fondness for black and white, Sylvester-like cats (a pic I took of our little Jasmine is below):

                                                    


And it also explains my partiality to full-head-of-hair-challenged men like Elmer Fudd (you’d have to meet my hubby to see what I mean). My embarrasing rooster fascination, personified in the infamous Foghorn Leghorn, now made perfect sense as well! 

     Most surprisingly, my first taste of opera was slipped into my psyche with the following Bugs Bunny episode. Opera truly changed my life forever, as I met my husband whilst singing chorus with him for 13 years in an opera company in BC.


Watching this as a child, how was I to know my heart had just been prepped for my future happiness?

2)      My kids and their buddies grew up watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Dragonball Z, Transformer: Beast Wars and Pokemon. All aggressive, violently competative (in a Good vs Evil kinda way), winner-takes-all kids' shows that all had tiny slivers of high-morality embedded here and there between blood-spitting, head-exploding, torture-glorifying, save-the-world fights.

Conclusion? Our childhood shows molded us FAR more than we ever knew! It's a jarring reality.

Conclusion of the Conclusion? Honey, we are in grave danger. 

The upcoming generation is a highly desensitized army of warped war-mongers who have no problem with talking turtles; stealing spaceships that look like Hoover vacuums on steroids; brutal military tactics; misogynistic, sexless aliens that give birth by barfing up their eggs, and emotionless androids that can shoot fireballs from their hands and randomly chop up bodies and/or explode planets. 

And they are locked and loaded, ready to rumble. I should know. Apparently I helped warp them.

                                                                               **
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AFTERTHOUGHT: The novel I recently wrote is called Parca’s Forsaken (click for link). Remember the name of The Friendly Giant's theme song? ‘The Forsaken Lover’. How’s that for an eerie coincidence. Or a sign?

ROGER EBERT RE-POSTED THIS BLOG ON HIS OWN FB PAGE! MANY MOONS AGO BUT STILL A THRILL.





14 comments:

  1. Thanks for sharing.

    As the creator of a preschool TV show, it makes me happy to see how a cartoon can have such an impact. I better be more careful about what I put in those scripts!

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  2. What a revelation!
    I loved "The Friendly Giant". "There's a chair for two to curl up in"... And while I can hear the tune in my head, in that lovely warbly recorder, I don't remember any lyrics. I even named my toy giraffe Jerome, in honour of, well, you-know-who!
    But you got me thinking now: I'm only a year older, and a born & bred Vancouverite, so I grew up with the same stuff. Your epiphany is making me think about dredging my memories of TV-shows that may've informed me in ways I've not noticed. What is my psyche to make of "Kukla, Fran & Ollie" and "J.P.Patches"?

    Congrats and good luck with your novel, btw!

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  3. Sorry for posting twice.

    I just watched some Friendly Giant on YouTube. Is it any coincidence that what I consider my childhood home was called 'the castle house' by the neighbourhood? It even had a turret! And yes, I have a love of medieval-anything.
    Thanks for cracking open a dusty vault of nostalgia for me to analyze!

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  4. Bob Boyle and Kymess: Thank you for your kind comments! I am exceedingly pleased to discover that I am not alone in my fascinations and revelations! Cheers!

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  5. As a recent graduate in communications I can tell you the influence of the media on children is a hot topic. After reading about this topic myself, I'm still conflicted as to how much the media shapes our lives. Some say the media shapes who we are (this would support your findings). Others think we can clearly separate our real life from fantasy. I enjoyed reading about your findings but hope this phenomenon is no different than the connection we have to our horoscope or a fortune tellers prediction (pure coincidence and our inherent ability to connect event that are not related whatsoever). I hope the latter is true if not only because I fear what several hundred episodes of Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch did to my newly forming mind in the 1970's.

    thanks for the interesting read

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  6. Ray Magner: Thank you for your interesting and kind comments. I believe the media shapes our lives to an extent, but the DEGREE of influence is directly affected by the other more potent influences in our lives such as parents, family and environment. For example, The Friendly Giant's influence on my life is relevant and fun to explore, but I do not live in a castle nor did I marry a Mr. Big and Tall. Having said that though, had I been a neglected, lonely child with no responsible adult around to keep things real for me, the opposite might be true (or I might have grown to be a bitter, unfulfilled woman for not having achieved those things). It does make one think...

    *Oh...and if you ever name your children Thurston, Marianne or Lovey I'd say you'd have your proof.

    Cheers!

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  7. I loved "The Friendly Giant," which I watched as a kid in Chicago. I watched carefully as he arranged the chairs so I could pick just the right one.

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  8. I'm a child of the 80s but I vividly remember watching The Friendly Giant. "Look up. Look waaaaaaay up, and I'll call Rusty." I play classical piano, and in one of my first competitions I played Early One Morning and got a gold certificate. Mr Dressup was another Canadian kid's show I was glued to. I loved watching him draw. I especially loved that his dog's name was the same as my Grandmother's maiden name.

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  9. cranberries: I was always partial to the rocking chair. Still am!

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  10. sweetNsawa: Mr. Dress Up was another fave of mine too, and although I never had a Tickle Trunk, I was famous in our house for dressing up in whosoever clothes I could find and traipse downstairs to surprise my family...especially when they had guests!
    And I love that your grandmothers maiden name was Finnegan! Very cool...

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  11. Rhonda: Sorry! I deleted you by mistake...please re-post!

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  12. Hi Everyone,
    Well, as the sister to Denise I can only comment on how true to her words she really is. Her fasination with Harry Potter(we call her 24 year old son, Potter as a nickname), miniture "anything" and her hopeless romantic outlook. True,true,true. I see fit to also mention her "gift" as an artist. Draw, paint, sketch...put a stick in her hand and she can etch out a Picasso in the sands on any beach. Unreal. This ability would have absolulty taken her life in a whole different direction only if her love for family hadn't surpassed this talent. Denise has 5 children and this she would not change for all the canvas in the world. I also see fitting to mention that we grew up in one of the coldest provinces in Canada(Manitoba). So, having the name "Parca" is well...apprapeau. Talk to you soon sis and oh yeah...that's the driest cat I've ever seen(ha).

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  13. Rhonda: Hey sis, good call on the POTTER reference;I hadn't even thought of it! (*driest reference I ever saw.)
    And yes, 'Parca' does sound like something Mom handed down to me from our 2 or 3 older siblings every October (and you got mine!)Hey, and thanks for the pat on the back...especially since I know how long it took you to get it on this page! (HA!!)Now sit still while I paint your portrait...it's your Xmas present.

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  14. I somewhow erased the THANK YOU to Roger Ebert that I posted here...he put my blog (this particular story, in fact)in his FaceBook page and he (and therefore I!!) got a lot of nice feedback. WHAT A THRILL!!!!! I'll have to sneak away from my novel (the next great blockbuster hit!Right?) and post some more stories. Lord knows I have a few more of them...

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