Sunday, September 18, 2016

obsessing on obsessions & the obsessed!

- i was an obsessed child. were you? i was obsessed with drawing pictures, comic books, typing stories & musings on my olivetti, mad magazine, &, once i got past the plateau, playing the piano. then i was an obsessed teen, but such a weirdo: i was obsessed with middle-aged actors, first humphrey bogart, then james garner & hal linden, & at my most obsessed, feverish peak, gene hackman. ha! why was i so strange?! i even had a plastic blue file box filled with folders about all of hackman's movies, movie stills, details of dialogue, casts, reviews lovingly typed & assembled.
- i remember the moment i became obsessed, watching bonnie & clyde, when brawny, burly hackman leaped effortlessly, limberly over the bank teller window. then watching him, all 6-foot-plus & 200 lbs, sprint athletically after a street punk, pulling a punch to threaten with meaty pink fist in the french connection. such bulky uber-male demonstrations drove me nuts!
- i know now it was just the flip side of the more usual teenaged-girl safe attraction to the androgynous little slips of boy whose polished smiles still beautify the covers of teen mags. although it's a step toward real relationships, attraction to perfect-pretty boy idols & hulky man-hunks are so far-removed from the real boys at school!
- we were raised in the church til aged 10, then given a choice if we wanted to keep going. my sister & i screamed NO!!! (at least that's what i remember...) my theory is, the less god or sense of the spiritual i have had in my life, the more obsessed i would get.  oh my lord, the obsessions have been many in the many years, even after i got sober & had periods of hugely unspiritual living! now being up here in the beautiful mountains, in a, yes, often-trying but loving, rewarding, emotionally edifying marriage, with fulfilling & immersing work, my obsessions are at bay... tho they still crop up!
- for instance, james & i've gotten obsessed in the past six months with columbo, tho me more than him, of course, cause, well, i think i'm just more neurotic. next weekend we're gonna stay at an old motel toward the mojave desert for one night, & i found out it has served often as a movie-tv locale, & then i kept looking (obsessing) & found out -- sh*t! -- they used it in an episode of columbo!! -- tho unfortunately not in one of the patrick mcgoohan episodes, cause that would've been a trifecta of obsession, to be w/james at a motel where a columbo was filmed starring my current-favorite deceased actor!!!  (mcgoohan, coolly, stoically handsome, did not drink or kiss onscreen because he was married & felt otherwise would disrespect his wife. he turned down the role of 007!)*
- there was a picture of the episode, so i clicked the link & found a site & realized: i am garden-variety obsessed. the person who made this website is full-boat, jenny-at-aged-16, maybe-whackadoodle obsessed! click here and see what i mean. http://columboscreenshots.blogspot.com
- columbo is such a terrific show! peter falk was a genius! so at least the man who assembled the site  has directed his obsession toward something worthy. just imagine if he put his effort & mind toward solving a world problem: he could change the planet, maybe!
(ps, here's a picture of patrick mcgoohan, just so you can see what i was enthusing about above...) :D
(tho of course james is far more handsome!!!)

* (from http://stuffnobodycaresabout.com/2015/04/20/batman-as-007-twelve-actors-who-turned-down-the-role-of-james-bond/:) A little more about Patrick McGoohan who had he accepted the role may have been the best actor to ever play the part. But it was not only the womanizing McGoohan objected to; he truly despised the character, calling Bond “contemptible and simplistic.”... McGoohan, a man of very strong ethics said in a 1960’s interview about the Dr. No script which he turned down, “I thought there was too much emphasis on sex and violence. It has an insidious and powerful influence on children. Would you like your son to grow up like James Bond? Since I hold these views strongly as an individual and parent I didn’t see how I could contribute to the very things to which I objected.”


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